AIGA (The Professional Association for Design) does a yearly survey called AIGA 365: The Year in Design. They’ve chosen a whole series of top examples for 2008 to put into the archives, all sorted into 10 different categories. From their writeup:

AIGA’s suite of competitions is widely recognized as the most discerning statement on design excellence today, extending a legacy that began 90 years ago. By means of the competitions, AIGA creates a chronicle of outstanding design solutions, each demonstrating the process of designing, the role of the designer and the value of design.

Their 29th Annual Year in Design is online now, and I’ve sifted through the 10 categories and pulled out some of my favorite selections. And so, for your enjoyment:

Brand and Identity Systems Design: Bretenic Limited Stationary System

Here’s a piece of work from a Toronto design shop that uses good copy and comical prose to illustrate why a lawyer and specialist is good to work with. It’s well-presented and direct, and the approach of the piece matches the approach of the client, which is funny and down to earth.

Corporate Communications Design: Take Action Postcards to the Edge

There weren’t a ton of wonderful examples in here, I found, but this set of postcards about dissidents being persecuted in other countries is concise, catchy, and embodies a spirit of design slightly different than much of the NGO “design ghetto” (if such a thing exists, and from my impressions it sort of does).

Editorial Design: New York Times Magazine

These guys don’t quit. I’ve written about their extremely skilled lead designer before, and these two nominations here are making me think about a subscription. Consistently, eye-catching, and beautiful to look at, week in and week out. I missed the recent food issue, which I’m sure was full of various mouth-watering things alongside some fantastic articles.

Experience Design: Detroit Institute of Arts Interactive Installations

Although I can’t vouch for this, not having been to the museum, the idea of watching a period meal being served while you sit at a kind of virtual table, as a way of presenting silverware and other period flatware and furniture and cooking habits, is kind of awesome. Plus it’s easily the best way to answer that eternal question we’ve all grappled with: “how can I make my 18th century flatware collection relevant to contemporary youngsters?” Now you know.

Information Design: The Normandy Campaign

I wish computer technology was at this stage back when I was sent to museums on various school trips, although I remember the series of blinking lights and various switches that moved things were equally as enthralling as this interactive touch-screen map of the Normandy campaign probably is. Everything is fun when you’re a kid. Ah hell, it still is.

Motion Graphics: TV Land Refresh

This category, I’ve got to say, is lacking a touch–the nominations were fine, but not mind-blowing, and from a design standpoint I just don’t think Modest Mouse’s Dashboard video needs to win a prestigious design award. I know it’s motion graphics, but that’s a wide category, considering what I eventually chose at their best selection: this refresh of the TV Land network, which is clean, contemporary, and not annoying. For a retro network that shows nothing but old reruns, it’s great, actually. No old TVs with rabbit ears sticking out of them or bouncy retro graphics–although I’m an unabashed fan of vintage things, showing Brady Bunch reruns doesn’t mean you have to embrace the tv-in-the-60s aesthetic for your entire network.

Packaging Design: Ultrasilencer

Well I wanted Criterion’s Breathless DVD set, but the Ultrasilencer takes it. When the hell are you ever going to get a Vacuum Cleaner with modernist Helvetica styling on all its packaging? This wins my personal award for “making Jordan kind of interested in a product he wouldn’t otherwise give a crap about.” Thanks to this design I seriously started thinking that maybe this product was some kind of revolutionary thing, until I realized the object I was thinking about was a vacuum cleaner.

Promotional Design and Advertising: Planet Propaganda

The posters of Planet Propaganda, collectively, win this one. This is a massive category and it’s kind of ridiculous to choose one, especially since I just complained about ‘honorifics’ in another article, but hey, I’m not actually handing out awards here, just picking my favourites.

Typographic Design: Sculpture Today

This ‘Paper Alphabet for Sculpture Today’ is fantastic. Typography done with paper that looks beautiful. Plus the “C” looks like my cherished Commodore 64 logo.

Book Design: Underachiever’s Manifesto

While there are a ton of quality choices here, the Underachiever’s Manifesto gets my vote. It was a tossup between this and a few others (All the Sad Young Literary Men I really like), but the “mistake is the whole point” simplicity of the cover won me over.

Book design needs more attention than it gets. I was all primed to write up some fine recent examples of the art that I’ve recently come across, except I got completely distracted by stumbling upon a ridiculously good series put out by Penguin, called Great Ideas. The third edition of this set got plenty of attention from blogs when it came out recently, but it turns out the entire line, from series 1-3, is absolutely packed with great typography and some fresh, creative cover work done within the self-imposed constraints of a run like this.

The idea behind the titles is simple: the biggest of the world-changing “idea” books in digestible, consistent forms. It should be noted these aren’t really “books” at all; most of them are treatises, essays, or the most important extracts from larger works. All of them are well and seriously chosen, but running through the whole series is a light, joyful touch that never lets up, and comes through in the design. These are playful covers and even more playful titles: there was never actually a book by Frederick Nietzsche entitled Why I Am So Wise, but there is now (it was, however, originally a well-titled chapter in his Ecce Homo).

Simon Winder, who edits the series, explains that “the intention with each book was to isolate it and represent it to modern readers so that they can relive in some measure just what made the writing so urgent and astonishing at the time.”

Speaking of isolating good writing, I’ve never seen another series of books in which prose extracts were used to such perfect effect on the front covers. Look at Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations! “A little flesh, a little breath, and a reason to rule all–that is myself.” Laid out like it is, the extract takes on far more weight than were it lost on the back flap, center-justified and surrounded by vague ellipses; it begs to be read. And then we have The Communist Manifesto cover, which shows deference to the importance of its original text while having fun with the hyperbolic prose any such manifesto is bound to contain–and this is still just the first series.

Looking at the blue-themed second set, The Book of Revelation and the Book of Job is sending me out to the bookshelf to find a bible right now, while Marco Polo’s Travels in the Land of Kubilai Khan makes the man with words of praise. And for anyone who’s read Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, and found it memorable, you’ll fall in love with what Penguin’s done.

Finally we come to the third series: everyone got real excited for Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and justifiably so (it’s the one with all the repeating spines displayed as its cover). I say any piece of good design that draws people towards the endless well of Benjamin’s beautiful writing is nothing less than a positive addition to the good of the whole damn world. You’ve probably also noticed that the series has switched to green by this point, while my coveting of the entire run has switched to a kind of obsessive panging. A great Kierkegaard cover and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s most famous essay round out the sampling.

Finding great book design that’s consistently held up over the course of sixty titles is a rare thing indeed, and Penguin should be celebrated for it. And I’ll do that, then–celebrate them, I mean–somehow or other. There’s probably some wine here somewhere.

Big words from the publisher:

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.