London designer Min-Kyu Choi was awarded the Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award 2010 for his Folding Plug at a ceremony at the Design Museum in London last night.
Min-Kyu Choi designed the product while studying at the Royal College of Art. See our earlier story about the project here.
All the shortlisted projects (see our earlier story) remain on show at the museum until 6 June. See the seven category winners here.
Above: jury chair Antony Gormley and Min-Kyu Choi
See also:
Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award winner 2009: Shepard Fairey’s Obama Poster
Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2008: Yves Béhar's One Laptop Per Child project
Photographs are by Luke Hayes.
Here are some more details from the Design Museum:
Folding Plug wins Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2010
British student’s elegant reinterpretation of the UK plug wins coveted international design award
British student, Min-Kyu Choi from London, has won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2010, for his elegant reinterpretation of the humble plug, beating over 90 international nominees in the process. Jury Chair, Antony Gormley, presented him with the award at a gala dinner held at the Design Museum.
The Folding Plug was chosen from the seven category winners as the most compelling and progressive design of the last 12 months. The jury panel consisted of artist Antony Gormley, designer Tom Dixon, Editor of Icon magazine Justin McGuirk, designer Morag Myerscough, Style Director of Grazia magazine Paula Reed, editor of Wired magazine David Rowan and writer and broadcaster Janet Street-Porter.
Antony Gormley comments ‘Thought-through, responsive and modest, the folding plug shows how intelligent, elegant and inventive design can make a difference to everyone’s life.’
Min-Kyu Choi’s inspiration came from having to carry around the world’s largest plug (UK pin plug) with the MacBook Air, the world's thinnest laptop. In creating a plug which could fold flat for easy transportation, Choi received much praise on showcasing the plug at the Royal College of Art’s graduate show in 2009, with a brilliant and seemingly obvious improvement to a product that had changed little since its inception in 1946.
Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum comments ‘It’s great to see such a practical but elegant demonstration of what design can do to make everyday life so much better. Min-Kyu Choi is a designer just setting out on his career and he clearly has a great future ahead of him.’
The folding plug and all of this year’s shortlisted designs are on show at the Design Museum, due to the overwhelming demand the exhibition has been extended and will now run through to 31 October.