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A Plain Plug Beats Out McQueen, EyeWriter for London Design Award

by Matthew Zuras on March 17, 2010 at 04:55 PM

If you live in Britain and are accustomed to bulky AC plugs (as we in the States are), London-based design student Min-Kyu Choi is about to turn your world upside-down. Or, at least, that's what the judges at the Brit Insurance Design of the Year competition would have you believe. Choi's design beat out the late Alexander McQueen's ravishing, alien-inspired Spring/Summer 2010 collection for the top prize.

Choi's innovation stemmed from the fact that he is one of the few people in the world to own a MacBook Air. The powerfully slim laptop starkly contrasts with the Brit-standard three-prong plug that, in Choi's words to The Daily Mail, "always causes problems such as tearing paper or scratching laptop surfaces." The designer decided to fashion a plug that folds into a minuscule .4-inch thick plane, for better storage and travel. Check out Min-Kyu Choi's site for more detailed tech specs and for diagrams of the gadget's guts.

What's most remarkable about Choi's achievement is not the design itself, which is elegant, simple, and completely marketable, but rather the fact that the design won. For the panel, which included design luminary Tom Dixon and superstar sculptor Antony Gormley, to choose an unlikely student design over McQueen's collection or over the tech wizardry of the EyeWriter, among other amazing entries, is fairly astounding. Let's hope that this inspires other students to aim for simple, novel solutions for everyday problems. [From: The Daily Mail]

Tags: alexander mcqueen, AlexanderMcqueen, brit insurance designs of the year, BritInsuranceDesignsOfTheYear, design, eyewriter, folding, min-kyu choi, Min-kyuChoi, plug, top

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