Office 2001 for Mac package wins IDEA award

The packaging for Microsoft Office 2001 for Mac, a reusable CD case, is a Gold winner in the 2001 Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). The annual competition, co-sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and Business Week magazine, honors products that display “exceptional form, usability features and interactive qualities.”

The design received a Gold Award in the Packaging Structures category. Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU), Landor Associates, Ivy Hill Corp. and Radius Product Development worked in tandem to create the bright, reusable plastic case. The package contains extra sleeves that can be used to store and transport CD-ROMs. 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 products such as the iMac computer, Kevin Browne, general manager of the MacBU, said.

“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,” he said. “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 the MacBU Web site.