British artist Benjamin Shine has won a highly prestigious Red Dot design award for a children’s activity toy he has created.
Cordz, which is already on sale in the UK and the US, allows children to create pictures and doodles by sticking coloured lengths of cord on to a reusable board.
The Red Dot competition is the world’s largest and most distinguished design contest. There were 3,231 entries from 49 countries in the category in which Cordz was judged.
London-born Mr Shine, 31, said he was “blown away” by the award.
He said: “I have been round loads of schools with Cordz and it’s the six- and seven-year-olds who really get it, making dinosaurs, cars, fish, all sorts of things. It develops skills and teaches how to correct mistakes straight away.”
In January, Mr Shine marked Barack Obama’s inauguration by creating a portrait of the president using torn shreds of a decommissioned US flag. The piece was displayed at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.
The designer, whose great-grandfather founded the Nat Shine clothing company in 1928, first received acclaim in 2004 with Skoody, a garment which combined scarf, fleece and waterproof jacket.
He has subsequently won a number of awards, including Top Creative Toy 2007 and the Courvoisier Future 500 last year.