Fitch Honored With Two 2001 Industrial Design Excellence Awards.

Business Editors

COLUMBUS, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 18, 2001

Fitch, the world's leading brand design firm, has received two Bronze Industrial Design Excellence Awards for its design of the Razer Boomslang 1000 & 2000, and the Jeep(R) Titanium CD Boombox.

The annual IDEA competition, co-sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and Business Week, is the foremost recognition of excellence in industrial design. Encompassing eleven categories from business equipment to furniture and medical devices, 189 winning designs for both actual and potential products were chosen from 1,260 entries. Honorees will be announced in the June 25 issue of Business Week.

To date, Fitch has been honored with twenty Industrial Design Excellence Awards since the contest's inception in 1996. Fitch's seventeen awards over the last five years have earned the firm a fifth place ranking among competing design firms.

For the Razer Boomslang 1000 & 2000, high-performance computer mice for the pc gamer that utilize the client Karna LLC's proprietary light beam-encoder technology, Fitch conducted extensive user and market research to better understand the players' complicated movements and pleasure-seeking bellicosity. The result is a multiple award-winning device used by the majority of top "first person shooter" players around the globe. The Boomslang also represents a potential enhancement of the standard computer mouse, which has not undergone a significant improvement for thirty years.

The Boomslang name itself, part of a complete brand identity and communications system designed by Fitch, derives from a lighting-fast Indian snake that diets primarily on mice. Sinewy curves and the acid green color suggest mouse mutation into a deadlier form, while the translucent 'skein' permits exposure of the technological exoskeleton. Design features include five programmable buttons and a scroll wheel; a lower, wider profile to diminish hand and wrist fatigue; and a symmetrical shape that works for both right- and left-handed users, and allows users to grip with their whole hand or "flick" with their fingertips.

Time Digital called the Razor Boomslang "Faster, more sensitive and more precise than any other mouse around ... Call it the mouse that roared."

Fitch's design of the Jeep(R) Titanium CD Boombox evolved the Jeep brand in consumer audio products away from a WW II-inspired, rugged retro design toward a more refined ruggedness in order to capture a broader market and be appropriate for upscale specialty retailers like Neiman Marcus. Incorporating a programmable CD player, AM/FM stereo radio, stereo-cassette player/recorder with bass boost, tone control, equalizer, and digital display, the product is optimized for portability and acoustics. A handle is integrated into the front, allowing the speakers to be directed toward the user while the boombox is being carried. When stationary, the boombox can be set up in either horizontal, vertical, or angled fashion to direct the sound. The new design reduced production costs and sold very well for Kash `n Gold Telemania, Inc., the company with exclusive licensing rights to the Jeep(R) brand name for consumer audio products.

A jury of eighteen non-affiliated designers selected this year's IDEA winners during two and a half days of intense evaluation and debate. The jurors scored how well each entry fulfilled five criteria of industrial design excellence: design innovation; benefit to the user; benefit to the client/business; ecological responsibility; and appropriate aesthetics and appeal.

The goal of the IDEA program is to foster business and public understanding about the impact of industrial design excellence on the quality of life and the economy. IDSA is the nonprofit association that represents the profession of industrial design to education, business, government and the public, and serves the profession's needs for information and networking.

Fitch is the world's foremost brand design firm, unique in its ability to express brand strategies as products, environments, identities, communications and interactive media. Research-based, user-tested and award-winning, Fitch's strategic design and ongoing brand stewardship have demonstrably improved business for clients such as Iomega, Virgin, Sunbeam, Warner Bros., Burger King, Harley-Davidson, The J. M. Smucker Company, Hewlett Packard, Nortel Networks, Omaha Steaks and DaimlerChrysler. Fitch has offices in Ann Arbor, Boston, Columbus, Orlando, Phoenix, San Francisco, London, Osaka and Singapore. Fitch (www.fitch.com) is part of Cordiant Communications Group (www.ccgww.com).