Press Release
Joris Beets Is Honored with the Silver A' Design Award for Harp E Electro Acoustic Harp in Musical Instruments Design
Joris Beets acknowledged for musical instruments design by the international grand jury of the 2022 - 2023 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 20, 2023 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has confirmed the Silver A' Design Award in the Musical Instruments Design category for Harp E Electro Acoustic Harp by Joris Beets, designed for Joris Beets Design. The award was conferred within the 2022 - 2023 A' Design Award & Competition and was decided through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who evaluated anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
About the Silver A' Design Award
The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.
About Harp E Electro Acoustic Harp
Harp-E is the world’s most accessible professional grade electro-acoustic harp. With a complete structural rethink and redesign, the ancient, complicated and elitist harp has become a simple, elegant, flat-pack, self-assembly instrument. All you need for assembly is a hex key. It's a paradigm shift, made for all people and settings, from classrooms to festivals. All fragile parts are sandwiched inside the sturdy frame; Harp-E is portable, stackable, customizable, wearable, adjustable, while boasting superior sound, strings and electronics, all at a fraction of the price and weight.
About Joris Beets
Joris Beets is a designer and inventor with a long track record of patents and impactful designs across many industries and markets. He has won a series of awards like 2 CES innovation awards in consumer electronics and healthcare and for instance a previous invention, the Delta Harp, took the professional harp market by storm, and won the Red Dot Product Design award in 2017, it has since been licenced to Salvi Harps in Italy, dubbed the “Steinway of harps” has been played at all major stages in the world including the 2018 FIFA World Cup opening ceremony. His latest brainchild, the Harp·E, is a social impact project and labor of love, initially developed for a large charity in Amsterdam.
Award Record
With this recognition, Joris Beets is a winner of 1 A' Design Award.
About the A' Musical Instruments Design Award
The A' Musical Instrument Design Award is an international design competition recognizing good musical instruments by leading designers and brands worldwide. It is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to musical instrument designers, industrial designers, music instrument producers and acoustic engineers from all countries. Typical entries include guitars, pianos, violins, drums, saxophones and flutes. The awarded musical instrument designs are published at https://dezigners.org/design-category/musical-instrument
About A' Design Award & Competition
Organized annually since 2008, A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The philanthropic mission of the A' Design Award is to advance society through good design, by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Nominations are peer reviewed and evaluated anonymously by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. Eligible laureates receive the A' Design Prize, which includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, uploading a work and receiving a preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. More information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://dezigners.org/142704
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/142704
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!142704
- Laureate Profile: https://dezigners.org/d/328989
- Further Information from the Laureate: https://www.harp-e.com/
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Harp E Electro Acoustic Harp
- Function
- Electro Acoustic Harp
- Category
- Musical Instruments Design
- Discipline
- Industrial Design
- Industry
- Arts and Entertainment
- Colors
- Burly Wood, White Smoke, Dark Salmon, Peru and Sienna
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Joris Beets Design
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Joris Beets
- Country
- Great Britain
- Recognition
- Silver A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2022 - 2023
- Design ID
- #142704
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- It’s the world’s most affordable, professional grade electro-acoustic harp. The ancient and complicated instrument was completely redesigned from scratch into a simple, elegant, flat-pack, self-assembly instrument. Some call it the people's harp. A complete structural rethink makes it a paradigm shift: all fragile parts are sandwiched inside the sturdy frame; Harp E is portable, stackable, adjustable, while boasting superior strings and electronics - all at a fraction of the price and weight.
- Inspiration
- Triggered by a charity telling him about the absence of affordable, quality harps for the thousands of students they aim to provide with instruments of their choice, we went on a mission to democratize the harp. Between a violin, a flute and a harp, many children choose the harp: it’s intuitive, embracing and immediately sounds good. But today harps are dissuasively expensive, thus remain elitist and produced in small numbers - which maintains their price high. Harp-E breaks this cycle.
- Research
- Throughout the project we observed, interviewed, surveyed, co-created and tested 9 rounds of prototypes with: teachers, students, parents, maintenance, harpists and would-be harpists, assembly volunteers, school managers. Varying from group to 1:1, lab-based to contextual ethnographic (e.g. in classrooms) or quantitative (surveys), to fully understand the complex and contradicting web of requirements, deep insights that allowed design decisions making the harp both functional and desirable to all.
- Challenge
- A hundreds of years old status quo of harp levers was they were either good and very expensive or cheaper but poor quality. Simply put, harpists and teachers wanted a minimum of 24 strings, fully levered and of the right quality, but target cost price made that impossible. That was tackled by integrating all individual levers into a single mechanism with an entirely different working principle (changing the string tension instead of length to change the pitch), a shot in the dark, but it worked!
- Realization and Technology
- The core of the design is a revolutionary lever system, reducing hundreds of metal parts down to just two, with the rest CNC-ed out of the same sheet of beech plywood as the frame, like a near-wasteless jigsaw. Sandwiching the strings inside two thin frame halves, held together by standard stainless steel fasteners, allows for less wood and higher string tension. This and the custom designed pickup and preamp system, immune to EMI and with perfect frequency response, result in a superior sound.
- Operation and Interaction
- Harp E arrives as a DIY kit with an assembly manual and can be put together with just a standard Allen key. It’s easy to customize with paint, hacks or mirroring the entire harp for the left handed, a world first. It can be played on its height adjustable stand or worn like a guitar, acoustically or amplified by simply plugging it into a small amp setup, a smartphone, or a professional PA system. This offers a world of interaction modes and sound possibilities, imagine a harp with guitar effects!
- Project Duration and Location
- The project started in 2019 when Dutch charity Het Leerorkest challenged us, who had just taken the harp world by storm with his Delta harp, to design an affordable, professional grade harp. Harp E was designed between London and Amsterdam. The first 10 prototypes were shown on Dutch National television with 300 more crowdfunded by the charity. Harp E was presented at the World Harp Congress in July 2022. Now also available D2C online, it is played by children and adults worldwide.
- Specifications
- Harp E has 24 SilkGut strings 5C-2E, fully levered. Width 48cm x Depth 7cm x Height 87cm. The stand fully nests inside the frame, everything fits into the carrier bag of the same dimensions. Harp 3.6kg, stand 1.2kg. Adjustable to 3 heights: 87, 101 and 115cm. The single, self-shielding sensor avoids low hums and spans all strings. The smart preamp ensures high signal-to-noise ratio, zero latency and full compatibility with any effects, stage amps and studio equipment, powered by a 9V battery.
- Keywords
- Music, instrument, harp, education, DIY, self-assembly, democratization, inclusive design, electro-acoustic, electric harp
