Taiwan Talent Shines at TIDC

The Taiwan Design Center (TDC) recently announced the winners of the 2011 Taiwan International Design Competition (TIDC). This year's competition marks the TIDC's 10th anniversary, and once again Taiwanese designers have finished well, winning the top three gold, silver, and bronze awards.

In the past decade the national Taiwan Design Center has attracted professional and design students from around the world. And now it is one of the world's top four conceptual design competitions, along with iF and Reddot in Germany and the International Design Competition in Osaka.

This year's TIDC theme was based on Design at Edge, the theme of both the 2011 International Design Alliance (IDA) Congress in Taipei and of the 2011 Taipei World Design Expo. Out of 1, 510 entries, a gold, silver, and bronze winner, as well as fourteen honorable mentions, were selected.

The winner of this year's gold award is the UD Bottle Cap. Based on the concept of moment of force, the UD Bottle Cap transforms the standard bottle cap design all of us take for granted and makes removing a bottle cap easy for children, the elderly, and others who for various reasons are unable to do so without assistance. It is an ingenious design. And the same can be said of the other award winning designs. Each one was inspired by the desire to find solutions to everyday inconveniences.

Following the TIDC's announcement of this year's award winners will be the 2011 Taipei World Design Expo and the 2011 IDA Congress, both to be held later this month. The TIDC award-winning designs will be exhibited at the 2011 Taipei World Design Expo, with free public admittance.

Below are some of the award-winning designs, including the gold, silver, and bronze winners.

Since most bottle caps must be unscrewed with both hands, it is not easy for many seniors, children, or those with disabilities to do so. And it's difficult to unscrew a bottle when one has his or her hands full. To solve this problem, the UD Bottle Cap uses the concept of moment of force. It allows you to unscrew a bottle cap with much less effort than would be expected. The triangle shape of the bump on two sides helps you know intuitively the right direction to turn the cap. Best of all, the cap is made with environmentally friendly material and is recyclable.

Whether you are a man or a woman, losing a button on one of your clothes is never a positive experience. The idea behind the design of the Pressing Button can be used immediately and easily, allowing one to sew a button onto a piece of clothing without using a needle. Once you've returned home you can use the needle and sew the button onto the piece of clothing. This concept provides an emergency solution without the need of using needles and threads.

When we need to cut scotch tape, finding a handy tool to do so can be a problem. Easy Cut attaches the cutting edge on the tape roll itself. When you use the tape, all you have to do is move it lightly along the cutting edge. No other tools will be needed.

A return to natural living: these are the bridges that connect hangers to hangers. It is also a return to the human being's natural state. One takes clothes out of the closet and fastens the hanger post on the base (??) to form a standing hanger. This is easy to do and the hanger position can be determined in the same step. On your way home, just drop your clothing on the Supportive Hanger, and then only after they've been cleaned and ironed must you return them to the closet.

Do you ever become confused about which way to insert a ticket into a machine? It can be difficult for tourists, the elderly, and children. Using a directive (???) shape and graphical instructions, this design lets users insert their tickets more instinctively. The shape of the ticket reduces its size by ten percent without removing any of the information. Advantages: you can use the ticket intuitively, it's easy for tourists, the elderly, and children, and it works for all tickets that must be used at a ticket gate.

The E-Traffic Light is designed to solve various kinds of traffic problems. Connected to a close-circuit TV (CCTV) system, the traffic light keeps the green light on for the main line when either there are no cars on auxiliary lines or the cars on auxiliary lines are still more than fifty meters away from the main line. With the help of a radio frequency identification (RFID) system, the traffic light automatically switches to an emergency light with a special symbol to identify incoming rescue vehicles such as fire engines, ambulances, and police cars. Designed with various kinds of symbols and color changes, the traffic light allows all kinds of drivers, including those with color blindness, to easily identify the signs.

When taking public transportation, have you ever tried to help a person who has no handhold to hold on to? This design allows people to help others by sharing a handhold they can both hold on to. It also creates the opportunity for people to have positive interactions with each other.

While measuring the volume of rice with a measuring cup may seem simple enough for some, for others it is not easy at all. For instance, those with either eye problems or arthritis may have difficulty in scooping rice out of a bag and in determining the correct volume of rice. Scooping rice out of a bag can also be unhygienic since water, dirt, or germs might contaminate it. The Rice Bag provides solutions to these potential problems. It is a bag containing a fixed amount of rice in which the amount is controlled through counting instead of measuring. Another advantage of the design is that the bag is made of rice paper, a kind of edible paper made from rice flour. It dissolves in water while the rice is cooked, and there is no waste in the cooking process itself.

When you're nailing something, the Safe Hammer can protect you with an attached nail holder located inside the handle of the hammer to prevent any aches or pains in your fingers.

The innovative packaging solution is made of recyclable corrugated paper latches in an interlocking form that reduces wastes, quantity, weight, resources, and costs. Once assembled, it becomes an integrated all-in-one design that includes a pallet and six cartons (carton numbers are adjustable). The front, back, left, and right sides make it easy to transport this product both with the forklift and the pallet truck, which makes it unlike the conventional design that combines pallets, cartons, saddle-stapled packing tapes, and nails. The new packaging solution is expected to replace the long-existing carton transportation method.

It should be remembered that wooden pallets sometimes carry and spread pests. Many countries have regulations stipulating that pallets of goods are not allowed to enter the country without first being fumigated or receiving heat treatment. The fact that this new packaging solution is made of corrugated paper resolves many potential problems such as parasites invading the human body or environmental pollution caused by fumigation or other chemical treatment processes.