The 2013 red dot awards ceremony and gala took place last week in Essen, Germany, and as usual, bicycles were among the many types of products that were recognized for design excellence. A couple of days after the ceremony, Yanko Design picked their top 20 product designs from the “Best of the Best” awards, and two bikes were included on the list- the Mando Footloose folding chainless e-bike by Mark Sanders and the Canyon Ultimate CF SLX road bike by Artefakt industriekultur. On his Google + page, Mark Sanders (pictured above with the Mando Footloose team) has quite a few photos of the Footloose, including a few from the awards gala. The footloose wasn’t the only bike designed by Sanders that received an award though. His iF Move was recognized as well, so congrats to him on both of the awards.

Topeak won two red dot awards in 2013 for the MiniRocket iGlow pump and the PrepStation toolbox. Both are nice products, but the MiniRocket iGlow, a mini pump with an LED illuminated optical fiber element inside, is the one I really like.

I am sure that there were many other bicycles and bike related products that were recognized with red dot design awards this year. If you know of any that I left out, please mention them in the comments.

Though not as big as the red dot awards, another international design competition wrapped up recently.  The winners of the Velodroom Bike Accessories Challenge can be seen at GrabCAD, the engineering community site that hosted the competition.  I was one of the five jury members along with Velodroom co-founder Andri Laidre, Velo Vision and Electric Bike magazine publisher Peter Eland, GrabCAD co-founder and bicycle enthusiast Indrek Narusk, and GrabCAD engineer Kasper Kiis. It was not easy to evaluate and pick my top 10 choices from over 150 entries, but it was interesting to see the similarities and differences between my picks, and those of the other judges.  Overall, it was a good experience and I hope that I will be able to participate in future bike related challenges with GrabCAD.