METSTRADE has announced that 48 products from a total field of 104 entries spanning 14 countries have been nominated to enter the final rounds of judgement for the 31st edition of the DAME Design Award 2022.
This year marked a welcome full return of an international jury of leading design and user experts to the DAME Design Award’s specially created assessment room at RAI Amsterdam. Following detailed pre-visit scrutiny of submitted entry information, the eight members of the Jury, chaired by renowned yacht designer Andre Hoek, gathered to spend two very intensive hands-on days looking at products in detail. The nominations for final assessment were agreed after much discussion.
It is from this list of 48 nominations (see below) that the winners from seven categories and the ultimate accolade of 31st anniversary DAME Design Award winner will emerge. The Jury will also name its first discretionary Environmental Design Award winner.
All nominees and winners will be celebrated at the METSTRADE 2022 Breakfast Briefing in the RAI Amsterdam Convention Centre on 15 November, featuring a keynote speech by electric aircraft visionary, Cory Combs.
All DAME nominated products will feature on a special display at METSTRADE located at the heart of the show in the Elicium (Hall 13). Alongside, the METSTRADE Theatre will host daily discussion panels from this year’s DAME Design Awards category and outright winners.
Driving design improvement despite other pressures
Andre Hoek, chair of the DAME Jury, says: “It is well known that the marine leisure equipment sector has been under severe pressure for the past two years. It has needed to satisfy a strong surge in market demand while dealing with significant supply chain challenges. Ordinarily, you might expect this to completely pull the focus away from R&D. Impressively though, many of this year’s very wide field of entries showed evidence of ongoing investment in better design, which is vital for longer-term future of the whole industry.
“The DAME Design Award has a long history of setting the bar high and it is not easy to satisfy all the design criteria we consider – including function, form, environment, innovation, and price to performance. The nominees listed here are to be congratulated on meeting the scrutiny of our jury members and I look forward to finalising the results and announcing the best of the best at the Breakfast Briefing.”
METSTRADE director Niels Klarenbeek adds: “For more than three decades the DAME Design Award has been very much a part of the METSTRADE DNA. It encourages design improvement leading to excellence in the experience of water sports enthusiasts, greater efficiency for manufacturing operation and improvement in environmental impact.
“The DAME Design Award is a significant high-water mark for many equipment manufacturers and suppliers around the world. We look forward to celebrating once again the significant design successes of our industry at METSTRADE .”
The DAME Design Award nominated products 2022 can be viewed at www.metstrade.com/awards/nominees
The DAME Jury 2022 can be viewed at www.metstrade.com/awards/dame-jury
About the DAME Design Award
The DAME Design Award celebrates everything that is important about marine equipment design, from aesthetics to functionality, integration to packaging and price efficiency to lifecycle management. It offers opportunities for all METSTRADE show exhibitors from around the world to submit their latest products and have them judged by experts spanning all areas of design. Because of this wider focus, the DAME encourages the whole marine industry to continuously improve its design efforts, to the last detail. Entrants are not just judged against their global peers, but the DAME Jury recognises improvements from year-to-year within individual companies too.
The DAME Design Award, continues to perform a vital function within the marine industry in stimulating design progression across all disciplines and product types. Great end-to-end design is vital to improve manufacturing efficiency and product reliability. It plays a developing role in environmental responsibility. It also recognises that the marine industry must match the high customer expectations set by products in other sectors like automotive and consumer electronics.
About METSTRADE
METSTRADE is the world’s largest trade exhibition for equipment, materials, and systems for the international leisure marine industry. RAI Amsterdam organises it in cooperation with ICOMIA (International Council of Marine Industry Associations). The event’s target audience includes yacht builders, naval architects, refit yards, distributors, dealers, wholesalers, captains, marina owners and marine equipment manufacturers worldwide. METSTRADE 2022 will run from 15-17 November 2022 in RAI Amsterdam.
