By Jeanne Tan / 23-10-2008

The winners of the 2008 Dutch Design Awards were announced in Eindhoven on 18 October 2008 during the first day of Dutch Design Week. From the three main categories - Product, Commmunication and Spatial Design, 19 winners were chosen from 64 shortlisted entries.

Winning two awards - Communication: Best Graphic Design and the RADO Young Designer Award - and the overall Golden Eye Award was designer Christien Meindertsma in collaboration with Swiss graphic designer Julie Joliat with the book PIG 05049. With its pig hide-coloured cover, the book depicts all the products that can be made from a single pig and is a detailed exploration into the origin of raw materials. The project was three years in the making.

According to jury chairperson Alexander Rinnooy Kan, 'PIG 05049 from Christien Meindertsma and Julie Joliat was chosen because of the admiration for the special way this beautifully designed production involves the reader in the societal debate'. The jury report continues, 'With her graduation project Checked Baggage (Design Academy Eindhoven 2006), Meindertsma had already shown that the act of collecting in its purest form could be communicative in itself. PIG 05049 is a continuation of this concept; it shows all parts of a slaughtered pig as well as the products these are used for, 185 in total. The design of the book is simply sublime: it feels like a technical reference book, the chapters indicated by a thumb index. The only frivolous element is the earmark on the spine. But, isn’t this the only part that doesn’t come from the pig itself but nevertheless stays with it for as long as it lives?'

'I have chosen the pig, in preference to for instance the cow or chicken, because a pig produces by far the most varied collection of ingredients. Moreover the pig is a fascinating subject to address because certain religions consider it unclean and the production method is currently the subject of heated discussion,' Meindertsma explains.

After its death, the pig 05049 depicted in PIG 05049 is distributed across the world in well-measured parts. The book is designed as if being deconstructed and dissected like the pig itself. The chapters are divided into body parts of the pig starting with the Skin, Bones, Meat, Internal Organs, Blood, Fat and concluding with Miscellaneous other parts. With surgical precision, the distribution and the use of the pig’s dissected parts are documented with life-sized (1:1) photos of all products. Besides the pork products we know (and don't know), the unexpected items are a revelation into really how many products actually contain some part of a pig. Some of these include products made with bone glue (sandpaper, matches, wallpaper), bone gelatine (paper, paintball, x-ray film), skin gelatine (beer, cakes, candy, ice cream), collagen for anti-ageing products, blood (cigarettes, colouring agent in ham), fat (shampoo, fabric softener, crayons), hair for paint brushes, and the list goes on.

'The idea for this book arose from my interest in the invisible lines that link raw materials, producers and consumers world wide. In a strongly globalised world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to trace these lines and due to the increasing scope and complexity of the meat processing industry, the consumer has hardly any idea of the route an animal takes to the various finished products. It is this phenomenon I want to describe and therefore this book should NOT be seen as a manual for vegetarians or people who, due to religious convictions, don't eat pork,' Meindertsma says. 'What I wanted readers to take away with them was that the products we use all come from somewhere: they were grown somewhere and were made by someone', she continues.

Other major winners in the 2008 Dutch Design Awards included Customr for the Jail Sport Domes (Public Interior), Jorre van Ast for the VKB/Jar Tops (Sustainable Product), G+N Glue Jeans (Accessories and Fashion) and Amsterdam Worldwide for Electric Tiger Land (Brand and Strategy). In addition, a number of special awards were handed out including The Audi Design Award, Toon van Tuijl Design Prize and Design For All Prize.

All nominated projects are on exhibition in the 'Brainport Greenhouse' at the Stadshuisplein Eindhoven for the duration of Dutch Design Week from 18 - 26 October. A full list of winners can be found on the website of the Dutch Design Awards.

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