Tag Archives: K-Design Award 2020

This award-winning filmmaking toolkit is designed specifically for Young content creators!

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When it comes to kids and content creation, everyone seems to have an opinion. One side says that keeping children from technology would mean keeping them from learning the very tools that will inspire the future. While the other side urges children to stay away from smartphones and tablets because they keep kids from learning the fundamentals of childhood. Kid’o, a children-specific filmmaking toolkit, brings some compromise to that two-sided argument. Kid’o is a simple product design that provides today’s younger generations the chance to experiment with film and content creation without the added complexity that accompanies multi-functional cameras and online communities.

Receiving the 2020 Grand Prize award from K-Design, Kid’o affirms children’s dreams of filmmaking by providing the tools necessary in order to bring them to fruition all while prioritizing childhood’s playfulness. Based on the vibrancy of crayons, the final product is a colorful, detachable physical lens and smartphone holder. Using an app, children can pair a Kid’o lens and monitor using their parent’s or their own phone, so that the lens’s frame appears on the smartphone’s screen. By merging the product with the app, children have the chance to continue developing today’s ever-changing technological language on an interface that maintains the integrity of childhood. Features such as ‘Another Me’ and ‘Twin Me’ are similar to some of TikTok’s features and, as simple video effects, can easily transform any video clip. Once a video is created and tailored by a kid filmmaker, they have the option of sharing it with friends on the Kid’o app or other social media platforms, such as Instagram or YouTube.

Kid’o embraces simplicity in its user-friendliness and portability – kids can bring the lens and smartphone holder anywhere. The product also pays homage to a less techy and more present childhood by moving in time with the growing technology of today, while cultivating the creativity that instills within every child a desire to create. Kid’o takes children and their interests seriously by designing a space and product that inspires creative experimentations and responsible self-expression. This filmmaking tool kit designed specifically for children is not only a compromise but a distinct recognition of the changeability and cultivation of childhood.

Designers: Hanseul Kim, Junwon Ko, and Yeonjun Song

This folding screwdriver focuses on making the classic tool more portable and usable

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The ‘More Uses’ screwdriver approaches simple problems with simple solutions. It’s multipurpose, foldable, and can mount the screw-bits in two separate ways to give you either a traditional experience or a high-torque one. Designed by the students of the Beijing Institute of Technology, the More Uses takes the traditional screwdriver and upgrades its performance and portability.

The driver comes in a metal capsule-shaped container. Open the container and you’ve got two parts on the inside. The base of the stem, and the magnetic screw-bits (in flat-head and Phillips-head variants). The base comes out, and can get attached one of two ways, creating either a linear screwdriver for regular applications, or a T-shaped screwdriver for tighter screws that need more force to remove or insert. When you’re done, the parts fit back inside the slick metal capsule which can easily be placed in your drawers (occupying a fraction of the space of a lengthy screwdriver) or even in your pocket, without worrying about the driver’s sharp tip hurting you or tearing your clothes!

The More Uses Screwdriver is a winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2020.

Designers: Qiu Qi, Yu Hong, Jin Hao, Ma Lyuting, Li Zhengkai

This modular home workout setup fits in your closet, no more excuses to not exercise!

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Few industries have changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic like the fitness industry has changed. Acclimating to the increasingly strange times, home gym designers have taken to the drawing boards by storm. Working out at home is possible, yes. Fun? Depends. Comfortable? Hard to say. What’s definite is that the team at G-Wall turned the everchanging state of 2020 into the well-knit, conceptual core of their sleek, modular home gym design. Recently, the designers behind the G-Wall Home Fitness System were presented with 2020’s K-Design Award.

Instead of answering the unanswerable (really, who can say what’s up next for 2020), the team behind G-Wall designed their home gym specifically so that it could be stored behind a closet or armoire cabinet’s door. That way the time that you would have spent making room for your home fitness system, instead is spent actually putting it to use. G-Wall’s Home Fitness System has several standout features: variable modules, user-adjustability, and compatibility, to name a few. Each user decides on which modules they want to comprise the larger system. This means that despite the amount of space in your home, G-Wall’s design makes it possible to incorporate a home gym anywhere. The different modules that users can decide on range from cardiovascular equipment, to free weights and even heavy training. The gear that comes with each module is stored in cabinets or racks that easily hang behind doors or however the user deems appropriate for their personal space.

Once quarantine started, many of us twiddled our thumbs while figuring out how to stay healthy and active within the confines of our respective homes. Fitness and health remained a top priority for many global citizens. It was never a question of compromise or adjustment when it came to working out during quarantine. Rather, designers and gym-goers took to the drawing boards to concoct their own solutions. That’s all to say that while the fitness industry has indeed changed with 2020’s unpredictable timeline, some of the most innovative new designs have been devised. Such deliberate and convenient designs like G-Wall prove that as unanswerable as some questions may be, as uncertain as the time may feel, design’s practical and adaptive nature is one thing on which we can always depend.

Designers: Tan Xuwen, Zhang Hu, Huang Shumei, Tong Bomin, Gao Lin x Guangdong Piano Customized Furniture Co., Ltd.

This lamp’s collapsible design also controls its brightness

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The Z-Lamp’s collapsible feature isn’t just to make it portable enough to carry around with you. That ridged silicone shade does allow you to expand or contract the lamp’s overall design, but in turn, it helps control the lamp’s overall brightness too.

Derived from ‘zhé’, the Chinese word for ‘fold’, the Z-Lamp comes with a collapsible silicone clad that sits over its LED-base. The clad’s ridged design allows it to expand and contract, allowing the lamp to grow bigger or smaller. Expand the entire silicone cover and it acts as a large diffuser, scattering more light in all directions… compact it and the diffuser’s size reduces, dimming the LED’s intensity. Simple, smart, and engaging!

The Z-Lamp is a winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2020

Designers: Ren Peng & Ye Jitong

Hourglass-shaped table lamp helps you keep track of time using ambient-light!

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There’s something very intuitive and interactive about the way the Time Machine Table Lamp is designed. Made to look like an hourglass, the lamp features a freely rotating shade with a central pivot and LEDs on both ends. Switch the lamp on and the LEDs on the upper half of the hourglass illuminate. Over time, the upper half of the hourglass dims down and the lower half begins illuminating, almost as if light particles are passing through the central channel, like grains of sand would.

The Time Machine Table Lamp was designed to help provide an ambient bedside aura of soft light, while allowing you to intuitively gauge time as it passes by. It takes around 60 minutes for the light to transfer from one half of the hourglass to the other, and a simple flip helps reset the entire procedure. It’s a fun-yet-useful way of timing your nightly activities before going to bed… perhaps reading a bedtime story, or sharing stories about your day before hitting the sack. Besides, with its warm, comforting glow and unique interaction, it’s the kind of lamp your eyes AND hands will fall in love with!

The Time Machine Table Lamp is a winner of the K-Design Award for the year 2020.

Designers: Chu Dongdong, Liu Bei, Ren Peng, Lin Rulong & Weng Hang