A Good Product Still Has to Answer: Why This Company?
A well-designed laundry basket can be right for one company and wrong for another. Jun Nakagawa has used that example to explain a question now central to his work as chair of the Good Design Award jury: does a design advance the vision of the organization making it?
The distinction matters for craft. A new product may be beautifully finished and still leave the workshop’s hardest problems untouched. Can its price support the people who make it? Can another generation learn the process? Does it give the company a direction it can sustain?
Nakagawa’s appointment in 2026 put those management questions close to the center of an influential design award. By October, his first year of judging had also exposed a communication problem: the link between a company’s vision and its product was often there, but difficult to see.
Why this product, from this company?
Nakagawa led Nakagawa Masashichi Shoten as president and later chairman, working on craft retail, consulting and education. He stepped down as chairman in 2025 and now works through initiatives including VISION to STRUCTURE. His experience brings the realities of running a craft business into the design discussion.
He calls his judging perspective “design that contributes to vision.” A MARNA laundry basket provides an accessible illustration. The same object, presented by Nakagawa Masashichi Shoten, might fit poorly with that company’s direction. The point is the relationship between the product and its maker, rather than a hierarchy of materials or styles.
For a workshop, that is a demanding test. A product has to do its immediate job while contributing to something the business can keep doing. Good form cannot settle questions about succession, pricing or access to materials on its own.
The award already looks beyond the object
This perspective extends an existing framework. The Good Design Award’s criteria consider human, industrial, social and time-related dimensions. Products, services and systems can all be evaluated in terms of the conditions they create or change.
Craft makes those conditions unusually tangible. A finished vessel depends on clay suppliers, tools, firing, trained workers and a route to market. An award-winning shape may be the most visible result of decisions made across that network.
The following earlier winners offer different ways to read that relationship. They predate Nakagawa’s 2026 jury leadership; they are examples for this discussion, rather than evidence of decisions made under him.
1616 / arita japan: a production region reaches a different audience
The project received a Good Design Award in 2019. Working with outside designers gave Arita porcelain new forms and an international design context. Its relevance here is the connection between product development and the way a production region presents its capabilities.
hibi: two industries find a shared product
A 2019 winner, hibi 10 MINUTES AROMA combines matches and incense in a product with built-in ignition. The collaboration gives two established industries a shared proposition a customer can understand quickly: strike the incense to begin a short interval of fragrance.
SUWADA: an established tool, reconsidered for use
SUWADA’s Classic Universal flat-blade nail nipper was selected for the 2023 GOOD DESIGN BEST100. The company describes its symmetrical blade arrangement as suitable for either hand and offers resharpening. The case connects Sanjo’s tool-making skills with the design of a personal-care object and its continued use.
seiseisha uzra: change begins with the material
224porcelain’s seiseisha uzra series received a Good Design Award and the GOOD FOCUS AWARD [DESIGN OF TECHNIQUE & TRADITION] in 2025. The series uses Seido, a material that can be fired without glaze while retaining a matte surface. It directs attention from a finished appearance back to material development and production.
In Taiwan, the design can be a way to learn
The Taiwan Yuan-Li Handiwork Association’s Next Artisan project was selected for the GOOD DESIGN BEST100 and the GOOD FOCUS AWARD [NEW BUSINESS DESIGN] in 2025. Its subject was rush weaving, but its design work included a route into the craft: modular learning, certification and a structure for passing on skills.
That broadens the idea of what a craft project can produce. A new object is one outcome. A workable way for people to become makers is another.
October 15, 2026: the connection needs to be visible
In the Japan Institute of Design Promotion’s October 15 announcement of the 2026 results, Nakagawa reflected that almost no entries were wholly disconnected from their organizations’ visions. Yet relatively few made that connection immediately apparent. Jurors could read closely and consult company websites; ordinary users would not necessarily invest the same time. He identified an opportunity to make the relationship between vision and product clearer.
For craft businesses, the implication is practical: years of inherited expertise cannot explain a new product by themselves. A customer still needs to understand why this workshop is making this particular thing now. That is an editorial reading of Nakagawa’s remarks, rather than a new award requirement.
The question earns its force at that level of detail. A vision begins to mean something when it helps a company choose what to make, gives the work a sustainable place in the business and can be understood by the person being asked to buy it.
Sources:
GDA official press release「2026年度グッドデザイン賞 新正副審査委員長を発表」
Reports on the Taiwan Yuan-Li Handiwork Association award
Japan Institute of Design Promotion: 2026 results and jury chair’s comments, October 15, 2026