REDMOND, Wash., June 15, 2001 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that the packaging for Microsoft® Office 2001 for Mac is a Gold winner in the 2001 Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). Cosponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and Business Week magazine, IDEA is an annual competition honoring products that display exceptional form, usability features and interactive qualities.
Microsoft, Landor Associates, Ivy Hill Corp. and Radius Product Development Inc. worked together to create the brightly colored, reusable plastic case in which CD-ROM copies of Office 2001 for Mac are sold. The design received a Gold Award in the Packaging Structures category in this year’s competition.
In contrast to the cardboard boxes that house most other software products, the Office 2001 for Mac package contains extra sleeves in which customers can store and transport their favorite CD-ROMs or compact discs. IDEA judges praised the design for its reusability and elimination of wasteful packing materials.
“Of all the products that claimed to be reusable, the Office 2001 case seems the most likely to have a second life,”
wrote Peter Kuttner of Cambridge Seven Associates, one of the jurors.
“The team created a case that looks like the Mac world, holds extra CDs beyond the Microsoft disk and will handily survive life in a soft briefcase.”
As it prepared to ship the first copies of Office 2001 for Mac in October 2000, the Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit asked the design team to create a package that echoed the attractiveness and hip design of Apple Macintosh products such as the iMac computer.
“The design and structure of the Office 2001 packaging is sleek, bold and visually appealing to Mac users,”
said Steve Callahan, president of Radius Product Development.
“We’re honored to see our mutual efforts validated by this prestigious award from the IDSA and Business Week.”
Office 2001 for Mac includes Word, Excel and the PowerPoint® 2001 presentation graphics program, as well as the Entourage™ 2001 e-mail and personal information manager. Office 2001 for Mac enables customers to simplify difficult tasks with innovative features exclusive to the Mac such as the new Project Gallery, Formatting Palette and PowerPoint Movie feature, which lets people save presentations as QuickTime movies. What’s more, it provides seamless compatibility with Microsoft Office 97, Office 2000 and Office XP for Windows® .
“The team behind Office 2001 for Mac sought to give customers a visually appealing experience of Microsoft technology, from the user interface of Office 2001 to the versatility of the package that this product comes in,”
said Kevin Browne, general manager of the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft.
“We asked our design team to literally think outside the traditional cardboard box for this product, and the result is a package that is as useful as it is eye-catching.”
More information about Office 2001 for Mac can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/mac/ .
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