Excellence in Japanese Design for 2008 Goes Green

Japan’s Good Design Awards 2008

Correspondent Derek Armstrong

The Year's Best Japanese Product Design

Mitsubishi Heavy's Diamond 3000 Wins JIDPONot to take away from designers around the world, each year since 1957, the Japan Industrial Promotion Organization (JIDPO) honors the best of the best Japanese Product Design in multiple categories. The government-supported organization offers the Good Design logo to winners. The 74-member committee of designers, architects, writers, and academics goes beyond packaging and focuses on major innovations and technologies.

The grand prize in 2008 goes to Toyota's iQ, a deceptively small car with an interior that is an instant marvel of engineering and space-saving design.

Grand Prize: Toyota iQ
The IQ may be the genius behind Toyota’s future survival in a poor automotive sector. the iQ. Debuting on Nov. 20, the "microcompact" car, the iQ is priced nicely at $14,000.

The IQ measures 117 inches long by 65 inches wide, but seats three adults and one child, unlike other micro compacts. Innovations allowing for this achievement include a flat fuel tank under the floor, a radical approach to components, and an ultra compact air-conditioning unit.

The iQ achieves 54 mpg and its one-liter gasoline engine's CO2 emissions levels are lower than Toyota’s gas-electric hybrids.

Industry & Society Category
In Good Design's Industry & Society category, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' offset press, together with furniture-maker Itoki's LAN sheet won.

Mitsubishi Heavy's Diamond 3000 can print 16,200 sheets per hour—and more importantly from a design point of view—it can be operated by one person.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. manufactures heavy machineries. Its Shipbuilding & Ocean Development segment engages in the manufacture, sale, and repair of crude oil carriers, container ships, cruise ships, car ferries, LPG carriers, and LNG carriers, as well as various other ships, defense vessels, and offshore structures. The company’s Power Systems segment produces boilers, steam turbines, gas turbines, diesel engines, water turbines, wind turbines, nuclear power equipment, nuclear fuel, denitrification equipment, marine machinery, desalination plants, and pumps. Its Machinery & Steel Structures segment manufactures waste treatment equipment, flue gas desulfurization systems.

JIDPO
The mission of the awards is defined as, a product design must: "improve lives, foster industrial development, and promote export and trade by enhancing the quality of products on the market."

The Best 15 get the lion's share of media attention and contend against 3,023 entries.
In the Good Design's Industry & Society category, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' offset press together with furniture maker Itoki's LAN sheet won for making complex machinery.

The Correspondent— Derek Armstrong is the chief crime reporter for Crime Report USA, a contributor to Films & Books magazine, Deadly Prose magazine, EDI Weekly and an investigative journalist contributing to several newspapers. He is a frequent guest on CNN, NBC, and other networks, and the author of eight books, including the investigative true crime blockbuster Drew Peterson Exposed, the eternally popular Alban Bane crime thrillers MADicine and The Game, and the cult classic historical fantasy novels The Last Troubadour and The Last Quest (from Kunati Books).