The winners of the International Design & Excellence Awards were recently announced in BusinessWeek magazine. The Industrial Designers Society of America, or IDSA, reported that out of 1631 entries, 31 were awarded the coveted Gold award, while 47 received Silver awards and 72 won Bronze awards, while 349 finalists were named in addition to the winners. This year’s jury, an international cross-section of design leaders led by Andrew Hartman, Philips Design’s design director, new business, bestowed this year’s “Best in Show” award to Nike’s Trash Talk, a performance basketball shoe made from manufacturing waste. This shoe, championed by NBA star Steve Nash, incorporates as many leftover materials—leather and synthetic leather, foam and rubber—as possible without sacrificing any of the performance that comes with shoes made from virgin materials.

Several technological winners include:

Apple LED Cinema Display , Gold, Computer Equipment, Apple (U.S.)

BD-P4600 Blu-ray Disc Player, Gold, Entertainment, Samsung Electronics (South Korea)

Better Place Charge Spot, Gold, Commercial & Industrial. NewDealDesign (U.S.); Nekuda DM (Israel) for electric car recharger stations

BTS1 Dual-Cooking Oven, Gold, Home Living, Samsung Electronics (South Korea)

iCASTS, Gold, Interactive Product Experiences, UNSW iCinema Design Strategy & Research Centre (Australia); Mines Rescue (Australia)

LiftPod, Gold, Commercial & Industrial JLG Industries (Australia); Hugh Stark, Frank Fornasari, Sandy McNeil, Mark Armstrong, and Oliver Kratzer

LightLane, Gold, Leisure & Recreation, Altitude (U.S.), for cyclists on the roads

IDEA also stated that 66 designs from 15 countries outside the US were given an IDEA Award: Australia, Brazil, Canada, People's Republic of China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, The Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan and the United Kingdom.

A “People’s Choice” award will also be presented when the winners are honored in a formal ceremony at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel in Miami on September 26, the final day of the anticipated 2009 IDSA International Conference. All winners with descriptions, photos and contacts are featured on BusinessWeek and IDSA’s web sites.