The National Design Museum (also known as Cooper-Hewitt) gives out some design awards every year, and since 2006 they’ve also been holding a public contest in which people on the internet are asked to both nominate and vote for the best ‘design’ of the year. 

The umbrella is pretty large on this one, so we see both the Obama logo, Al Gore’s ‘we’ Logo, and the Design Observer website (which is, of course, quite worthy of whatever award it gets).

Helvetica: The Movie is also up there, and a whole lot of other worthwhile nominees, but the one that I find the most interesting is the Design Awards are So Over t-shirt. It’s just another snarky slogan of dismissal slapped across a chest, but the writeup tries to make some amends: 

This is a real campaign created to spur discussion. Why not here, one of the most prestigious institutions dedicated to design? Are design awards good for design or just designers? Why not let the public decide?

I thought about this a bit after the nobel prizes were announced the other day, and especially after both Philip Roth and John Updike weren’t awarded anything in literature. There was a certain amount of expectation leading up to the nomination, plus a widely circulated article about how American literature isn’t very ‘relevant’ anymore, but then the awards were announced and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won. A few people said who?, and then we moved on.

David Kenner had a good comment about the nobel process, and I think his last paragraph is relevant to these Cooper-Hewitt design awards. We all know awards ceremonies are sort of BS, and we know “people’s choice” awards don’t generally fare much better, either. But both are mainstays in every industry, including design.

The Literature Prize is awarded by a committee selected by the Academy, founded by the Swedish King Gustav III in 1786, while the Peace Prize is awarded by a committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament. In any other context, the idiosyncratic tastes and political beliefs of these elite Scandinavians don’t exactly make headlines. Why the entire world pauses to honor the selections of an otherwise unknown group of people remains a mystery.

In the end, the Nobel Prize reveals more about society’s collective obsession with honorifics than it does about the world’s great leaders and writers.

Awards give us a framework, however arbitrary and irritating it may be, to talk about the merits of a piece of work. A group of people vote and decide “this is #1, this #2, and so on,” and then we immediately disagree and get down to clarifying our reasons why, at least for the time being. Will we always have random juries voting on the strengths of one thing or another, or will aggregators like metacritic, with their algorhithms of critical weight and coverage, eventually automate the job for us? 

Some kind of metacritic awards ceremony would be counter-productive, of course, as we can see the results build online. There’s no real surprise, and that’s probably the ultimate point–waiting and wondering whether a certain big piece of work is goign to get an award or not is almost the entire point. Whether marshalling every corner of the world’s creative class into a quest for ‘honorifics’ is a worthwhile pursuit–well, that’s another story.

Details on the Cooper-Hewitt People’s Design Award:

Every year, Cooper-Hewitt gives out design awards chosen by a jury of distinguished design gurus—but do you agree with the experts?

Now you can make your design voice heard by voting for the 2008 People’s Design Award. Whether it’s handmade or mass produced, high end or low brow, if it’s an example of good design, we want to know about it! On this site, you can browse and search for designs that have already been submitted, or nominate something new.

Cast your vote for your favorite design before 6:00 p.m. EST on October 21, 2008, and check back on this site on October 23 at 10:00 p.m. EST to see the winner announced live at the National Design Awards gala in New York City.

Art and science are not so difficult to associate with one another since there is so much technology involved in creating art. But the marriage between art and science is about more than just the creation, it’s about inspiration meeting functionality. Artists have been taking queues from science for years. Art consistently meets science in the techno-colored photographs taken of the universe as it expands. It can be found in the way that cells, micro organisms and ice crystals form the most precise yet masterfully chaotic of patterns. A certain aesthetic beauty can even be found in the MRI of a human brain.

Model of Human Heart formed from MRI Images.

Recently, science has found compatibility within the textile industry. The University of the Arts in London and a few Nobel Prize winning scientists and research fellows from Central Saint Martins College have combined forces in order to form Nobel Textiles. Each artist has been paired up with a scientist for inspiration and will put their work on display at London’s Design Festival on 14-21 September 2008.

Nobel Textiles

This is a truly unique event. Five textile designers and five scientists have been formally paired up, neither one really knowing much about the other. The result is some of the most innovative and functional textiles that have been created in a long time. A few of the artists-scientist couples include:

Rachel Wingfield is introducing “Metabolic Media.” She takes her inspiration from studies in ATP energy conversion done by John E. Walker, and more recent work done in the areas of architecture, agriculture, sensor technologies and geotextiles. Using lace and weaving techniques, she hopes to create small structures from all new composite materials that will enable and promote urban gardening. Examples will include specially designed stakes for plants to grow along and even small collapsible greenhouses which can save space, protect plants and enable gardens to grow virtually anywhere.

Rachel Wingfield's "Metabolic Media" inspired by John E. Walker

Rachel Kelly inspired by Tim Hunt’s “Now You See It – Now You Don’t” report delves into how Cyclin B appears and then disappears leaving a memory imprint on the DNA of cells. He made this discovery through the study of sea urchin eggs. Rachel is focusing on a unbounded circular theme. She will be using new specialized drawing and printing techniques on a medium of paper lanterns and transparent wallpaper.

Rachel Kelly inspired by Tim Hunt.

Philippa Brock’s work is motivated by Sir Aaron Klug’s research on viruses. Klug discovered that a three-dimensional virus model could be created based on information obtained by studying two-dimensional viruses. Philippa Brock has been experimenting with the creation of three-dimensional textile structures by folding and weaving two-dimensional pieces upon themselves.

Philippa Brock inspired by Sir Aaron Klug.

Kristin Von Glasow has created a documentary on the scientist-designer collaborations which can be viewed from the Nobel Textiles website. The festival will be held at the ICA and Saint James’ Park.