featured

Noa Wins at the Best Design Awards 2023

Oct 09, 2023

Established in the mid seventies to celebrate New Zealand's best graphic design, the National Graphic Design Awards attracted 300 entries in its first year, exhibiting 130 works as part of a touring exhibition and lecture series.

In 1988 the name was changed to the 'New Zealand Best Design Awards' and enabled a growing community to benefit from the experience of a jury of international peers before expanding in 1992 to include Spatial and Product design. By 1998 the Best Design Awards became an annual awards programme with Interactive, Ngā Aho Award (renamed the Toitanga Award in 2020), Best Effect Award, Public Good, Moving Image and User Experience Award being introduced in the years to come. The awards are a showcase of excellence in graphic, spatial, product, digital and motion design along with three special awards - Value of Design, Public Good and Toitanga.

The Noa team recently headed to Tāmaki Makaurau for the 2023 Best Design Awards, of which we were finalists in three categories for our Limitless Range. We’re proud to be acknowledged by our peers across the design industry, winning Koura (Gold) in two categories: Product - Consumer and Product - Textile, and Hiriwa (Silver) in Toitanga. A huge feat being first time entries into these prestigious awards.

We want to share a big thank you to the Design Institute of New Zealand and the judges - and of course to you, our customers and whānau who have supported and believed in our brand, allowing us to continue to grow and share our stories. E kore e mutu ngā mihi ki a kōtou katoa!

Made entirely here in Aotearoa, Noa blankets give a deeper meaning to the ceremony of gift giving, sharing treasured designs, reflecting our identity and supporting the transmission of intergenerational knowledge through art & textile. Each design narrative we retell is a unique expression and extraordinary perspective of our common values, intentionally drawing on Te Ao Māori, the fullness of our natural world and our place in it.

Each blanket is a vibrant tapestry that tells a story, featuring patterning and design elements that not only warm and calm a restless body, but is a work of art, a tāonga, a collaboration of culture and colour, a woven representation of our communities, and our Nation's strength and resilience - in a fabric which in itself is apart of our story, wool. We believe sharing our individual story reiterates our connectedness, as the essence of each celebrates our shared core values. These stories take on new life as they are shared, its message becoming personalised to the individual, an unending narrative that continues to weave strands and story together, long after it has come off our loom. Ever-growing in its richness and meaning for years to come.

The Limitless Range embodies our ambition to live intentionally, to acknowledge each step in the pursuit of our goals. An individual thread woven into our tapestry of life and is the latest addition to our family of blankets. This award-winning range of tāonga is the first ‘woven to order’ offering compared to previous Limited Edition collections. It is always available to order and is online now.

SHOP Limitless