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Konica Minolta Wins Good Design Award 2020 for Four Designs
Tokyo (October 8, 2020) - Konica Minolta, Inc. (Konica Minolta) is pleased to announce that the company has been awarded the Good Design Award 2020 by the Japan Institute of Design Promotion (JDP) for the following four designs.
Award-winning designs
- bizhub C650i/C550i/C450i, A3 color MFP series
- AccurioPress C14000/C12000, digital color printing systems
- HitomeQ Connect, communication service for care facilities
- Lifestyle-related body odor awareness-raising project
Reasons for winning the award
bizhub C650i/C550i/C450i, A3 color MFP series
High-end MFPs that meet a variety of workstyles and business needs
Feature of the design
This series serves as an important touchpoint for accessing various high-end office services, and supports versatile workstyles with its outstanding customizability and expandability. The sophisticated design helps to build lasting customer confidence in the brand of Konica Minolta.
Comments from Screening Committee of JDP
This series of high-end MFPs is characterized by Konica Minolta’s unique “INFO-Palette” design, a vertical white section on the machine body that symbolizes its role as a touchpoint for various office services, which adds to the brand value across the series. With its independent applications, selectable operation screen displays, and customizable user interface, this series can meet a wide range of user needs.
AccurioPress C14000/C12000, digital color printing systems
With high-speed printing and ease of use, these systems enable every user to shorten turnaround times.
Feature of the design
The sophisticated design is befitting for these flagship models, which ensures the high performance and quality required for professional printing and motivates users to expand their print business.
Comments from Screening Committee of JDP
These systems are characterized by the accent lines that go with the horizontal line of the machine top cover equipped with the paper feed and delivery units, which gives a sense of uniformity, and by the exterior design that matches the appearance of the company’s conventional models. Inside, toner bottles are arranged vertically and large handles are provided, reducing the workload for users. While incorporating automation technology that boosts quality and productivity, these systems only occupy the same footprint as their predecessors. The higher print quality, faster printing speed, less manual intervention and greater ease of use also enhance the efficiency, quality and quantity of commercial printing.
HitomeQ Connect, communication service for care facilities
Smartphone-based letter to connect with residents’ family members
Feature of the design
This service is designed to enable care facilities and residents’ family members to easily share the situation of facility residents without using special devices, and to deepen cooperative relationships between them.
Comments from Screening Committee of JDP
Design can help key social issues, in this case the problem of elderly care. This service tackles the sensitive issues of how family members can keep in touch with their older relatives. Good communication of personal and health data is handled in a neat and easy-to-use manner, it works both for healthcare professionals, patients in care and family members.
Lifestyle-related body odor awareness-raising project
Open collaboration project to help users detect and reduce their lifestyle-related odors
(Joint development project with Dentsu Isobar)
Feature of the design
This project is designed to propose a new health management method by measuring “lifestyle-related odors” stemming from illness or unhealthy lifestyle and using the data to improve lifestyle.
Comments from Screening Committee of JDP
This project aims to encourage a healthy lifestyle by helping users detect what the project calls “lifestyle-related odors,” which means the change of body odor caused by an unhealthy lifestyle that users themselves cannot easily notice. In this project, Konica Minolta aims to contribute to longer healthy life expectancy by working with several other companies while using its sensing device. This project is highly significant, especially in light of preventive medicine which is growing in importance in Japan. This project was selected for the award as it was launched not to promote the company’s products, but more importantly, to continuously encourage people to change their lifestyles permanently.
Features of the award-winning products
bizhub C650i/C550i/C450i, A3 color MFP series
The next-generation “bizhub i series” A3 color MFPs are designed to help corporate users achieve digital transformation and access IT services easily. The series is characterized by its operation panel, which features a new easy-to-use and intuitive user interface design and enhanced cloud connectivity and IT security. These MFPs enable users, even those without specialized IT knowledge, to easily access advanced IT services, and support companies to reform workstyles and effectively use IT services.
AccurioPress C14000/C12000, digital color printing systems
AccurioPress series boasts unparalleled efficiency in high-volume printing with: the ability to print 140 A4 sheets per minute at 2400 dpi; the industry’s first automatic pre-print adjustment and print quality inspection functions; and media sensor that lets users know the optimal print settings. These innovations enable printing companies to not only minimize wasted time but also hire operators from diverse backgrounds without special skills.
HitomeQ Connect, communication service for care facilities
This service is designed to assist communication between care facilities and residents’ family members. The facilities can send care reports, photos, videos and messages to families, who can view them via LINE, one of most popular social network services in Japan, on their smartphones at any time and anywhere, and can reply to messages or ask questions if necessary. This service allows care facilities to easily share even minor information about the residents with their family members, thus making communication smoother and building trust.
Lifestyle-related body odor awareness-raising project
For this project, “lifestyle-related odors” are defined as unpleasant body odors resulting from an unhealthy lifestyle such as irregular sleep and poor diet. The project aims to encourage people to change their lifestyle and stay healthy by measuring lifestyle-related odors using Konica Minolta’s Kunkun body, a body odor measuring and visualizing device. Lifestyle-related odors include sweat odor, sebum skin odor unique to middle-aged people, old-age odor, and mouth odor. Konica Minolta has been conducting various awareness-raising activities in Japan to contribute to longer healthy life expectancy.
About Good Design Award
The Good Design Award is a comprehensive design commendation program implemented by the JDP with a view to highlighting and commending outstanding designs around us in the pursuit of prosperous lives and industrial and social development.
This program has a history spanning approximately 60 years since its implementation in 1957 by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (present-day Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) under the name, Good Design Selection System, which was more widely known as the G Mark System.