Hankook Tire has announced that its Ultra-High Performance (UHP) winter tire, Winter i*cept evo, was honored with the Good Design Award 2012 (Transportation Design category).
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The Good Design Award is a well recognized design program with a 62-year tradition beginning in 1950. Entries to the program are judged based on criteria for highest aesthetic in terms of innovative design, new technologies, materials, construction, concept, energy efficiency and more. In 2012, the Good Design Award selected approximately 500 product designs and graphics from 48 countries. Hankook Tire’s Winter i*cept evo was honored in the Transportation Design category.
Winter i*cept evo is Hankook Tire’s flagship UHP winter tire product that incorporates environmentally-friendly features and satisfies both style and performance, maximizing handling and braking in wet and snowy conditions. In particular, this product was highly acknowledged for its asymmetrical tread design reflecting a polar bear’s claw shape and the application of 3D kerfs for further winter traction. In addition to its innovative tread design, the new silica compound applied to Winter i*cept evo significantly reduced the tire’s rolling resistance for enhanced vehicle fuel-efficiency.
Prior to the Good Design Award 2012, Hankook Tire was honored with numerous design awards on various occasions in the past decade, such as the iF Design Award (Germany), International Design Excellence Award (the US), and the Reddot Design Award, which is one of the top 3 design awards in the world, for its Product Design Category. By winning another prestigious award for its product design, Hankook Tire has clearly demonstrated its status in the world as a global leading tire company, recognized for excellence not only in product performance but also in product designs.
“In addition to the award from the Reddot Design Award, Hankook Tire once again was selected for a prestigious award from the Good Design Award 2012. This certainly proves Hankook Tire’s competitiveness in the global industry with leading technology, product performance and design,” said Ho Youl Pae, Senior Vice President of Marketing Strategy Planning Division at Hankook Tire. He added, “Hankook Tire will continue its relentless effort to produce the best tire products in terms of quality and performance, but also in terms of its design and eco-friendliness.”
Hankook has been gaining market share in the United States with its line of winter tires, with the Winter i*cept evo leading that growth. In addition to the recent Good Design Award, the Winter i*cept evo has been well received by the media in the U.S., being recognized recently by a leading independent magazine for its performance.
The design work put into developing new tires is an integral part of Hankook’s marketing efforts. Tires that not only offer the exceptional performance that consumers expect from Hankook, but also provide a fresh, visually appealing design aid in generating increased brand awareness and purchase consideration.
To push the envelope of tire design Hankook partnered with the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) and a number of its third year industrial design students in 2012 for a project entitled ‘Tire Design For The Future Environment’. Students were asked to create new tire designs based on their own visions of future cars, sustainability needs such as reducing and reusing raw materials used in tire production, the importance of increasing tire efficiency and meeting specific tire performance targets. Full-scale mockups of the winning designs were shown at the 2012 SEMA show in Las Vegas, Nevada to great media and show attendee interest.
The Good Design Award program is organized by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design in cooperation with the European Center for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies. The program announces winners on an annual basis and covers new consumer products designed and manufactured under various categories including electronics, transportation, furniture and more.
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