公益財団法人日本デザイン振興会 公益財団法人日本デザイン振興会

GOOD DESIGN AWARD

Japan's Good Design Award program is a uniquely comprehensive platform for design evaluation and advocacy. Exemplary design in many spheres, with the potential to drive industrial growth and enrich lives, is found and shared through the program, which has a distinguished history and has grown to an unmatched scale. Over more than 60 years, the G Mark logo has become a familiar sign of good design.

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A wide range of works is eligible for the Good Design Award, including both tangible and intangible designs. Today, we are presenting the Good Design Award to design entries that play important roles all around us, including industrial products such as daily necessities, home electronics, and motor vehicles as well as homes, facilities, and other construction projects; various services and software applications; communication activities including public relations and community-building; and business models and research and development initiatives. In the screening process for the Good Design Award, we judge entries comprehensively taking into consideration a wide range of aspects, including not just visual design components such as color and shape but also more fundamental factors that are not easily apparent, such as the processes of achieving goals, ideas, and meanings. In recent years, a tendency has been firmly taking root to consider as elements of design the processes planned and implemented toward achieving a goal themselves, and close analysis of such implications is growing more and more important in the screening process.

The Good Design Award is not merely a design competition or contest in which designs compete on their comparative advantages and quality. Nor is it intended to select a handful of elite designs that only a few can enjoy. It judges designs in light of their efficacy and utility, from the perspective of whether they are likely to enrich people’s lives and society, with awards going to entries chosen to be good designs as a result of this process.

The ideas and methodology embodied in a good design provide hints for people’s future activities. These hints act as sources for future good designs, and that in turn serves as a driving force behind creating the society of the future. The Good Design Award is intended to help promote this cycle of creativity to build the society of the future.

Designs that have won the Good Design Award may use the G Mark in promotional activities. The G Mark, the symbol of a Good Design Award winner, helps communicate the design to society. The latest survey in Japan shows that 55.9% of people recognized the G Mark as the symbol of items that have won the Good Design Award while 79% were aware of the G Mark, including those who had heard of it. Furthermore, when asked about the image of a company that has won the Good Design Award, 61.3% said they saw such a company as “having good sense”, 54.3% as “good at manufacturing”, and 30.7% as “a leading, pioneering company”. The image of the Good Design Award, with its high levels of recognition and favorability, not only can help to communicate the advantages of a design through the G Mark but also contributes to improving the image of the company or organization that created the design.

The Good Design Award promotes award-winning designs in society through various methods. It holds the Good Design Exhibition in autumn of each year to exhibit to the public the latest winning designs, showing a wide range of designs from various fields. Furthermore, in cooperation with partners including design-related institutions and commercial facilities both inside and outside Japan, it proactively provides opportunities for exhibition and sales of winning designs. In recent years, the number of events such as participative workshops on the theme of winning designs is increasing as well. The ability to provide this wide range of opportunities for presentations from a design perspective, from both B2B and B2C approaches, is one of the strengths of the Good Design Award, which has years of experience and a track record in promoting design across diverse genres, and a way it demonstrates results through communication connecting society to design.


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