From a total of 115 products entered into this year’s prestigious DAME Design Award METS competition, 52 have now been nominated to go forward for final judging by the DAME Jury who will eventually choose a maximum of seven Category Winners and one Overall Winner.
 
The DAME Design Award is held every year in conjunction with METS. The competition promotes the importance of design for all marine products, from function to aesthetics and from packaging to end product. This has never been more important in an era where the consumer wants everything he or she touches not only to work well, but took look great.
 
DAME 2013 received entries from all around the world, with the successful nominations coming from 12 nations. The Overall Winner and Category Winners will be announced at a special Breakfast Briefing on Tuesday November 19th at 8 a.m. prior to the start of the METS show that same day. During METS, all of the short-listed products will be put on display in a special DAME presentation located in the entrance of Holland Complex (entrance C).
 
Chairman of the DAME Awards Jury, Bill Dixon, said the Jury was pleased both with the quality of many of the entries this year and also the effort made by companies to present their products in a clear and concise way.
 
“The number of nominations this year is the highest for some time,” Dixon reports. “This reflects the overall quality of the entry, which is undoubtedly improved on previous years. “There were some standout categories with evidence of innovation. For example in marine electronics we saw some notable moves forward while the deck equipment, sails and rigging category generated a third of all nominations and brought a lot of very different products from several manufacturers to our attention. In fact we’ve had significant entries to consider in each category, so the final decisions will be very hard.”
 
“For all marine products today we need a leap forward to attract buyers. “It’s not enough that a product does what it needs to do – it needs to look the part as well. We commend all entrants that have shown clear evidence of employing design right the way through the development and manufacturing process, from function to form.”