Sydney (Australia) - Industrial design experts from New York, Seattle, New Zealand, The Netherlands and Japan will join leading Australian design practitioners for the 2010 Australian International Design Awards judging.

Designers from some of the world's leading industrial design consultancies and global manufacturers will descend on Sydney next week to participate in the Final Round Assessment stage of the 2010 Australian International Design Awards.

Presented by Standards Australia, the Australian International Design Awards is Australia's premier design awards program, recognising and promoting product design and innovation excellence in Australia. It is recognised as one of world's leading industrial design recognition programs.

Stefanie Kubanek from New York's Pentagram Design; Andrew Hartman, Design Director from Philips Design Netherlands; Kazuo Tanaka from Tokyo based GK Design Group; Mark Elmore of New Zealand's Fisher & Paykel and John Barrett from award winning Seattle design studio Teague will bring their international expertise to the 2010 judging panel.

"With experience in working with global brands including Herman Miller, Philips, Nike, Fisher & Paykel, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft - to name just a few - these internationally recognised designers will contribute valuable insights and observations to our Consumer and Medical and Business Technology judging panels," said Stephanie Pemberton, Program Director of the Australian International Design Awards.

"We are very excited to be able to showcase Australian ingenuity, innovation and design excellence to these international design figureheads," she said.

The 2010 Australian International Design Awards Final Round Assessment will take place in Sydney from Monday 1 March 2010 to Friday 5 March 2010.

At this time, judges have the opportunity to physically test entries from a usability perspective, and rank the design merits of the each product against a common set of criteria including innovation, visual and emotional appeal, functionality, quality of manufacture, human factors such as ergonomics, semantics and safety, and environmental sustainability.

2010 Judging Panel – Visit the full biographies at the official website.