During this year Dutch Design Award, two important prizes will be handed over, the Audi Design Award and the Rado Young Designer Award.

The Audi Design Award is the public award of the Dutch Design Awards. The selection committee, headed by Floris van Bommel, for the Audi Design Awards selects from all entries six designs that score high in terms of innovation, emotional perception, contemporary look & feel, styling in material and use of colour, originality, sustainability, functionality, user-friendliness, ergonomics, and safety.

The public determines the winner of the Audi Design Award through online voting via www.dutchdesignawards.nl. The name of the winner will be announced during the Award Show on October 17th. Audi Netherlands has initiated and adopted this award because they recognize the role of innovative design more than any other car brand. It is fort hat reason that design has been at the base of the brand for more than one hundred years.

This year's finalists are (in random order):

• Maarten Baas with Real Time, four film clocks indicate the time by means of images: filmed persons who have taken over the function of the clockface depict the time.
• Studio Wieki Somers with Merry-go-round coat rack, cloakroom in the entrance hall of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
• Urban Alliance with Moodwall, LED wall connected to a movement detection system as a product to enhance social safety in the public space at shopping centre De Amsterdamse Poort.
• Firma Rieks Swarte with an animated picture story ‘L'enfant et les Sortilèges' by Maurice Ravel.
• Aldo Bakker with porcelain table ware, five pieces of porcelain tableware - water carafe, milk jug, saltshaker, bowl for olive oil, and vinegar bottle.
• Eddy Kaijser, Bart Cardinaal & Nadine Roos with The Flying Grass Carpet, a simple, moveable temporary urban park in the form of a synthetic grass rug. The urban space becomes (temporarily) an interior.

Nominated for the originality and creativity of their approach and for their choice and treatment of materials, three candidates have been selected unanimously by a panel of experts in order to receive the Rado Young Designer Award.

In no particular order, they are:

• Mattijs van Bergen, a stylist whose approach lies at the crossroads of fashion and a form of graphic expression, and whose models’ lines and materials are structured and finely worked in full elegance.
• Atelier NL, comprising two designers who demonstrate the extent to which creative research represents an essential part of design, with objects that reveal the very essence of their craftsmanship.
• Jelte van Abbema, a creator whose reflection on the nature of time involves a working method that harnesses the computer sciences and/or biochemistry, to open up a veritable creative vision of the transient.

Envisaging the future in a new light. Because of the inherent passion which comes with youth and the ability to use this to their advantage with their talent and look to the future, one of these three finalists will receive an amount of EURO 10,000 as well as communication and marketing support from Rado. Introduced during the 2008 Dutch Design Awards, this prize enables the watch brand to reaffirm its credibility and renew its support for the creation of tomorrow’s world.

The Award Show will take place on October 17 in Eindhoven.

For further information visit www.dutchdesignawards.nl.