Alt Group wins four Red Dot awards

Alt Group celebrates a stellar international awards season by taking home four coveted red dot awards and two nominations for the Grand Prix award.

Auckland based multidisciplinary design firm, Alt Group, is celebrating yet another significant international awards haul, with the company picking up four communication design awards at one of the design industry’s largest and most prestigious international competitions - the red dot awards.

Alt Group beat out more than 6,112 entries submitted from 42 countries throughout the world to take home two highly esteemed ‘red dot: best of the best’ (best of category) awards for their work for boutique Auckland based law firm Hudson Gavin Martin, and iconic New Zealand furniture manufacturer, Formway.

Recognising the “highest design quality”, only 56 ‘red dot: best of the best’ awards were given out at this year’s red dot: communication design awards, which were announced yesterday (Wednesday, August 12).

The Hudson Gavin Martin project - which saw Alt Group designing everything from the firm’s branding, corporate artwork, print advertising and collateral - has already won the company a bevy of national and international design awards, including a Silver at the 2009 Cannes Design Lions, two Pencils at the One Show Design Awards and a Gold Cube at New York’s ADC Awards.

Formway Furniture’s Hum Research Book - Alt Group’s other ‘red dot: best of the best’ award-winning project - has also received a slew of international accolades, including Gold at the recent Graphis Design Awards and a finalist nomination in the editorial category of the UK’s esteemed Design Week Awards.

Both the Hum Research Book and Hudson Gavin Martin project have been nominated for a ‘red dot: grand prix’ award - a special distinction that is given to category winners whose work is judged “particularly outstanding”. Just five ‘red dot: grand prix’ prizes were presented in 2008. This years ‘red dot: grand prix’ winners will be announced at an award ceremony later in the year.

Adding to their two ‘red dot: best of the best’ wins, Alt Group also took home two 'red dots’ – a quality label that distinguishes works which have been certified to have “very high design standards”.

The ‘red dot’ quality label was presented to Alt for their work for Hawke’s Bay based Farmgate Wines and their Hudson Gavin Martin ©h®is™as project.

The recent wins cap off what has been a hugely successful international awards season for the firm, which has seen them pick up 31 international accolades in 2009.

Alt Group creative director, Dean Poole, said that winning a red dot award was a great achievement for New Zealand design.

“Picking up not one but four of one of the most prestigious accolades in the design industry validates our team’s commitment to design excellence and is a great endorsement for New Zealand design on the international stage.”

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About the red dot awards

Established in 1955, the international red dot design awards rank among the largest and most renowned design competitions in the world. It is divided into three categories: Product Design, Design Concept and Communication Design.

Each year an international jury reviews and evaluates the submitted works according to criteria such as degree of innovation, functionality and the formal quality. This ensures the seriousness of the competition and its international acceptance. The group of jurors is made up of renowned designers and design experts from all over the world. The constellation changes from year to year and guarantees a high degree of objectivity and reliability. www.red-dot.de

About Alt Group’s red dot winning projects

The HUM Research book is a 40,000 word book that Alt wrote and produced about the creative development of the HUM – Minds at Work furniture system, an innovative award-winning workspace system designed by Formway which is sold in the United States by Kimball Office.

Farmgate Wines: Alt Group took an ‘unconventional’ approach when designing the packaging for the boutique Hawke’s Bay based wine label, with their designs centring on the concept of place, people and community, which are at the very heart of the brand.

Each wine label features portraits and stories of different artisan food producers from the Hawke’s Bay region, with each food producer paired with a varietal wine style suited to be matched with their product, for example a barrel aged chardonnay with a local cheese maker.

Hudson Gavin Martin: Based around the concept that “all good things come in threes,” the project, which saw Alt Group designing everything from the firm’s branding, corporate artwork, print advertising and collateral. The identity uses the copyright, trademark and registered symbols to directly reference the firm’s core business of assets, equities and liabilities. Alt also produced a small fold out brochure sprinkled with word trios, such as ‘Equities, Assets and Liabilities’; ‘Beg, Borrow, Steal’; and at the end: ‘Ready, Willing and Able’.

Hudson Gavin Martin ©h®is™as: The concept of three was also carried through into Alt’s Christmas gift pack that they designed for the law firms’ clients. The word Christmas was used three times and the gift itself comprised three parts – wine, a rolling pin and a candle – all the ingredients for a celebration (or three). The copyright, trademark and registered symbols were again a key feature, with Alt innovatively incorporating them into the design, transforming the word Christmas into ©h®is™as.

About Alt Group

Alt Group is an Auckland based strategic design company, established nine years ago by directors Ben Corban and Dean Poole. With a team of 18, the company’s long term vision is to be recognised as a boutique design firm that just happens to be based in New Zealand.

Major clients include New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, Farmgate Wines, Formway Furniture, and law firm, Hudson Gavin Martin.

Last year Alt Group won a total of 55 international and national awards, in their most successful year since the company was formed.

In the 2009 year to date, the company has won 31 international awards.