Message from Organizer
My sincere congratulations to all Good Design Award 2018 winners announced today.
More entries (4,789) were received than in 2017, and there are probably a few reasons for this. Social appreciation of design has grown in recent years, and people have higher hopes for what good design can do. The expanding boundaries of design have led to greater diversity among those involved. What's more, becoming a GDA winner is now more valuable. The rising number of entries from overseas - especially from China and elsewhere in Asia - shows how design is positioned as being strategically important to growth in these areas. It is also a sign of the trust we have earned for fair and rigorous evaluation.
The 1,353 winning entries announced today reflect these current design conditions while suggesting what future design should be like.
I trust that this year's winning entries will give a sense of how essential the power of good design is in improving the quality of everyday life and raising new possibilities in society.
Among all winning entries, the Good Design Best 100 announced today are particularly outstanding and worthy of setting a new standard in design today and tomorrow. It is from the Best 100 that winners of special awards, such as the 2018 Good Design Grand Award, will be chosen.
Watch for our other program activities throughout the year.
President, Japan Institute of Design Promotion
Atsushi Oi
Message from Chair
Congratulations to all involved in the award-winning design recognized today in this year's Good Design Award program.
In evaluating entries in the 2018 GDA program, we focused on finding the power and potential of good design. Good design is making greater inroads into our everyday life. Its advantages can now be shared across society more easily, whether in solving social issues, helping people effect change, bringing happiness to all, or in other ways. In welcoming this era, the undertaking that has established what might be called benchmarks of good design, which guide the public in assessing the many things now promoted for their design, has been the Good Design Award program.
Looking ahead, we expect well-planned design to grow even more pervasive and deeply rooted in everyday life. We thought that this is precisely why the Good Design Award must serve as more than a design benchmark. Beyond this, the program must find and promote work that is clearly effective and promising as inspiring design that points the way to a better future.
Knowing that "beauty" or aesthetic appeal will be essential as future society takes shape through good design, we identified it as a key concept in this year's program. As jury members evaluated entries, this topic was discussed even more thoroughly than in past years. Instead of restricting the meaning of "beauty" to a single thing, we should understand that it is defined in many ways and continues to change with the times.
In this year's program, we found beauty in the merits of entries from a social or holistic perspective and in our own pleasure or delight from how entries benefit our own lives, here and now. Screenings to date have convinced us that surely, what brings about this kind of beauty is the power of design.
Chair of the GOOD DESIGN AWARD 2018
Fumie Shibata
Vice Chair of the GOOD DESIGN AWARD 2018
Seiichi Saito