International Design Awards Announce 2011 Winners; 3 Designs by RKS Honored

(Los Angeles, CA)  The RKS design team was awarded three IDA awards this week - First Prize for KOR’s Aura, Third Prize for the Orion-18 (Levelstar/APH) and an honorable mention for Nuance (DenMat). Aura is KOR Water’s latest and most affordable sustainable hydration alternative, the Orion-18 is a smart new Smartphone optimized for blind users, and Nuance is an innovative composite syringe for dental professionals.

The International Design Awards celebrates the world’s most visionary designers and promotes the appreciation of design worldwide, honoring designs for excellence in originality, creativity, execution and overall impact.

What Gandhi (Yes, Gandhi) Taught Me About Design, Leadership, And Technology

Long before Gandhi was a political leader, he was a designer who created a loom to help Indians in their daily lives. RKS’ Ravi Sawhney writes about learning from Gandhi’s example for Fast Company.

[Image: jaimaa/Shutterstock]

Connecting the Blind to the Digital World

Design Magazine (CIDA) April 2012

Check out China’s Design Magazine this month (Titled Extra-Ordinary Life) for a feature on the development for the Orion-18, and learn about RKS’ collaboration with LevelStar and APH to empower the blind with a smartphone designed to meet their specific needs. You can learn more about Design Magazine and CIDA (China Industrial Design Association) here, or download the article as a PDF.

Life Technologies and DenMat Announce Red Dot Awards

2012 Awards Received for Revolutionary Ion Proton™ DNA Sequencer and Innovative Nuance® Dental Syringe

March 21, 2012 - RKS is honored by the recognition received for our recent design collaborations with Life Technologies for the revolutionary Ion Proton™ benchtop sequencer, and with Den-Mat® Holdings (formerly Discus Dental) for the innovative Nuance® composite syringe. Both designs were recognized in 2012 with the prestigious Red Dot design award, conveyed for high design quality and designs that distinguish themselves for excellence.

Design Collaboration

Orchestrating Design Collaborations: Think Like a Family

The current issue of dmi Review tackles the topic of design collaboration, examining the benefits of collaborative design and exploring effective options for managing the collaborative process.  RKS’ Harnish Jani and CEO Ravi Sawhney contributed their professional point of view on the critical topic, co-authoring a feature entitled “Orchestrating Design Collaborations: Think Like a Family,” which shares a globally-recognized analogy to help guide managing modern design collaborations. 

Copies of the issue and article are available here.

Ravi’s Drucker Business Forum Conversation Now Viewable Online

The video is now viewable of Ravi’s keynote appearance at the Drucker Business Forum, for all those outside the Los Angeles area, and for those who heard the event promoted on KPCC 89.3 SoCal public radio but were unable to attend earlier this month.

RKS’ CEO Ravi Sawhney sat down on Feb 09 with Dr. Arvind Bhambri of USC’s Marshall School of Business for a broad ranging conversation on strategic design thinking at the Crawford Family Forum in Pasadena. The informative conversation about the intersection of design, consumer psychology and business success was well received by the live audience, with the Morton Report’s Bridget Fonger calling Sawhney a “ray of hope for this planet.”

Designed In USA

The ‘Designed in USA’ brand certification mark is a new identifier and brand enhancer for goods, services and environments designed in the United States. It is now available for free use by members of the design community, business community and by leaders championing the design profession.

‘Designed in USA’ was created by RKS to raise awareness of American design in all its forms, capitalize on perceived value, provide competitive differentiation and encourage optimism. Design’s various disciplines (product, service, architecture, interior, interaction, communication, etc.) are a vital humanistic tool increasingly shaping the world. And the U.S. design profession is a global leader that helps create more successful products and services by boosting consumer attraction and experience, driving innovation and innovation processes, stimulating job creation inside and outside manufacturing, and much more.

StageSource L3t Rocks Artists’ Expectations

It is a challenge for the performing musician to choose the perfect high-performance loudspeaker system because over the course of a career they play different styles, instruments and venues.  StageSource L3t is a simple, powerful and compact integrated live sound solution uniquely built on Line 6’s innovative technology platform and design. Innovative technology inside and an intelligent design outside enable a single speaker enclosure to provide best-of-class performance in multiple live sound functions, and the result is the most versatile and scalable loudspeaker ever imagined for musicians that stands-out within the crowded category. To learn more about StageSourceL3t visit Line 6’s website here or see what the media are saying here.

Unity Home Theater Wins Innovations Award, Impresses at CES Debut

Unity is a revolutionary new home theater solution and winner of CEA’s prestigious Innovations 2012 Design and Engineering Award. It provides a simple, elegant, high-performance answer to the difficult questions consumers face in building Home Theaters that fit their lifestyles.

With design a core part of In2Technologies’ market-entry approach, the Unity Home Theater was developed in close partnership with the RKS design team, including both the industrial design and strategic brand development. The collaboration helped In2Technologies’ to realize their vision of a simple, elegant Home Theater product that would meet the aesthetic requirements…

American Design and the Innovation Nation

CEO Ravi Sawhney recently completed a blog series addressing the changing nature of ‘Made in America,’ which highlights good news in manufacturing, the need to better protect IP, ideas for better national leadership around innovation, and a pathway to better brand the American design community.

Part 1: America, the “Innovation Nation”

Part 2: Here’s Some Good Economic News: U.S. Manufacturing Is Rising Once Again

Part 3: Protecting Design IP for the US to Remain On Top

Part 4: U.S. Innovation Can’t Stay On Top Without Smart Government

Part 5: Designers: Help Me Rebrand American Innovation