The Chicago Athenaeum has presented Robert Brunner and Ammunition Group/Zephyr the 2008 Good Design Award for the Plane range hood which is part of the Arc Collection.

The World's Most Prestigious Global Awards for New Product Design and Graphics presented by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design in conjunction with The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies

Founded in 1950, GOOD DESIGN is the world's oldest and most celebrated awards program that bestows international recognition upon designers and manufacturers for advancing new and innovative product concepts and for stretching the envelope beyond what is considered standard product and consumer design.

Pound for pound, letter for letter, ligature for ligature, the best redesign of a wordmark that retains the essence of the original while pushing the company into the new, young century.

Take a look at the work for SanDisk and then see the rest of the best and worst at Brand New.

"The collaboration turned out a good-looking, great-sounding set of 'phones. Like other headsets in the same price range from Bose, Sony (SNE), and Panasonic (PC), the Beats employ so-called noise-canceling technology. A tiny, built-in microphone records ambient noise, and sophisticated electronics then generate a corresponding sound wave that more or less eliminates background chatter.

Turning on the Beats is a little like having your head shrink-wrapped. A flick of the switch on the side of the headphones instantly muffles sounds of the outside world with an eerie whoosh. The effect is impressive, as a colleague of mine, who wears headgear from a shooting range to escape the din of our boisterous newsroom, happily testified when he tried the Beats.

With the ambient noise out of the way, the Beats produce deep, rich bass as well as clear, distinct treble. Does this stellar sound enable one to, as Dre hoped in conceiving the product, "hear what the artists hear and listen to the music the way they should—the way I do?" Hard to say. But to my ears, from Mariah Carey to Mozart, the Beats outperform similarly priced headphones, including the industry standard Bose QuietComfort 3. "

Read the rest of the article by Matt Vella at Business Week.