Announcing the 2020 Golden Pin Design Award International jury members with Fumie Shibata, Marco Casagrande, Yah-Leng Yu, Sonja Schiefer, and Gerald Mark Soto.

The annual Golden Pin Design Award is the longest-running international design award that celebrates products or projects expressly created for Chinese-speaking communities, offering entrants an unprecedented opportunity to prove their prowess in the world’s largest market. This year, in appreciation of all the global efforts to fight against COVID-19, the Golden Pin Design Award is taking the lead to encourage people to make a stronger difference in the world by waiving the entry fee for entries related to epidemic prevention!

The 2020 Golden Pin Design Award and Golden Pin Concept Design Award revealed their international jury members today (May 19^th). This year, design industry experts from over fifteen countries and regions will participate in the Preliminary, Secondary, and Final Selections for the two awards.

Jurors will include influential Japanese product designer Fumie Shibata; Finnish architect Marco Casagrande; Sonja Schiefer, German industrial designer and director of BMW group Designworks’ Shanghai studio; Yah-Leng Yu, founder of Singapore’s Foreign Policy Design Group; and Gerald Mark Soto, the 2D animation director of acclaimed New York animation studio Brand New School. The award organizers will shortly be announcing the full list of jurors, so please stay tuned! Early-bird registration for the 2020 Golden Pin Design Award ends on Monday, June 1^st, at 23:59 (GMT+8).

The two awards are now calling for entries by talented designers from around the world!

Since 2014, the Golden Pin Design Award has solicited designs from all over the world, and the organizers have invited international experts in creative design to come to Taiwan to participate in each year’s selections. In past years, jurors from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, the United States, Japan, Taiwan, and Mainland China have participated in the event, and the juries have included such luminaries as Martin Darbyshire, Mårten Claesson, Luisa Bocchietto, Naoto Fukasawa, Oki Sato, Kashiwa Sato, and Tony Chi.

The annual jury lineups have been outstanding, and this year is no different. This year marks the first time the Golden Pin Design Award and Golden Pin Concept Design Award have invited international jurors to take part in the Preliminary and Secondary Selection. Their insights are sure to give the awards a more international perspective.

If you are curious to know more about previous renowned jurors of the Golden Pin Design Award, don’t miss Interior design for luxury hôtellerie – The word goes to Tony Chi.

Fumie Shibata – Product Designer of Design Studio S

The list of jurors announced today is truly outstanding. We have invited renowned Japanese designer Fumie Shibata to join us for the two award finals. Shibata has used her unique insights and impeccable design ideas to create a multitude of classic products for brands such as MUJI, OMRON, KINTO, and JIA Inc.

As one of the iconic figures of contemporary Japanese design, Shibata has been a juror for Japan’s Good Design Award since 2006, and she was named foreperson of the jury in both 2018 and 2019. Shibata will bring her wealth of review experience to the Final Selection process, and we await the insights and perspective she will offer with great interest.

Marco Casagrande – Principal of Casagrande Laboratory

Master architect Marco Casagrande is known worldwide for his unique architectural theory and creative philosophy. He won the European Prize for Architecture in 2013 and the UNESCO & Locus Foundation Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in 2015 and now teaches in the Bergen School of Architecture in Norway. From 2004 to 2008, Casagrande was a visiting professor in the Department of Architecture at Tamkang University in Taiwan.

During his stay, he was deeply involved in community projects such as the preservation of Treasure Hill in Taipei, and he also formed the WEAK! At Work team with Taiwanese architects Ying-Chun Hsieh and Ching-Yueh Juan and staged a solo exhibition in Taiwan. Because of his deep connections with Taiwan, Casagrande readily accepted the invitation to serve as a juror during the Final Selection.

Gerald Mark Soto – 2D Animation Director of Brand New School

Additionally, Gerald Mark Soto, the 2D animation director of Brand New School, a well-known animation studio based in New York, will make a special visit to Taiwan to participate in the Final Selection. Soto has twenty years of experience in the animation industry and has produced countless visual works for multinational corporations such as Nike, American Express, Apple, Samsung, and Google.

Sonja Schiefer – Director of Shanghai Studio Designworks, BMW Group Company

This year, the Golden Pin Design Award has invited German designer Sonja Schiefer to serve as a juror during the Secondary Selection for product design. Known for her experience in industrial design, Schiefer has been working as creative director at the BMW group’s Designworks Studio since 2001, where she originally held leading positions in Designworks’ Los Angles and Munich studios before transferring to their Shanghai studio in 2019 to assist the group in formulating innovative development strategies for the Asian market.

Yah-Leng Yu – Founder of Foreign Policy Design Group

Last but not least, Singaporean designer Yah-Leng Yu will join the jury for Preliminary Selection in communication design. Yu is the founder and creative director of famed Asian design studio The Foreign Policy Design Group and a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI). She has participated in multiple cross-industry design projects, including the store design for Gallery & Co. in National Gallery Sinagapore.

Yu is active in the field of creative design in Asia and is now the chairman of the Design Society in Singapore. We look forward to her insights during the Golden Pin Design Award review process.

The 2020 Golden Pin Design Award is now cordially calling for entries! Design entries must be commercialized and already in production. Categories include product design, spatial design, communication design, or integration design. The vendor/applicant must be a business entity or design team. Registration ends on Thursday, July 9 at 5:00 p.m. Registrations completed before Monday, June 1 will receive an early-bird discount. For more details, please visit the official website.

If you want to know more about previous Golden Pin Design Award winners, don’t miss Life in Tree House redefines residential interior spaces through scattered levels.