The gargantuan list of finalists for this year’s edition of the Best Awards has been announced, and it reads like a veritable encyclopedia of New Zealand’s design agencies.
As Paul Catmur wrote last year, the marketing bit often seems to be forgotten in the world of digital marketing. But here are a few that combined the two and were deemed worthy of a place in the interactive marketing category at the Best Awards.
Winners of the Best Design Awards, the Oscars of the New Zealand design industry, were announced last Friday night at Auckland’s Viaduct Centre, and showed off how talented our country’s designers are. The night belonged to Alt Group, which scooped up six gold pins, four silver pins, three bronze pins and a coveted purple pin, recognising its designs for Auckland arts organisation Studio One Toi Tū (formerly Artstation). The studio was also host to one hell of an after party.
Design, said Apple founder Steve Jobs, is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. Or, put in a commercial context, whether it helps a company make money. And the Best Design Awards’ ‘Best effect’ category, whose finalists were announced this week, celebrates design that has produced a measurable effect on the success of an organisation or product, whether it be productivity, staff engagement, sales growth, bottom line or customer experience.
The Best Awards finalists have been announced, with a bevy of great design from New Zealand and Australasia. The annual awards are organised by Designers Institute of New Zealand and names the very best in graphic, spatial, product and interactive design, awarding a coveted purple pin to the winner of each category. This year there was a strong involvement in getting Australian designers to enter, wanting to put a spotlight on Australasian design, and CEO of Designers Insitute of New Zealand Cathy Veninga says standards have remained high.
A humane possum trap and a power company that taught people to like them are among the seven finalists in the inaugural Best Effect award to be announced at the Best Design Awards on 5 October.
A guitar with a body sculpted like a spider web, uber cool packaging for compost, a Mexican restaurant, a fanzine for motorcyclists, a tiny cinema in a stair well, and various pop up shops in Auckland’s Viaduct and the Christchurch Re:START container mall are among the 310 finalists in this year’s Best Design Awards, which are organised by the Designers Institute of New Zealand and recognise the country’s best graphic, interactive, spatial and product designs from the past year.
Doing its bit to represent the Wellington creative scene at the Best Awards, digital agency Resn picked up a Purple Pin in Interactive Design for its American-based virtual racing car application called Sponsafier 4. Vincent Heeringa had a chat with Rick Campbell and Steve Le Marquand, who tell us the secret to winning international work is wrack up the air miles and knock on the doors of the clients you’re after.
Take a radio fashioned out of pavlova, some interactive nappy packaging, a 21st birthday party invite, mix it with a giant rubber duck and a home brewing system and what do you get? A snapshot of Kiwi creativity by way of the finalist entries for this year’s Best Awards, thanks to the folks at The Designer’s Institute of New Zealand.
The Best Design Awards are recognised as the leading celebration of excellence in the design industry. And as the official awards of the New Zealand Designers’ Institute, it holds significant gravitas as an indicator of the current role that design is playing in the wider marketing landscape.
More than 2300 votes were cast and the team from Interbrand New Zealand has been crowned the winner of the ‘I wrapped it my way’ Mini design competition for its ‘Mend a Broken Heart’ entry.