This year’s European Design Awards took place in the Yugoslav Drama Theater in Belgrade, Serbia. The manifestation was an integral part of the three-day, inspiring Belgrade Design Week, a conference during which a number of EDA prize winners held brief presentations of their work.

The European designers were quite diligent and produced numerous breathtaking works, all sorted into one of 30 EDA categories. The jury did not have an easy job to do, bearing in mind that design studios and advertising agencies from 19 EU countries fought for the prestigious EDA awards this year.

The part of this ceremony that was of most interest to the Branding Magazine crew was, of course, the Identity group which consists of the following categories:  Brand Logo, Company Logo, Company Implementation and Brand Implementation.

In the Brand Logo category, Demian and Conrad Design from Switzerland were awarded with a gold prize for the project executed for their client, DADADUM, a contemporary furniture company based in Switzerland. The value of this project lies in the correlation between typeface and a brand’s core values that it presents. One bronze prize went to Beetroot Design Group (Greece) for its project, The Life Goddess, while another went to Silo (Netherlands) for its WTF.nl project.

The Company Logo category awarded two silver prizes in Belgrade, one to Natasha Shrendik of Russia and the other to Agency X4 of Sweden. Natasha Shrendik’s logo for the Moscow Theater “Gogolj-Center” represents a revolution and restoration of an old cultural navel. On the other hand, X4’s award drew from the inspiring logo created for Eski Kilim, a company that produces exclusive Turkish kilim carpets.

One gold and two silver awards were given in the category entitled Company Implementation. The gold went to Mondrey Sin from Spain, while on silver went to Jäger & Jäger from Germany and the other to Work in Progress from Norway. Mondrey Sin was awarded for a shop design of Barcelona’s Kiosko Burger, which now has a unique style and appearance, much different from classical American diners. Jäger & Jäger, creatively enough, executed a corporate design for dentist Dr. Florian Fries, all supported by a very interesting backstory. Dissimilar to its competitors, Work in Progress did a load of hard design work for the largest film studio in Norway, Storyline Studios.

The last category in the Identity group was Brand Implementation. The stage of the Yugoslav Drama Theater was full of stylish european designers, with three gold prizes awarded, one for Sanchez/Lakasta of Spain and two gold awards for Studio Dumbar of the Netherlands. Jäger & Jäger won the silver, while Norway’s Scandinavian Design Group took the bronze. From this category we would like to point out Studio Dumbar’s incredible work for Alzheimer Netherlands, where design speaks of the horrors of dementia.

The Packaging group awards began with the presentation of awards for Packaging Miscellaneous. In this subcategory, two silvers were awarded, one to Popular Bruketa & Žunić (Serbia) for Sofi Bath Bombs and the other to R’pure Studio (France) for the Viktor&Rolf StrongBox.Continuing into the subcategory of Packaging of Food and Beverages, the audience saw Stories of Greek Origins, a collection of design solutions for premium Greek products by the Athenian BOB Studio, awarded with a gold medal and The House Packaging, by Norway’s The Metric System Design Studio, awarded with a silver medal. The last subcategory was Packaging Alcoholic Drinks, which awarded two gold and one bronze medal. Wondering if there is a particular beer for each season? The answer is yes, in Sweden. Brewmaster Mikkel Borg Bjergsø has produced four different beer tastes for four different seasons and, obvious enough, design had to go with the flow! Sweden’s Bedow agency is responsible for the packaging designs for these seasonal beer flavors! The second gold award, not surprisingly, goes to beer again–this time for the work done for Holland’s traditional SNAB beer by Amsterdam’s BURO MET agency. Finally, the bronze award went to caso graphic+direction for the wine packaging design of Cantine Garrone.

And last, but not least, (before the special prize announced at the end of the ceremony) EDA presented one very interesting student project, cleverly named “Same shit, different wrapping,” that is dealing with Wikipedia’s redesigning for mobile and tablet devices. The project was fully developed by Marius Hauken from Norway, as an MA project at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design and won a gold prize in the Student’s Projects category.

At the very end of the ceremony, Germany’s Jäger & Jäger agency was declared Agency of the Year, Studio Dumbar was titled Best of Showfor their Alzheimer Netherlands project and, finally, the Jury Prize went to Marius Hauken’s “Same shit, different wrapping.”

Sources:
Branding Magazine – http://www.brandingmagazine.com/2013/06/12/and-thegoldgoes-

Web: http://www.europeandesign.org/

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Company ImplementationgermanyIdentityMondrey SinNatasha ShrendikNorwaySerbiaSilo NetherlandsspainSwedenswitzerland