Designed by HEY SHENG, the V-shaped Golden Pin Projects Infinite Possibilities.

The Golden Pin Design Award, the top design award in the global Chinese community, officially unveiled its new trophy today. Designed by the acclaimed Taiwanese design team of Cam Yang and Vii Chen of HEY SHENG, the new trophy retains the aesthetic spirit of the previous version while transforming the renowned Golden Pin image into a ‘V’ shape that represents the continuous expansion of vision and the infinite possibilities of design. The newly redesigned trophy will be presented to the winners of the Golden Pin Design Award, Golden Pin Concept Design Award’s Best Design of the Year Award, and the Special Annual Award during this year’s awards ceremony in recognition of their work.

The Golden Pin Design Award, founded in Taiwan in 1981, has undergone several changes and refinements over the years. Originally the National Design Award, it was officially rebranded as the Golden Pin Design Award in 2009. In 2014, the Award launched another major transition when it opened the competition to the world. Every year, the Award attracts prominent corporations and design firms from across the globe to compete for awards and honors with nearly 60,000 works recorded to date, underscoring the Golden Pin’s prestige and international standing.

The Golden Pin Design Award trophy, which is handed to the Best Design winners each year as a symbol of the highest honor, has also undergone two design changes that emphasize the award’s expanding vision and the design spirit of different eras. The 2009 trophy was designed by multiple international award winner Jennifer Tsai, who created the hefty golden pin on the trophy to symbolize the inception of each creative concept and the value of design. Chang Yi and Loretta Yang, founders of legendary art glass studio Liu Li Gong Fang, designed a new trophy in 2014, a rectangular prism of solid crystal injected with air bubbles and topped with satin glass cast in a butterfly design that signified the brewing, rising, and metamorphosis of good ideas that ultimately transform into the iconic Golden Pin that crowns the trophy.

The left is the 2009-2014 Golden Pin trophy; the right is the 2014-2021 edition.

This year’s Golden Pin Award trophy has been redesigned to reflect the award’s vision of promoting design to expand its influence. According to HEY SHENG CEO Cam Yang and Art Design Director Vii Chen, who took on the monumental task of designing the new trophy, their first work—the Fruit and Vegetable Peels Cups series—was created when the company was founded in 2012. The work won awards in both the product and package design categories at the Golden Pin Design Awards the following year, bringing tremendous support and recognition to the company. According to Chen and Yang, as the brand celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, the opportunity to design the new Golden Pin trophy is truly an honor and a privilege.

The team spent eight months creating the new trophy. During their research, Yang and Chen were deeply moved by the award’s history and the story of the evolving form of the trophy. As a result, the new trophy retains its crystalline transparency in a tribute to past designs while reflecting contemporary trends and delivering an insightful vision of the future of design. The most significant change in the new Golden Pin design is the transformation of its shape into a cone. The intersecting V-shaped lines can be extended infinitely upward, symbolizing the limitless possibilities of design and creation as well as the grand vision of the Golden Pin Design Awards. Unlike the explicit design of earlier versions, the new trophy integrates the Golden Pin into the trophy. Set against a crystal-clear transparent background, the shining V-shaped Golden Pin highlights the brilliance of good design, as well as the lofty vision of expanding the influence of design through the Golden Pin Awards.

HEY SHENG CEO Cam Yang (the right) and Art Design Director Vii Chen (the left).

The new trophy will be formally presented at this year’s awards ceremony. Only the winners of the highest honors in each category, including the “Best Design of the Year Award”, “Special Annual Award”, and “Golden Pin Design Award Honorary Award” are entitled to receive the Golden Pin Design Award and Golden Pin Concept Design Award trophies. The winning works and names of the winning design teams will be engraved on their trophies using sophisticated laser technology. We hope that this meticulously crafted trophy conveys the depth of the honor conferred on the award recipients.

The call for entries is open for the 2022 Golden Pin Design Award and Golden Pin Concept Design Award! The Golden Pin Design Award is for commercialized products on the market or completed spatial/integrated design projects. The applicant can be a business entity or design team. The deadline for registration is Thursday, July 7, and early bird registration has been extended to Tuesday, June 14.The registration deadline for the Golden Pin Concept Design Award is Wednesday, June 22. Registration is free of charge, and Best Design winners will have a chance to win NT$400,000.

Welcoming designers all around the globe, this is an unprecedented opportunity to prove their prowess in creative design!