Students from KU School of Art & Design shine on global stage

The student teams participated in the Red Dot Design Award competition and won the Best of the Best award and Winner award, considered by many as the Oscar award for product design.

KU students won awards at the world’s most prestigious design competition.

Five students from the Department of Industrial and Information Design at the School of Art & Design, Korea University, entered the 2018 Red Dot Design Award competition. They were grouped into two teams; one team consisting of Se-hyun Won and Nam-ju Kim (both in their senior years), and the other with Seung-gu Kang (in his senior year), Yeong-hyeon Lee and Sang-yong Lee (both in their junior years). Both teams submitted their product designs and were selected as award winners.

The first team with Won and Kim received the Red Dot’s Best of the Best award. This year, of the 5,640 teams from 55 countries, only 40 product design entries received the top award. The Winner award, given to only 265 entries, was presented to the second team.

Considered as the Oscars for product design, the Red Dot Design Award is one of the world’s most prestigious design awards, including the iF Product Design Award and IDEA. Each year, designers and companies from around the world submit their new products and product designs for the Red Dot Design Award. Winning products and designs are exhibited at the Red Dot Design Museum located along Marina Bay, Singapore.

[Photo] (Above) Se-hyun Won and Nam-ju Kim, winner of the Best of the Best award; (Below) Seung-gu Kang, Yeong-hyun Lee, and Sang-yong Lee, the Winner awardees

Celebrating an innovative design, the Red Dot Best of the Best award is the top award in each category of the design competition. Won and Kim submitted a VR gadget named ‘Ombre’ to the competition. Having a mask as their motivation, Won and Kim designed the Ombre VR under the theme of ‘Being Another.’ They got the idea for their design from the fact that when people wear VR glasses or masks, they tend to be someone else and play a role that differs from their everyday role. The streamlined and fluid contours of a mask were incorporated into Ombre to add more artistic aspects to the digital equipment.

The Winner award celebrates a high-quality design and is given to distinguished product designs. The second team entered the competition with their standing, universal hairdryer, called ‘Wiss.’ It was noteworthy that Wiss was designed for both able-bodied and handicapped users.

The five winners were invited to the Red Dot Design Award Ceremony held on September 28, 2018 at the Red Dot Design Museum in Singapore.

Se-hyun Won, who participated in the ceremony as the Best of the Best Award winner, said, “Winning such a prestigious design award would never have been possible without the wholehearted support of Korea University and our professors. I hope our award can be a stepping stone for young designers in Korea to set the bar high and dream of becoming a world-class designer.”

Aside from the two prize-winning teams, another KU student team consisting of Min-ah Lee, Seong-ji Won, and Yu-na Hwang presented their zoo-related experience project called, ‘Zoody.’ The project aimed to increase behavioral diversity of captive animals living in zoos and to inform zoo visitors of the concept of caring for animals with respect. To design the project, the students had extensive consultations with zoo keepers and one-on-one interviews with visitors. Zoody received high scores at the competition as the students came up with a realistic service design through which human beings and animals can co-exist with respect to each other.

Another KU student team comprised of Eun-ji Ko, Ga-ram Park, and So-jin Kim submitted an LBS-AR application design, called ‘Eulji-Road.’ Their app design aimed to provide local store information customized for visitors to Eulji-ro where parts and material shops are located. By using the application, people can virtually visit the shops and create their own souvenirs as if they were in a game. To get the basic information for the application design, the students spent several months visiting shops. The app design received high praise from the judging panel as it tried to find a way of urban regeneration by using state-of-the art technology.

Professors and students from the Department of Art and Design at Korea University had also won awards at IDEA and the Red Dot Design Award from 2014 to 2016. Winning the Red Dot’s design awards this year reaffirmed the school’s reputation on the global stage as a true training center for young and promising designers.