Putting a creative pin in it
The origins of the Golden Pins, which are so highly respected in the design community, go back to 1981. Originally known by the more bureaucratic-sounding “Taiwan Good Design Awards,” their primary objective was to select and commend well-designed products. They were later renamed the National Design Awards in an effort to raise their international profile, and their name was changed yet again in 2009, this time to the Golden Pin Design Awards. The current name evokes the image of designers pinning notes to walls to preserve their good ideas. The “Golden” was added to make the name more memorable, by bringing it into line with Taiwan’s well-known Golden Horse and Golden Bell awards.
Oliver Lin, vice president of the Taiwan Design Research Institute (TDRI, formerly the Taiwan Design Center), says that the Golden Pins are oriented around the ethnic Chinese design community and Asia as a whole, and seek to foster dialogue and exchange with the more mature design markets of Europe, the US and Japan.
Following their leap into the international limelight, the awards began to include international design luminaries on their juries. This, coupled with their conscientious and objective review process and their grand awards ceremony, has helped spotlight winning designers and firms, and cemented the Golden Pins’ credibility within Asia.
In recent years, the Golden Pins have also become a touchstone for designers from other nations entering the Asian market. For example, when German optical and optoelectronics powerhouse Zeiss wanted to introduce its products to the Asian market, it first tested the waters by entering for the 2019 Golden Pins, to gauge the market’s likely reaction. Participation in the Golden Pins has become more international, with designs from the US, Russia, Thailand, Australia, the Netherlands, France, Lebanon, Poland, India, and even Serbia, Hungary, and the Central African Republic, creating a diversity of expression and making the Taiwanese awards a truly global competition.
HMM enhanced the aesthetics and value of its W Glass, a product made from recycled glass, through design.