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OKI Printing Solutions has been awarded the ‘Good Design Award’ – Japan’s only comprehensive product design, evaluation and commendation system – for its new C3000 Series digital color printers.
OKI Printing Solutions worked in partnership with London based product design consultants therefore Ltd to develop a Product Design Strategy that reflected the company’s brand strategy and acknowledged the changing global trends in office design. The new C3000 Series (launched in May 2006) is the first of OKI Printing Solutions’ product lines to reflect this new approach.
The Good Design Award is judged by more than 70 designers, architects, editors and other specialists, and has been previously won by Olympus for its 35mm Single Lens Reflex Camera (1973) and Honda for its Civic passenger car (1984). In awarding OKI Printing Solutions, the judges said: “All necessary functions are incorporated under a smart design. It harmonizes with the intermingled office environment”.
Mr Mikihiko Maeno, President and CEO of OKI Printing Solutions says: “At OKI Printing Solutions, we believe the ultimate expression of a company’s brand values is the product itself. That’s why the design philosophy behind the new C3000 Series is based around three key attributes that we believe reflect our brand; simple, solid and smart.
“Simple, the product is easy to use and has a clean design appearance which fits well with today’s modern office environment. Solid, reflects that the product is well built and reassuringly reliable. Smart, the product has a range of intuitive features that make color printing easy.
“The new C3000 Series is a culmination of OKI Printing Solutions’ continually evolving LED technology and ongoing R&D investment. This has enabled us to deliver a product with second to none features and performance, in a stylish and compact form. We look forward to applying the philosophy to all of our future product designs,” he said.
Patrick Hunt, Creative Director at Product design consultants, therefore, says: “We helped OKI Printing Solutions devise a strategic design development programme to establish product design guidelines for use by design, engineering and brand/marketing teams in their future product development projects. The C3000 Series is the first product to emerge from this new approach and is the result of international collaborative work between therefore Ltd and OKI Printing Solutions in Japan, the US and Europe.”
The ‘G-Mark System’ behind the ‘Good Design Awards’ was incepted by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in 1957, at a time when design was given little emphasis in Japanese product development. Today, the award still strives to encourage “quality in all aspects of life” so that businesses have access to high quality products in the same way that consumers do, and is embraced across a number of fields including architecture, environment, communication and experimental design in state-of-the-art technical fields.
OKI is represented in Malta by Avantech Limited, 212 Cannon Road, St. Venera. Telephone 21488800. |
