The best Czech design 2004
Kazik Pietruszewski

When looking at the exhibition, it is clear from the first sight that it gathers everything or almost everything the best of what the Czech Republic can boast in 2004. Amongst mature designs that found their way to mass production, there appear students’ works and the distance between them is not big at all, in fact, it is frequently not noticeable at all. This proves a good condition of Czech schools of design, the Prague Vysoka škola uměleckoprůmyslová coming to the top in particular.

The designs awarded include the Siemens Xelibri phone family from the autumn-winter collection of this producer. Untypical shapes, reduced weight, masked devices resembling jewelry but fulfilling their function perfectly – these are, according to the jury – some of the qualities that decided on awarding this design. A complex visual identification of the city of Prague, realized by Studio Najbrt, presents good quality too. A legible and unexaggerated design was included in a manual comprising details concerning the denotation of buildings, instructions for building spatial orientation systems, information panels, printed and electronic materials.