Search on for Budding New Zealand Product Designer

Press release
30 March 2007

Search on for Budding New Zealand Product Designer

Budding inventors, engineers and product designers with inspiring new design ideas, are being called to enter the seventh annual Dyson Product Design Award.

Judges are seeking innovative design concepts which provide solutions for everyday problems. Previous award submissions include a bamboo crutch for amputees in third world countries, a digital talking book for the blind, a practical yet stylish skateboarding shoe with a replaceable outer shell and washable inner, and a man overboard life saving device.

Last year’s winning product, N-One, designed by Victoria University graduate Matt Backler, is a medical device which replaces cumbersome hospital drip attachments with a tubeless intravenous pump worn on the patient’s arm. The compact pump allows patients to recover from hospital procedures in the comfort of their own home, without bed rest restrictions, providing greater freedom of movement during recovery.

The 2007 Dyson Product Design Award recipient will be named a British Council Design Ambassador and will travel to the UK with $3,000 travelling expenses where they’ll have the opportunity to meet key members of the UK design community. Plus, they can select an official fee prize package from IPONZ tailored to their design’s intellectual property needs, a year’s membership to DINZ, a Dyson vacuum cleaner, and an invitation to join the D&AD Talentpool, an online database of international design talent.

The winner will also have the opportunity to represent New Zealand and compete against other emerging product designers for the James Dyson Award, a global design award to be won by the best of other national level competition winners from around the world. The winner of the James Dyson Award will receive a £5,000 cash prize package which also includes interaction with Dyson’s senior engineers from their Research and Development team based in the UK.

The Award is open to final year tertiary students studying in the areas of design, technology or engineering, and to graduates in these areas who are in their first five years of work force.

Launched in 2001, the Dyson Award is held in association with the British Council Design Ambassador Programme, the Intellectual Property Office (IPONZ), New Zealand Listener, and the Designers Institute of New Zealand to recognise and reward up and coming Kiwi designers with product design ideas that best demonstrate innovative and inspiring solutions to everyday problems.

Interested applicants can visit www.dyson.co.nz for entry information or email entries[at]dysonawards.co.nz to request an entry pack.

Entries close on Friday 25 May, and the winner will be announced at an award ceremony in Auckland in June.

ENDS

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