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According to Charles Peguy, "It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas." If the French poet is correct, the winners of EXHIBITOR Magazine's 23rd Annual Exhibit Design Awards are veritable Albert Einsteins and Thomas Edisons of their time.

Employing fundamental elements and shapes - including everything from sandstone and copper to a simple but striking wave-like form - this year's award winners bypassed cumbersome complexity to create what Exhibit Design Awards judges called "powerful," "ethereal," and "utterly dramatic" designs. Holed up in a New York design firm in January, nine judges plowed through a bevy of entries from 15 different countries, including France, India, Germany, China, Turkey, Switzerland, and Italy. After a day's worth of analyzing and cajoling, they settled on 15 winners - including one EDGE Award winner (for Exhibit Design and Graphic Excellence), three Gold Awards, six Silver Awards, and five Bronze Awards - and established a noticeable preference for design solutions that evoke a sense of clarity and simplicity.

Surprisingly perhaps, this simplicity also translated to exhibitors' budgets. For aside from one design with a $6-million price tag, this year's winners averaged a measly $96 per square foot, well below the Exhibit Designers and Producers Association's average of $161 per square foot for a custom island exhibit.

So please join us in congratulating the 2009 Exhibit Design Award Winners. They've shown us once again that while there's nothing simple about creating award-winning design, some of the world's best exhibit-design concepts are born of relatively small budgets and simple ideas. e

JUDGES

(standing from left to right)
Chris Calori, principal, Calori & Vanden-Eynden/ Design Consultants, New York
Duncan Jackson, managing director, Billings Jackson, New York
Carin Goldberg, principal, Carin Goldberg Design, New York
Peter Dixon, senior partner and creative director, Prophet, New York
Shari Berman, principal, Evidence Design, Brooklyn, New York
Michael Donovan, founder, Donovan/Green, New York
(sitting from left to right)
Graham Hanson, principal, Graham Hanson Design LLC, New York
Jake Barton, principal, Local Projects LLC, New York
Jay Valgora, founder, Studio V Architecture, New York
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CALL FOR ENTRIES
Think you have what it takes to compete with the industry's top designers? Throw your hat into the ring and enter the Exhibit Design Awards. Visit www.ExhibitorOnline.com/awards/eda for information on how to enter.

  23rd ANNUAL DESIGN AWARDS: THE WINNERS

Linda Armstrong, senior writer; [email protected]

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