Picking outstanding from excellent

Selecting an outstanding design from a room full of pieces that have been recognised as excellent is an unenviable task. However that’s exactly what we ask our Design Guild Mark judges to do each year when choosing the winner of the Jonathan Hindle Prize.

The Design Guild Mark aims to drive excellence and raise the profile of British design and innovation. In addition to the Mark, the Jonathan Hindle Prize, sponsored by KI managing director and Design Guild Mark founder Jonathan Hindle, is awarded to the piece considered to be the best in class.

It’s never an easy decision, but with a record 34 pieces awarded the Design Guild Mark in 2017, the judges had an even tougher task than normal.

This year the Keyn Chair Group, the brainchild of London firm forpeople, designed for international office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller  – was bestowed the honour.

The Keyn Chair Group is a range of meeting and side chairs that offers responsive movement and immediate comfort for collaborative spaces.

It sounds effortlessly simple when described that way so what was it about the Keyn Chair Group that pipped the other designs to the post?

Alex Gifford, Design Guild Mark chairman 2014-2017, explains: “The judges were particularly impressed by the fact that Keyn, along with several other entries, reacts to a change in the way we need task and meeting chairs.

“The way people now work is not as polarised into ‘task’ and ‘meeting’ as it has been in the past, and what is needed is dynamic ergonomic seating that does not involve complicated adjustment and has a design approach that suits a wider range of settings, be they focused work, collaboration, meeting, touch-down etc.”

The design uses four key parts to create every model in the group, so each retains the same visual appeal. For extra comfort, Keyn’s CradleFlex movement responds to shifts in posture, reclining up to 10 degrees.

The Keyn Chair Range was Richard Stevens and Joohee Lee of forpeople’s first collaboration with Herman Miller. The chair represents both companies’ mutual determination for “a continuous search for new perspectives and insights, brought to life through great design, cutting-edge engineering and responsible manufacturing”.

Alex continues: “Of the products that that are created for this new paradigm in workplace design, the Keyn chair was the best resolved and innovative. It was also recognised that the manufacturer and designer had invested heavily in producing a new type of mechanism that represents real innovation in plastic injection moulding.”

For more information about forpeople, go to www.forpeople.co.uk