Finalists in focus

METSTRADE has selected 48 products from a field of 104 entries for final judging rounds in the 31st DAME Design Award 2022.

Photography by METSTRADE

27 October 2022

From a total of 104 entries spanning 14 countries, 48 have been nominated to enter the final judging rounds for this year’s DAME Design Award.

This year marked a welcome full return of an international jury of leading design and user experts to the DAME Design Award’s specially created assessment room at RAI Amsterdam.

Following detailed pre-visit scrutiny of submitted entry information, the eight members of the Jury, chaired by renowned yacht designer Andre Hoek, gathered to spend two very intensive hands-on days looking at products in detail. The nominations for final assessment were agreed after much discussion.

It is from this list of 48 nominations (see below) that the winners from seven categories and the ultimate accolade of 31st anniversary DAME Design Award winner will emerge. The Jury will also name its first discretionary Environmental Design Award winner.

For more than three decades, the DAME Design Award has been very much a part of the METSTRADE DNA.

This year, the 48 finalists were selected from 104 entries from 14 countries.

All nominees and winners will be celebrated at the METSTRADE 2022 Breakfast Briefing in the RAI Amsterdam Convention Centre on 15 November, featuring a keynote speech by electric aircraft visionary, Cory Combs.

All DAME-nominated products will feature on a special display at METSTRADE located at the heart of the show in the Elicium (Hall 13). Alongside, the METSTRADE Theatre will host daily discussion panels from this year’s DAME Design Awards’ category and outright winners.

Driving design improvement

Andre Hoek, chair of the DAME Jury says, “It’s well known that the marine leisure equipment sector has been under severe pressure for the past two years.

“It has needed to satisfy a strong surge in market demand while dealing with significant supply chain challenges. Ordinarily, you might expect this to completely pull the focus away from R&D. Impressively though, many of this year’s very wide field of entries showed evidence of ongoing investment in better design, which is vital for the longer-term future of the whole industry.

“The DAME Design Award has a long history of setting the bar high, and it’s not easy to satisfy all the design criteria we consider, from function, form, environment, innovation and price to performance.

“The nominees listed here are to be congratulated on meeting the scrutiny of our jury members and I look forward to finalising the results and announcing the best of the best at the Breakfast Briefing.”

METSTRADE director Niels Klarenbeek adds, “For more than three decades the DAME Design Award has been very much a part of the METSTRADE DNA.

“It encourages design improvement leading to excellence in the experience of water sports enthusiasts, greater efficiency for manufacturing operation and improvement in environmental impact.

“The DAME Design Award is a significant high-water mark for many equipment manufacturers and suppliers around the world. We look forward to celebrating once again the significant design successes of our industry at METSTRADE.”

The DAME Design Award nominated products 2022 can be viewed here, and The DAME Jury 2022 can be viewed here.

The Jury for this year's DAME Award: Patrick Hemp, Arjen Jansen, Andre Hoek (Chair), Davide Cipriani. Dave Marsh, Kim Hollamby (secretary), Elaine Bunting and Olivier Racoupeau. Missing: Ben Ellison.

DAME Design Award

The DAME Design Award celebrates everything that is important about marine equipment design, from aesthetics to functionality, integration to packaging and price efficiency to lifecycle management. It offers opportunities for all METSTRADE show exhibitors from around the world to submit their latest products and have them judged by experts spanning all areas of design.

Because of this wider focus, the DAME encourages the whole marine industry to continuously improve its design efforts, to the last detail. Entrants are not just judged against their global peers, but the DAME Jury recognises improvements from year to year within individual companies too.

The DAME Design Award continues to perform a vital function within the marine industry in stimulating design progression across all disciplines and product types.

Great end-to-end design is vital to improve manufacturing efficiency and product reliability. It plays a developing role in environmental responsibility. It also recognises that the marine industry must match the high customer expectations set by products in other sectors like automotive and consumer electronics.

metstrade.com