Apple Watch Wins Prestigious iF Gold Award
While Apple Watch could be more than a month away from a public release, it has won a 2015 iF Gold Award from the International Forum (iF) Design in its annual industrial design competition. The jury called the Apple Watch design “an icon”. …
Apple Watch was one of only two telecommunication products out of 64 recipients to earn the “Gold” designation. Out of the 1,624 products recognized, only 75 of them received a Gold Award.
Apple’s no stranger to the 62-year-old iF Design Awards, having won something from the critical exhibition 118 times since 1985. Of those, 44 have been Gold awards, just like the one handed to the (gold?) Apple Watch this time around. Of course, because this is such familiar territory for Apple and its design team, the news might rightfully be disregarded as something of a foregone conclusion. Indeed, Apple Watch is probably primed to win a slew of similar accolades in the short term, and such prizes are hardly affirmations or validations of a job well done. The real measure of Apple Watch’s beauty as an “icon” of industrial design will be in how many people actually buy the thing. That is the only award Apple cares about.
You can check out all the other iF Award winners here and see for yourself how Ive and company’s latest efforts stack up against the best designers in the (rest of) the world.