BlackBerry Z10 has been awarded a 2014 iF Product Design Award in the telecommunications category. The ideal and preferred option for highly productive people, the design behind the BlackBerry 10 smartphone “…is about simplicity, functionality, and attention to detail,” says Brian Paschke, ID Lead at BlackBerry.
Joseph Hofer, Senior Industrial Designer at BlackBerry, remarks, “When designing the BlackBerry Z10, we crafted a minimal form with purposeful details that complement the gesture-based BlackBerry 10 user interface.”
For 60 years, the iF product design award has been an internationally recognized label for prizewinning design and the iF brand has become a symbol for outstanding achievements in design.
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Design that Takes a Stand – the iF Design Awards 2014 Reward the Daring
4,615 entries vied for the coveted iF design awards, which were awarded for the 61st time this year. The successful internationalization continued to gain ground in 2014: the jury of 49 experts evaluated designs from 55 countries in total, once again a considerable increase over the previous year. The iF design awards 2014 were awarded in the three competitions iF product design award 2014, iF communication design award 2014 and iF packaging design award 2014. 75 entries stood above the strong international competition and received an iF gold award for their extraordinary design achievement. The award ceremony will take place at the BMW Welt in Munich on 28 February 2014.
Prof. Fritz Frenkler, jury chairman, was impressed by the consistent high quality of the entries, the passion for innovation and the courage of some manufacturers to pursue their own design approaches:
“With products from categories that focused on computers, consumer electronics and mobile phones, the overall tendency goes toward simplifying and slimming down, which unfortunately also leads to uniformity. In doing so, it becomes more difficult to recognize differences in design. Whoever has the courage to step outside of the box gains advantages and is rewarded with visibility.”
The experts also determined that design is becoming more and more important in areas that are less consumer-oriented. There were extraordinary accomplishments in the medical field as well as in the field of agriculture with tools and equipment – there were various examples that well-thought-out design leads to considerable improvements in the handling of products.
Product optimization and the courage to stand out with design are topics that will remain important in the near future, according to the jury of the iF design awards.
The three iF design awards 2014 at a glance:
iF product design award 2014:
_ 3.249 entries
_ 17 categories
_ 1.220 awards (iF label)
_ 50 iF gold awards
iF communication design award 2014:
_ 1.102 entries
_ 6 categories
_ 311 awards (iF label)
_ 20 iF gold awards
iF packaging design award 2014:
_ 264 entries
_ 7 categories
_ 95 awards (iF label)
_ 5 iF gold awards