Camera, lights, Joan! The Red Dot Award in Joan’s hands.

Joan received the Red Dot Award for best Product Design on July 4 in Essen’s imposing Red Dot Design Museum and enjoyed a night out dancing with 1,800 guests amid the special exhibition “Design on Stage”.

Professor Dr. Peter Zec, founder and president of the Red Dot Award, spoke about the award winners:

With their performances, the Red Dot winners not only demonstrated an extraordinary design quality, but they also showed that design is an integral part of innovative product solutions.

Joan is the first door label ever to receive the prestigious Red Dot Award. The award speaks to Visionect’s dedication and hard work and recognizes Joan’s lean development as a force to be reckoned with. Fuelled by the insights of some of the largest corporations in the world, among them Microsoft, Hyundai, Greenpeace, Dreamworks, the Huffington Post, Dell and others, and now crowned with the Red Dot Award for Product Design, Joan has proven itself internationally.

Recognizing Joan

The Red Dot Award is one of the largest design competitions in the world, bestowing an international seal of outstanding design quality each year to select products. In spring, Joan was chosen out of almost 5,200 products from 57 countries entered this year by an independent expert panel of 41 designers, design professors and specialized journalists, who assessed each entry according to criteria such as degree of innovation, formal quality, functionality and ecological compatibility. Only products which set themselves apart considerably through their excellent design received the sought-after quality seal from the Red Dot Jury.

The jury recognized Joan as a good fit for a modern, technologically advanced workplace, describing it with the following words:

With its intelligent technology and a versatile appearance, Joan Meeting Room Assistant meets the needs of a digitally-dominated world of work.

Joan is also featured in the Red Dot Design Yearbook, a selection of the best designs of the year.

Style, simplicity and strength

Joan Meeting Room Assistant was developed specifically to manage meeting rooms. It is compatible with all standard office calendars, including Microsoft Exchange and Office 365, Google Apps and iCal. It connects to available Wi-Fi networks, is quick to install, requires no cables and uses very little electricity, running up to three months on a single charge. Its design is uncluttered, without buttons and perfectly tailored for easy, intuitive use. The E Ink touchscreen offers great visibility with its 180° viewing angle and due to epaper being a bistable technology (meaning that the screen will hold an image even without power) displays the last accessible information even if the Wi-Fi falters or the battery does run out eventually.

Final thoughts: It’s all about teamwork!

Matej Zalar, CEO of Visionect, shared his thoughts on receiving the coveted award at the event:

Joan’s Red Dot Award is proof of dedicated teamwork. It’s a proud moment for us. Our efforts to develop an intelligent and easy to use solution for a modern workplace have been recognized and it’s a wonderful feeling.

1,800 guests attended the glamorous black-tie event, among them such illustrious names as Ken Okuyama, automotive design legend, Alexander Neumeister, Transrapid designer, design luminary Jimmy Choo, Flavio Manzoni, chief designer at Ferrari and Sean Carney, chief designer at Philips.

Red Dot Gala at the imposing Aalto-Theater.

The gala was rounded off with a cultural fringe programme that included an appearance by the Aalto Ballett Essen.

The magnificent Red Dot Design Museum in Essen, Germany, is the annual site of the Red Dot Designers’ Night.

1,800 designers, decision-makers and design fans attended Designers’ Night, where they celebrated high design, danced and networked till early morning.

The special exhibition “Design on Stage” of current award-winning products opened in the Red Dot Design Museum on July 4.

We’ll keep more articles like this coming. And some behind the scenes as well!

Estera Dezelak lives at the crossroads of technology, workplace efficiency and the morning cup of joe.