Good Design Award 2026 winners announced

The Japan Institute of Design Promotion has announced the recipients of the 2026 Good Design Award. Among the winners is ‘Yasashii Asahi Shimbun’, a news media service jointly operated by Alpha Third Co., Ltd. and The Asahi Shimbun Company. Launched in October 2025, the platform uses ‘easy Japanese’ to make news accessible to foreign residents, Japanese language learners, the elderly, and people with disabilities.

The service was recognized for its commitment to information accessibility and its ability to allow users to customize their reading environment through features such as furigana, speech-to-text, and adjustable fonts and color themes. It is the first national newspaper initiative to provide continuous news in simplified Japanese.

Other award recipients include products from Original Mind Co., Ltd., specifically the ‘CONERI CN-3035A’ desktop pelletizer and the ‘GOIGOI2’ manual punch press. These tools are designed to support small-scale prototyping and creative manufacturing by making complex processes like resin pellet production and sheet metal processing more compact and accessible.