Alembic Design Consultants

© DC Thompson

Hats off to RCA graduate Min-kyu Choi, who has won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award.

The award – a slightly weird exercise in comparing apples with oranges (if not bananas, guava, macadamia nuts and kiwi fruit) – last year favoured Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster and this year pitted the late great Alexander McQueen’s spring/summer collection, a light aircraft and a social housing project against Mr Choi’s clever folding plug design.  Anyone travelling any distance with a thin laptop will appreciate the value of his elegant solution to the problem of the ugly bulk of the UK plug when travelling. The new plug, which folds to 1cm or less, may not save lives but solves a daily irritation for potentially millions of people.  Amazing a) that no-one did this sooner and b) that it is not in production already.  We may now have to put up with endless ‘plugging the market gap’ headlines, but Min-kyu Choi deserves the success that will surely result from his clarity of thought and keen eye for a missed opportunity. Demos here and here.