News 2009

Message from Judging Committee Chair(2009/04/22)

"Design's underlying potential"
Design has unleashed its true power.

Hiroshi Naito
Chairperson of Judging Committee

Japan has been caught up in the global economic crisis. However, if we change our perspective, we can view this instability as a major opportunity to make changes. Without realizing it, we are abandoning old values whose role has ended and laying the groundwork to take up the challenges of a new era. A look back at history shows us that new designs are created in precisely this kind of tumultuous period.

Design is essential particularly in difficult periods for its role in supporting daily life and broadening our minds. The accumulation of the small pleasures provided by design leads us into a new era. In every age, design has presented new values and lifestyles. Now, design faces the challenge of easing people's anxieties and disappointments and inspiring them to transform their concerns into hopes for the future. Design must now overcome this crisis with boldness and creativity.

The major policy advocated in fiscal 2008 to "imagine the perspective of consumers in the near future" is even more relevant to the current situation. We must seek out the new values needed for the near future and seriously consider what consumers want - this is the approach that design requires now. We hope that the Good Design Awards will serve as the platform for encouraging an appreciation of vibrant, open and optimistic designs that look to the future.

We look forward to receiving many submissions that will clear away the current turmoil to make the world stand up and take notice of the potential in Japan's designs.

Message from the Organizer

Good Design Awards Envisions Prosperous Future

Kazunori Iizuka
President of Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization

The Good Design Awards boast name recognition of 87%. This means that 100 million Japanese people support and trust the Good Design Awards. It is precisely the public's good will that will drive the development of design in Japan and bring it into the future.

The entire system for the Good Design Awards was overhauled in 2008 to give it greater relevance for "lifestyle of the near future". This fiscal year, we also launched the Good Design Frontier Design Award for subjects that have yet to be realized. This award highlights the crucial role that design plays in guiding us to a bright and prosperous future.

We are facing an unprecedented economic crisis. However, hope is more important than ever in such times. As Hiroshi Naito, our chairperson explained, design can "ease people's anxieties and disappointments and inspire them to transform their concerns into hopes for the future". Indeed, all of those skills that humans are naturally blessed with can be channeled into design.

We need the power of design more than ever. The Good Design Awards fulfill this need, and paints a rich and varied vision of the future. We ask for your continued support and patronage of the Good Design Awards.