The 20 winners of the 2024 GOOD DESIGN GOLD AWARD have been confirmed! The winners will be announced on October 16

This year, GOLD AWARD winners = candidates for the GOOD DESIGN GRAND AWARD

The GOOD DESIGN AWARD 2024, which began in April, is finally reaching their climax.

The GOOD DESIGN AWARD winners were decided upon during the Second Screening Panelat Makuhari Messe from August 7 to 9. Following this came the selection of the GOOD DESIGN BEST 100, awarded to 100 particularly outstanding designs from among the award winning objects.

Our topic this time is the screening which takes place to select the special awards, the GOOD DESIGN GOLD AWARD and GOOD FOCUS AWARD, from among the BEST 100. The GOOD DESIGN GOLD AWARD is given to the top 20 among the award winning objects.

Up until last year, five “finalists” were further selected from among the GOLD AWARD before deciding upon the GOOD DESIGN GRAND AWARD. This year, however, all 20 gold prize winners are candidates for the GOOD DESIGN GRAND AWARD. The secretariat will provide information about the selection method for the GRAND AWARD later.

Presentations by the winners in order to select the special awards

The screening for the special awards begins with presentations by the BEST 100 winners.

GOOD DESIGN BEST 100 Presentation Screening One representative of each BEST 100 winner gives a presentation on their winning design, using projected materials and sharing their screen. The presentation time is four minutes plus two minutes for Q & A, a total of six minutes.

The chair and vice-chair of the judging committee and each unit leader (19 members) conduct the screening from the BEST 100 onwards, rather than all the judges. The 100 award winning objects are divided into four rooms, with four or five judges per room listening to approximately 25 presentations. *The division is carried out so that the judge from the unit to which each entrant applied can listen to their presentation.

During the Q & A sessions after the presentations,

there were many questions about “forthcoming developments” and “future possibilities” for the award winning objects. These questions included:

・Awareness of issues involved when disseminating products, services, or activities, and attempts to do so ・Specific current figures such as the number of users and sales, and future prospects for these ・Applicability and potential for development of the technology being developed.

Decision on the special awards! The focus for this year

After the presentations by the BEST 100 winners, a special awards selection meeting was held.

The Special Awards Selection Meeting The special awards are selected through voting by and discussions among the chair and vice-chair of the judging committee and each unit leader. First, up to 20 winners of GOOD DESIGN GOLD AWARD (ECONOMY, TRADE AND INDUSTRY MINISTER’S AWARD) are selected from among the BEST 100 winners. Then, the remaining 80 winners are divided into four categories, and one to three GOOD FOCUS AWARD winners are selected in each of them.

During the screening discussion, Chairperson Saito talked about the trend among this year’s entries, saying, “I think there are many designs in which one person’s enthusiasm spreads to cross the boundary between the government and the private sector or make all boundaries melt away. In addition, the boundary between product design and concept design is disappearing more than ever before.”

There are activities in the background of product designs, and high quality product design is included in activity designs. One focus of the discussion was how to “beautifully solve” social issues precisely because the boundary between objects and concepts is seamless.

The screening process is based on voting, but decisions are not made based solely on the voting results, and designers and experts in various fields exchange their views on a single award winning object. In addition, Focused Issues researchers also add their bird’s-eye perspective of trends in society as a whole from time to time when deciding upon the special awards.

The award announcement will be on October 16!

It is not much longer now until the announcement of the winners! On October 16, the following winners will be announced:

・GOOD DESIGN AWARD ・GOOD DESIGN BEST 100 ・GOOD FOCUS AWARD ・GOOD DESIGN GOLD AWARD

After this, the GOOD DESIGN EXHIBITION 2024 of the award winners’ exhibition will be held from November 1, and then the GOOD DESIGN GRAND AWARD will be announced on November 5.

Please see the GOOD DESIGN AWARD official website for a detailed schedule and after winning the award.