The innovative Folding Plug designed by South Korean student Min-Kyu Choi has won the top prize in the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year Awards...

Choi's radical redesign of the humble three-pin plug came about after his Macbook Air (the world's thinnest laptop) suffered scratches from its bulky plug that he had placed in his laptop bag (the UK plug is the world's largest, apparently).

The UK plug has in fact changed little since it was designed in 1946. Choi's design allows the plug to be folded down to a width of just 10mm. It is currently on show as part of the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year show at London's Design Museum. A recent graduate of the Royal College of Art's Design Product MA, Choi has also turned his hand to designing a folding suitcase.

Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum said, "It's great to see such a practical but elegant demonstration of what design can do to make everyday life so much better. Min-Kyu Choi is a designer just setting out on his career and he clearly has a great future ahead of him." A short video on Choi's plug is on YouTube, here.

The individual Brit Insurance category winners were announced last week as follows:

Architecture Award 2010: Monterrey Housing, Mexico by Elemental (Chile). 

Fashion Award 2010: Plato's Atlantis show by Alexander McQueen – Spring / Summer '10 collection (UK).

Furniture Award 2010: Grassworks (below) by Jair Straschnow (The Netherlands).

Graphic Award 2010: The Newspaper Club by Ben Terrett, Russell Davies and Tom Taylor (UK).

Interactive Award 2010: The EyeWriter (below) by members of Free Art and Technology, openFrameworks, Graffiti Research La, The Ebeling Group and Tony Quan (USA).

Product Award 2010: Folding Plug by Min-Kyu Choi (UK).

Transport Award 2010:  E430 Electric Aircraft by Yuneec International (China).

Find out more about each of the winning designs at the links above and at the Designs of the Year website.

The Designs of the Year exhibition has also recently been extended to October 31.

In the next issue of CR, our Reader's Panel reveal what they thought of their tour of the show.