22 October 2008

Design Award goes to Doruk 190LE

Koç Group member, celebrating 45th Anniversary, Otokar, has been granted the "Good Design Award" for Doruk 190LE model in Design Turkey Industrial Design Awards organized for the first time with cooperation of the government, industry and designers.

Otokar participated with its Doruk 190LE bus to Design Turkey Industrial Design Awards, organized in collaboration with Undersecretaries for Foreign Trade (DTM), Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM) and Industrial Designers Society of Turkey (ETMK), within the framework of TURQUALITY® program. Otokar is the owner of design and intellectual property rights and trademark of Doruk 190LE.

Otokar's Doruk 190LE bus honored with "Good Design Award" for its outstanding modern design for public transportation in the "Transport and Transportation Vehicles" category.

The ceremony of "Design Turkey Industrial Design Awards", organized with the aim of expending design culture, enhancing the brand building visions of Turkey in design and rewarding good designs that add value and competitive advantage to the products in local and international markets, took place on 21 October 2008 in the Antrepo 3, İstanbul.

General Manager of Otokar, Serdar Görgüç, stated that they work hard to design products in line with the requirements of the customers with a worldwide competitiveness and they feel proud of being appreciated and awarded for those efforts. Gögüç emphasized that as Otokar they export own-design products more than 45 countries under their own trademark and they are able to design products according to customer expectations without dependency on external resources. "As we look through the countries with advanced markets and created their own brands, we notice that they all maintain intellectual property rights and designs." he said. Today, you can find a cost effective manufacturer to produce your trademarked products wherever you want. Ownership of that product distinguishes you from others. And this can be accomplished by owning these products with their design and rights. Therefore, in order to develop Turkey as a "production Base" beside a "Design" and "R&D Center", it is fundamental and essential to invest in technology and human resources. I can say that the only way to establish sustainable growth in the sector is differentiation by design, particularly in automotive sector. Görgüç reminded that the award ceremony drowns attention to the importance and value of designer and design and added "Design contributes value to a product, improves market acceptance and strengthens customer perception. Those awards give support to Turkish designers and encourage them to go after innovations. The awards also appraise and reward the designers who had great performance especially in automotive design category."

Otokar was also granted "Pride Award" for its contribution to industrial design in automotive design category by Mimar Sinan University in 1999.

386 products, 58 conceptual designs applied

Designers, trademark owners and manufacturers from 12 sectors took part in "Design Turkey Industrial Design Awards". 386 applications to "Product Design Awards", 58 applications to "Conceptual Design Awards" were received and after the evaluation by the "Pre-evaluation jury" 311 product and 25 conceptual projects had been passed to the second stage of award evaluation system. Awards are given in different categories upon evaluation of the international jury formed by 29 elite experts.

Products passed the first evaluation and prize honorees can be seen in the Antrepo 5 at Istanbul between October 21st and 22nd of 2008.