May your Christmas be Merry and Bright

2015 was a very busy year for us here in Dolmen.  

We opened the year having won the IDI Awards Grand Prix for the wonderful Moocall, which then went on to win a Red Dot award as well as being shortlisted for Designs of the Year in the London Design Museum. We also won a Red Dot for the great Voyager ECK by Klas Telecom and an A' award for our design of the Cyclock system and branding.

Internationally speaking we have been all over the world in 2015, visiting new clients, building new professional relationships and opening new markets for growth. This has involved attending international trade fairs, conferences, targeted networking events and receptions. Thanks to all our funding supporters who have facilitated access to all of these events.

2015 was the Year of Irish Design and we participated in a number of ways, where products we designed were showcased in the Liminal exhibition in Milan, New York, Eindhoven and Dublin as well as in touring exhibitions that travelled all over the world. Most importantly for us here in Dolmen, we developed and ran the 'Irish Design + Medical Technology' exhibition, which showcased the value of design in the Irish Med Tech sector. The exhibition, which involved a number of industry partners, travelled the country to industry specific events where design was highlighted as a key driver in the industry. The project was a huge success and we are delighted that we were able to partner with ID2015 on this.

We continued our work with the Bioinnovate programme in NUIG, delivering the intensive bootcamp week as well as special sessions on design and innovation. We have also done considerable work in the area of Lean Product Development, where we are Enterprise Ireland sponsored specialists, working with SMEs and Multinationals around the country to implement strong innovation management processes via Lean Product Development. We are also continuing our work mentoring new business startups in a number of locations around the country.

We also featured in a number of documentaries that were filmed as part of the Year of Irish Design. 'Design is...' was a short documentary on what it is to be a designer in Ireland today, featuring our own lovely Mark Murray.  The Designing Ireland series looked at design in Ireland from multiple points of view. We were featured in the final documentary, where it focuses on our innovative work with exciting new SMEs and our work in the Medical Device sector.

As is the norm in product design consultancy, there are always projects that you can't talk about. However, we can say that there are a number of innovative and market leading products out there on the shelf, saving your life or keeping you secure and connected that have been designed and developed here in our offices. We are very proud of the work of all our team in 2015 and are hugely excited about all the projects lined up for 2016. It promises to be another brilliant year!