..:: IAMRAV ::..

BA Graphic and Media Design alumnus Min-Kyu Choi has become a design star by winning the theBrit Insurance Design of the Year 2010 Award. His success was announced last night by Anthony Gormley at a ceremony held at the Design Museum.

The Brit Insurance Designs Awards, “the Oscars of the design world”, showcase the most innovative and forward thinking designs from around the world. Last year’s winner, the unofficial Barack Obama poster campaign by Shepard Fairey, demonstrated the power that design can have at a grass-root level. An exhibition of winning designs will be on show at the Design Museum until 31 October 2010.

Min-Kyu Choi graduated from LCC’s BA Graphic and Media Design – Interactive and Moving Image pathway in 2007 when he secured a place at the Royal College of Art.

He has impressed everyone with his neat, apparently market-ready, plug that folds down to the width of an Apple MacBook Air.

Min-Kyu Choi comments:

The MacBook Air is the world’s thinnest laptop ever. However, here in the UK, we still use the world’s biggest three-pin plug

The plug is just 10mm wide when it is folded. To unfold it, the two live pins swivel 90 degrees and the plastic surround folds back around the pins so the face of the plug looks the same as a standard UK plug.

The idea produced a spin off, too. Min-Kyu created a multi-plug adaptor, a compact standard plug sized unit with space for three folded plugs to slot in, as well as one that charges USB devices. His design has been given extensive coverage on Radio, TV and has been celebrated with several awards including the Wallpaper Design Awards 2010. We also covered him on Snapshot last year when his designs started to attract attention from the national press.

It is part of the philosophy of the Design Faculty at the LCC that designers can and should approach any kind of problem in any material or dimension"