Amidst incredible design research projects, awe-inspiring architectural works and agricultural innovations, Good Design Australia also celebrates and recognises designs that would slot beautifully into a holiday stocking. These gift-ready projects usually thrive within the Product Design and Fashion Categories of the Australian Good Design Awards, somewhere between artificial reef modules and X-ray cameras for bomb disposal.
With the season upon us, Good Design Australia thought they too should harness the holiday spirit and hand-pick some Award-winning designs that would look magnificent under the tree. Plus, explore two incredible initiatives to give back to.
‘Tis the gift of good design!
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Sinonimo Essentials
John (Ju Seok) Lee, Axel Meyer, Emma Tian & Ximena Lauga
Good Design Award Winner – Sinonimo Essentials – presents a coherent collection of essential tools for espresso making that are designed to live within modern living space such as your home or office. The essentials includes tamper, tamp support, funnel, knock box and lid-tray that are coherent in experience, function and appearance.
Direct customer feedback was paramount during the entire design process, with the team emphasising product durability alongside the everyday ritual of espresso making. Dual-hybrid coating on casted aluminium allows for gracious wearing, while the most fragile pieces employ oak cap and cork knock pole which are are compostable and easily replaced at minimal cost. Its success has been quantified by a bit over 3 years in production and not a single return.
SodaStream Art
Tamooz Design Studio & SodaStream International
For 120 years, SodaStream have provided fun, creative ways to make and enjoy sparkling water. To continue their history of innovation, they created a new generation of Sparkling Water Makers that elevate the experience of drinking water.
They began by addressing a customer concern surrounding the product’s standard screw-in cylinders which were not very user-friendly and went on to optimise a user experience marked with easy-to-clean carbonating bottles, more intuitive cylinder connections and machines crafted from recycled materials. The result was the SodaStream Art Sparkling Water Maker – a stylish, retro-looking model that features a new Quick Connect Cylinder, dishwasher-safe carbonating bottles and a unique, user-friendly lever that enhances everyday experiences with sparkling water.
Sharple
Dreamfarm
Vegetable peelers are ubiquitous in all kitchens, regardless of culture or cuisine. However, they are also notorious for dulling quickly which renders them ineffective, dangerous to use, and inevitably thrown out. So, the designers of 2023 Good Design Award Gold Winner – Sharple – set out to design a vegetable peeler that would stay as sharp on its millionth stroke as it was on its first, without the need for a separate sharpening tool.
For all chefs, no matter the skill level, the resulting self-sharpening swivel peeler is the ideal gift. Its protective cover features an integrated ceramic ball that sharpens the stainless-steel blade every time its cover is slid open or closed.
PROTO 1.4 Traction Pad
Creatures of Leisure Design Team & Catapult Design
Has the salt water enthusiast in your life been good this year? Well, they probably know that surfers have used traction pads for nearly 50 years to grip their surfboards during radical manoeuvres. What they probably don’t know is that this once innovative product has changed little in half a century, with up to 67% of a standard traction pad’s raw materials currently going into landfill.
So, to ensure they can shred harder and more sustainably, consider the PROTO 1.4 from Creatures of Leisure for their holiday stocking. PROTO 1.4 not only reduces this footprint to 5%, but also significantly improves pad grip. It’s made with an organic additive called EcoPure®, which allows offcuts, and the pad itself, to biodegrade in landfill at end of life.
frank green’s Pet Collection
frank green
frank green’s Pet Collection celebrates the special connection people have with their pets. The holiday-ready collection comprises pet collars, leads, bowls and multiple accessories that are all designed to immerse beloved fur babies in the bubbly world frank green. The drool-worthy range turns every sidewalk into a catwalk.
The entire frank green Pet Collection is made from a range of planet-friendly materials designed to withstand the rough and tumble synonymous with an active pet. Recycled and biodegradable materials were used as much as possible, with 40% of the range manufactured using ECORPET® – recycled co-polymer and compostable corn-starch. The aim of this collection is to provide pet owners with an opportunity to express their taste and style (through customisation and personalisation) while embracing a more sustainable lifestyle.
Seed & Sprout’s Without Skincare
Alena Hunold, Lisa Crawford & Sophie Kovic
For those passionate about the health of their skin and the earth, Seed & Sprout’s Without Skincare range allows you to tread softly as you exfoliate, brighten and moisturise. Truly sustainable in design, ingredients, testing and materials, the collection was designed with people and planet in mind.
The Without Skincare range is 100% naturally-derived, plastic free, vegan friendly, dermatologically tested, clinically proven, hypoallergenic, safe for sensitive skin, zero waste, and comes with a forever lid made from zinc alloy that you keep and reuse over and over. Even the packaging and aluminium tubes are 100% recyclable. Alongside face masks, serums and moisturisers, the collection also comes with an innovative tube key that helps you get every part of the product out of its tube and assist with opening and closing each product.
Give back
Koorie Heritage Trust
The Koorie Heritage Trust is a unique space rich in culture, heritage and history that welcomes and encourages all people to come together in the spirit of learning and reconciliation at Federation Square in Naarm. It takes Koorie peoples, cultures and communities from the literal and figurative fringes of Melbourne to a place that is a central meeting and gathering place for all Victorians.
The Trust offers a range of programs and services including the only public collection in Victoria dedicated solely to Koorie art and culture comprising artefacts, pictures and photographs, as well as oral history and cultural experience programs, an annual exhibitions program with an emphasis on showcasing young and emerging Victorian Peoples art and artists and the Koorie Family History Service.
It’s also behind the 2023 Good Design Award Best in Class-Winnning program – Blak Design – the Trust’s annual professional development and mentoring program that provides support, training and opportunities to Indigenous creatives to foster First Nations innovation and entrepreneurship within the national design sector.
OOXII (4eyesVision)
The WHO reports that 53% of avoidable vision impairment worldwide is simply due to lack of access to spectacles. The majority of people affected are in remote and developing communities, mainly for three key reason:
- Lack of professional services to test for prescription
- Cost
- Geographic isolation.
This drove Sydney ophthalmologist, Sarah Crowe, alongside John Nicholl and Edward Ko, to develop a kit containing everything needed to test vision and dispense glasses in remote and low-resource communities. The result was the 4eyesVision Kit, which contains a simple vision testing device to measure what lenses are required and a mobile application with training, instructions and inventory management. The kit also includes 2023 Good Design Award Best in Class Winner – OOXII – glasses that affordable, durable, aesthetically pleasing and adjustable to suit all face sizes, from children to adults. The glasses are so amazing, people want them here too!
Discover more 2023 Australian Good Design Award Winners
Explore the Good Design Index for more incredible gift ideas and be inspired by the enduring spark of design.
