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That there is the proverbial better mousetrap. The OneDown mousetrap's ingenious design is simple to "set," with no danger of snapping your fingers in anything; it clearly indicates when it's captured something (the weight of an entering mouse rolls it from horizontal to vertical); and there's no mess, as it doesn't kill the mouse, just traps it so you can safely deposit the little critter outside, or maybe down the hall near your annoying neighbor's apartment.

As brilliant as it is, the OneDown is just one of the 38 Gold Medal winners of the 2010 International Design Excellence Awards, and Fast Company's got an article up covering the final selection process.

The best World Cup matches are not the Portugal-North Korea blowouts, but the hotly contested ones, like U.S.-Algeria. Similarly, we love it when design competitions and awards have no easily clear-cut winners because the quality of the entrants are so high. So we were thrilled to read the jurors agonized over which medalist would snag the coveted Best in Show title:

The jurors are hypersensitive about the signal their choice will send to the larger design community. Jury chief John Barratt, CEO of product-development firm Teague, insists that the winner be something that people throughout the industry "could be proud of vicariously." He also reminds the panel, "This award is the bellwether of where the industry is and where it's going."

Read all about it, and see more of the medalists, here.

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