Holly Wright’s specialised equestrian saddle, one of nine gold pins awarded to students and graduates from Massey's College of Creative Arts at the 2017 Best Awards.
Industrial designs from a modified equestrian saddle for disabled riders to a high-performance lamp were among the Massey University gold winners at the 2017 Best Awards.
The awards are an annual showcase presented by the Design Institute of New Zealand of the best in graphic, spatial, interactive and product design.
In total, staff, students and graduates of Massey’s College of Creative Arts with either individual or group entries were awarded 11 gold pins.
The respective designers of the specialised saddle and lamp, Holly Wright and Felix Turvey, have already been awarded Best of the Best Awards to be presented by global design awards organisation Red Dot at a ceremony in Singapore next week.
Professor of Industrial Design, Tony Parker, was awarded a purple pin for best design having earlier earned a gold pin for his hand-held digital weigh scale designed in conjunction with Gallagher Animal Management Systems.
Felix Turvey's high-performance LED light.
College of Creative Arts Pro Vice-Chancellor, Professor Claire Robinson, and senior lecturers Karl Kane and Tim Parkin were awarded a gold pin in the public good category for their work developing VoteLocal - an online game-like questionnaire that guides people toward finding the best match among their local mayoral candidates at last year's local body elections.
Among the student graduate projects, the saddle design, called Contak, focuses on safety, experience and adaptability for the rider, volunteers and the horse involved.
The high-performance light, called Alineo, uses modern LED technology paired with analog control dials, allowing the user to tune colour, temperature and brightness to suit a range of applications.
The winner of the New Zealand section of the James Dyson Award for product design, Nicole Austin, was also among the gold pin winners for her updated design of a lamb docking tool.
Ms Austin’s design, called Moray, helps eliminate repetitive strain injury for farmers when using traditional tools during the seasonal process of removing lambs’ tails – known as docking. The body of the device, which updates equipment unchanged in design for more than 40 years, is made from reinforced nylon and ergonomically designed with a specialised handle to make the docking process easier on the farmers hands.
Nicole Austin with her modified lamb docking tool.
The Best Award gold pin winners are:
Professor Tony Parker for his product design of a hand-held digital weigh scale; Professor Claire Robinson, Karl Kane and Tim Parkin for their public good design VoteLocal; Nicole Austin for her product design Moray; Holly Wright for her product design Contak; Felix Turvey for his product design Alineo; Rachael Hall for her product design Pato; Maia Visnovsky and Dayna Northwood for their interactive design Flat Ease; Tyree Gunn, Neve Linforth, Rachel Hall, and Jasmin Maake for their design in the public good section called Origin- Banana Leaf Bowls; Nick Pitcher and Georgia Wales for their interactive design Skipper, Luke Hoban and Kyle Whyte for their motion graphic design Dark Side of Fashion; and Luke Hoban for his interactive design Nuclear Waste Web.