Yamaha Musical Instruments Win a Series of Top Prizes in the Design Award Competitions in Asia

Hamamatsu, Japan- Yamaha today announced that two of Yamaha's musical instruments, featuring unique designs, have won top prizes in two of the prestigious Design Award competitions in Asia. Yamaha's electric violin YEV was presented with the Grand Award, which is the top prize in the DFA Design For Asia Awards. In addition, Yamaha's casual musical instrument Venova received the top Good Design Grand Award in the Good Design Award 2017 competition.

The Electric Violin YEV Series combines superb playability on concert stages with a design that is beautiful from every angle point. Based on Yamaha's superlative woodworking technology, the design successfully draws on the beautiful appearance of the wooden surfaces to realize a 3D arched body and a unique frame like a mobius loop. The lightweight design, natural touch, and graceful curves allow players who are accustomed to playing acoustic violins to switch effortlessly to the YEV. This is clearly a next-generation violin that makes free expression in any musical genre possible at any time.

This instrument is a completely new type of acoustic wind instrument, with the innovative branched pipe structure and meandering shape, developed to enable players to enjoy an authentic sound and rich expressiveness with relative ease. Yamaha's Venova is easy to begin to play even for players with no previous wind instrument experience and makes possible performances with simple fingering like a recorder. At the same time, Venova also gives satisfaction to experienced wind instrument players because it provides the expressiveness of a single-reed instrument like a saxophone and has a full two-octave range. By making the body of the instrument with ABS plastic, it is light in weight, excels in durability and can be washed and cleaned with water. Because of its compact size, the Venova can be taken virtually anywhere, allowing players to enjoy music easily in many scenes, including the outdoors and in casual music sessions.

Designers at Yamaha think constantly about "creating products and services that will be loved by customers as lifelong companions." I believe these design awards are evidence of the success of Yamaha's design philosophy, which aims to focus intently on pursuing the true nature of its products and services.

This was a first time not only for Yamaha but also a musical instrument to receive the Good Design Grand Award. We are truly delighted and honored to receive such a high evaluation. Also, the new education method using VOCALOID for Education received the Good Design Special Award Design for the Future. Today, as design of services, and not just products, is becoming more and more important, we believe winning this award is a very significant and history-making event for us.

Similarly, in the Design For Asia Awards competition, Yamaha's electric violin YEV was presented with the Grand Award. We believe this, too, is a very meaningful honor for Yamaha, that is developing its activities worldwide.

We want everyone who participated in the development of these award-winning products and services, not just the designers, to share in the joy and satisfaction of these awards. Looking ahead, let us confront our design work with renewed passion and continue to create and deliver products and services that will bring joy to our customers for many years to come.

The Design for Asia Awards (sponsored by the Hong Kong Design Centre) is a design prize program that was instituted in Hong Kong in 2003 to celebrate design excellence and acknowledge outstanding designs with Asian perspectives. DFA awards are presented to companies and designers whose superior work reflects Asian lifestyles and are influential in the design field. Awards presented comprise Grand Awards, three Special Awards, and Division Awards that are presented in the four categories.

http://www.dfaa.dfaawards.com/

The Good Design Award has been a sole comprehensive design evaluation and commendation system in Japan since 1957. Submissions come from a wide range of fields, and roughly 1200 designs are recognized every year. Over 60 years, around 44,000 designs have been recognized by the awards.

http://www.g-mark.org/?locale=en

https://www.yamaha.com/en/about/design/