The BraunPrize seeks to promote the work of young and established designers from all over the world, to value the work of design schools and to help develop a greater appreciation of the factors and criteria which make for good product design. Furthermore, it serves to make the ingenuity and creativity of designers accessible to the public and to provide a link between designers and industry or potential clients.

The new BraunPrize 2012 is embracing the increased relevance of well-designed products that help improve all aspects of everyday life. With most people's daily challenges becoming increasingly complex and demanding, we are relying on ubiquitous technology, highly connected social structures and our ability to cope with a fast, 24/7 lifestyle. Our everyday has become an artificial environment of architecture and technology, with products building, enabling and expressing our personal world for us. And while it seems that the quantity of products around us is consistently increasing, their level of quality is not. We have surrounded ourselves by many things we don't really value, instead of focusing on fewer but better solutions to help us live our lives. With this in mind, the BraunPrize 2012 is looking for ingenious solutions and product ideas to make our everyday a better place.

Theme

Genius design for a better everyday

Assessment criteria

• Design – the combination of innovation, usability, ergonomics and aesthetics
• Technology – the use of innovative technology to improve product functionality
• Sustainability – the environmental compatibility of the product concept

The product concept should be designed with the benefit it provides for the user and society as the focal point.

The following additional factors are also taken into account during the assessment process:

• The clarity of the content
• The quality of the presentation
• A thorough analysis of the assumptions on which the product concept is based
• The feasibility of the concept with regard to processes and costs

Entry conditions

We are pleased to welcome all product designers world-wide.

Entries will be separated into two categories:

Student: students who are still studying, or young designers who have graduated since January 2009.
Professional/Enthusiast: professional designers, design interested enthusiasts and inventors who have a clever product concept.

Entries must be product concepts and projects not yet in production. The focus of the BraunPrize is product design. Software, interaction or media design will be considered as an integral part of a submitted overall (hardware and software) product concept.

Individual or team participation is accepted. Personnel of P&G and Braun are excluded from the competition.

Requirements

Participants must register online and enter general personal and project information.

The name of the entrant or a company logo must not appear on any of the items. However, project names – such as "LeapFrog" – are permitted on all elements and are a helpful feature. In order to ensure complete anonymity, projects are only identified by a number throughout the entire competition.
All material must be in English.

Please consider that the jury has a limited amount of time for each project to capture essential details. Please select documents that will describe the project clearly and concisely.

Objects are transported to Braun at the entrant's risk. Only specially requested objects will be returned. The organiser is liable only for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence.

Jury

Oliver Grabes
Head of Braun Design, Chairman of the BraunPrize jury, Kronberg, Germany
Professor of Industrial Design at the University of Wuppertal, Germany
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Naoto Fukasawa
Industrial designer, founder of Naoto Fukasawa Design, Tokyo, Japan
Professor at Musashino Art University Tokyo, Japan
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Jane Fulton Suri
Managing Partner and Creative Director at IDEO, Boston, USA
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Anne Bergner
BraunPrize winner 1999, Design consultant, Munich, Germany
Professor of Integrated Product Design at University of Applied Sciences Coburg, Germany
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Dr. Dirk Freund
Director R&D, Global Braun, Kronberg, Germany
PhD in Solid-State Electronics
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Prize

The total prize money is $100,000 USD. With the addition of the new Professional/Enthusiast category, this amount has doubled from previous years. The Gold winners will each receive $15,000 USD, Silver $10,000 USD and Bronze winners $5,000 USD. The winners of the Sustainability Awards will each receive $5,000 USD. In addition, the 30 National Winners will each receive $1,000 USD in prize money.

Forum and award ceremony

The BraunPrize forum is part of the judging process; it is here that the Gold, Silver and Bronze winners of each category are selected. Following the award ceremony, all those who are interested in the BraunPrize competition and its outcome are invited to the exhibition.

Exhibition

The 50 best entries will be presented in the BraunPrize exhibition and will also be published in the international press and on the internet. After the prizes have been awarded, the BraunPrize exhibition is always shown first at Braun's headquarters in Kronberg, Germany.

Website

www.braunprize.com

Contact

Verena Wissel
BraunPrize Manager

Braun GmbH
External Relations
Frankfurter Str. 145
61476 Kronberg
Germany
t: +49 0 6173 30 2315
f: +49 0 6173 30 1534
e: