The registration phase for the Red Dot Award: Product Design 2015 starts on 3 November 2014. The hallmark of good design which is recognised all over the globe will be awarded to today’s best products and projects. Its history stretches back 60 years: in 1955, a jury convened for the first time to assess the best designs of the day. In the same year, the first exhibition of “Permanent Show of Elegant Industrial Products” took place in Villa Hügel in Essen, Germany.
Prof. Dr. Peter Zec, President of Design Zentrum NRW since 1991, introduced the “Red Dot” in 1992 and brought an international dimension to a competition which up until that time had been seen as a primarily German event. In 2000 he created globally understandable concepts around the “Red Dot” such as “Red Dot Design Museum” or “Red Dot Award: Product Design”, and the logo designed by Peter Schmidt was introduced in 2001. Still today, the significance of the Red Dot Award is defined by its credibility. Its features include clear criteria for granting an award, respected and independent jury members as well as a uniform and outstanding presentation of the original products.
The winning products are presented in the Red Dot Design Museums, in the online presentation and in the Red Dot Design Yearbook. They also become part of Red Dot’s PR work. In their own communication and marketing, manufacturers and designers use the distinctive “Red Dot: Best of the Best” and “Red Dot Winner” labels to use their well-earned awards to set themselves apart from their competitors. The Red Dot Award: Product Design 2015 is open to global brands and established names in the world of design, but equally to small and medium-sized companies and young talents.
The number of individual product groups was increased to 31 in response to the growing number of participants and product diversity. For example, there are now new categories for “Materials and surfaces”, “Watches” and “Bicycle and bicycle accessories”. Depending on the specialist area, Red Dot invites specialised design experts as jury members. In order to avoid conflicts of interests and to ensure maximum fairness and non-bias, none of the jury members are permitted to assess any products that he or she has personally been involved in. In addition, the rule for the Red Dot Award has always been that the jury members are only accepted if they are not employed by an industrial firm in the manufacturing sector: None of the roughly 40 product design experts should assess his/her own performance or that of competing brands. “That actually goes without saying”, explains Red Dot founder Prof. Dr. Peter Zec. “But the Red Dot Award is the only major international design competition that has set and consistently adhered to these strict rules for decades.”
At the Red Dot Gala on 29 June 2015, the winners of the top individual award, the Red Dot: Best of the Best, will be honoured in the Aalto Theater in Essen, and all award-winners will subsequently be celebrated, photographed and interviewed many times at the big Designers’ Night after-show party. Each year, these two events are attended by more than 1,200 top international guests from design agencies, corporate brands and the media. At the same time, the four-week winners’ exhibition “Design on Stage – Winners Red Dot Award: Product Design 2015” opens in the Red Dot Design Museum Essen. The exhibition presents new, award-winning design achievements to tens of thousands of visitors in the midst of the historical industrial architecture of the UNESCO world heritage site of the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex.
