News: Stringer Award win­ners at BeST

Alt Group, Form­way and Fearon Hay take out top prizes at BeST Awards.

Stringer Award win­ners at the BeST Awards 2009. From left: Be by Form­way; Sele­con by Alt Group; Win­ter­garden at the North­ern Club by Fearon Hay. Details and more images after the jump.

Graphic design firm Alt Group was the big win­ner at this year’s BeST Awards. Rep­res­ent­at­ives from the firm trouped to the stage no less than 11 times to pick up 10 gold awards and the coveted Stringer, which it won for its work with light­ing com­pany Sele­con. The firm also picked up 8 sil­ver awards and 6 bronzes. Alt Group also won the Stringer Award last year for its work with law­yers Hud­son Gavin Martin.

Form­way was another repeat offender at this year’s awards, win­ning the Stringer for product design with its work on Be, a task chair that is licensed to Knoll in the USA. Form­way last year up a Stringer for its Hum desk­ing system.

The spa­tial design Stringer went this year to Auckland-based archi­tec­ture firm Fearon Hay for its Win­ter­garden at the North­ern Club.

Details:

Graphic Stringer: Sele­con Iden­tity and Brand Book for Sele­con. Design com­pany: Alt Group. Design dir­ector: Dean Poole. Design team: Anna Myers.

The judges describe this piece of work as “a tact­ile, light filled and craf­ted tour de force that shows print is not dead and demon­strates the power of words and images when wrapped around a single idea”.

Product Stringer: Product: Be. Design Com­pany: Form­way. Design Team: Be from the Form­way Design Studio.

Judges: “This next-generation work-chair dis­plays very high levels of; com­fort, flex­ib­il­ity, strik­ing design, dur­ab­il­ity and sus­tain­ab­il­ity. It provides us with a per­fect example of how New Zea­l­and product design com­petes, and can win on a world stage. Win­ner of a Gold Award at Best, a Gold Award at Neo­con and now the Best Stringer Award – con­grat­u­la­tions Formway.”

Spa­tial Stringer: Pro­ject: Win­ter­garden at The North­ern Club. Archi­tect: Fearon Hay Archi­tects. Cli­ent: The North­ern Club. Design dir­ect­ors: Jeff Fearon and Tim Hay.

Judges: “The Win­ter­garden dis­plays a strong com­pos­i­tion of build­ing form, from inside to out. As an annex to a his­toric build­ing it trans­lates a tone of form­al­ity from one build­ing to the other in a stark but com­ple­ment­ary manner.”