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.

I’m one of those relatively new wine drinkers that knows next-to-nothing about actual wine, but just enough to pretend that I know what I’m doing when selecting one. If I’m with a group of people who don’t usually buy wine, they defer to me. This is about as good an idea as closing one’s eyes and selecting a wine at random, but hey, I’ll take the extra responsibility.

This is mainly because it lets me do that certain type of wine-browsing–you know the one–where you walk along the racks, picking up certain bottles, turning them over, and muttering comments to yourself that you hope your friends take for informed musings on a particular vintage. If they only knew I was just saying “this one is a red one…” or “this one is from France…”

Despite my solid sommelier credentials, I’m not above occasionally choosing wine based on its packaging. I once bought a bottle of Ontario wine with a twist-off top because it had a bunch of well-designed raccoons on the bottle. It wasn’t that good (at least… I don’t think it was that great), but what can you do when faced with an awesome bottle?

That’s the question I might have to ask myself when I finally happen upon these products in-store, three examples of great design applied to the wine bottle. Our first example is a Shiraz called Boarding Pass, and comes from Australia’s R Wines. It’s a top example of creative packaging design as applied to a pretty constrained medium–if you want to be taken seriously as a wine producer, wild innovations in bottle design and shape usually mean you’ll get looked over by serious buyers. This is a perfect compromise: the design is fresh and original, and the playful luggage tag around the neck is a great touch. I’d go out of my way to buy this just so I could take it somewhere.

The second bottle to catch my eye comes from Spain–it’s the Baud-designed Lazarus Wine, with its packaging done entirely in Braille. Another great piece of work that would have my cash if I walked by it on a rack, no questions asked. Again, it’s tricky with wine, as most innovative design skirts the original/gaudy line, and subtlety is crucial in putting out a bottle that’ll catch the eye without drawing a follow-up groan.

My last candidate isn’t a bottle design at all, but rather these custom wine tags from popptags. They’re funny, honest, and letterpressed on recycled paper. There are tons of well-written, witty cards out there now, but these are both seriously funny and beautiful to look at. I’d go nuts if I got a nice bottle of wine with a tag on it that said “Nothing Says Thank You Like a Bottle of Wine I Know Nothing About.” Plus “The Wine Store Guy Said This Was Good” is a printed version of the exact line I spoke when recently giving someone a bottle. I think my friends and family know what they’re getting this year–yes indeed, a bunch of hilarious tags attached to thick $5.00 bottles full of red liquid.

(Updated: one of the in-house Criterion designers provides a helpful list of designers who created each DVD in our list. Thanks, Eric!)

If you have even a passing interest in international film, you already know all about the Criterion Collection and its unabashedly cachet series of expensive DVDs. This is a series that has set an industry standard for special editions, rich extras, essay-packed print inserts, and meticulous print restoration. They’ve also released several international classics in definitive editions that have destroyed the relevance of every single film studies faculty the world over (maybe I exaggerate slightly).

Take just some of the classics of Italian filmmaking as an example: Criterion has essential editions of The Leopard, Amarcord, and the lost classic Mafioso on the market, a crucial influence on The Godfather and a wonderful film, that until 2007 never saw a North American release. If in a single year you managed to watch every disc Criterion has put out (they’re up to 453 now, not to mention that Janus pack) you’d have taken one of the most comprehensive arthouse film courses in the world.

But it’s not just about what’s on those DVDs or in those luscious booklets that draws me to Criterion’s stuff. See, I used to work at a CD/DVD shop. My days were punctuated with small pleasures, like routine visits from various ‘prized’ customers temporarily off their medication, or rabid Frank Zappa fans out to steal 3 hours of my time (often the two were indistinguishable). When I wasn’t sneaking smokes by the dumpsters in the back, I was eagerly tearing open fresh shipments of new DVDs.

The Criterion ones were, without a doubt, the sweetest to discover. Before sadly entering them into the store’s vast inventory, where they were inevitably misfiled on a shelf, nestled among far less deserving brethren, I would cherish each disc, temporarily forgetting that my measly salary prevented me from ever buying more than one every two months. A lot of this perverse behaviour of mine was due to the cachet Criterion managed to create by being the most exclusive and expensive DVD producer around, but the rest of my silly obsession was all about packaging, packaging, packaging.

Criterion hired and continues to hire some fine artists to do great graphic design work for its small packages, and when they aren’t comissioning originals by various stars from the world of illustration, they’re finding and using as packaging the most perfect piece of vintage memorabilia from a film–that damn rare French poster you’ve never seen before and would kill to have as a reprint today. So here, for you, I’ve collected my favorite 10 Criterion packages. If some of this material was available in larger–say, poster-sized–formats, I’d be giving those jerks at Criterion even more of my business. As it stands, jpegs will have to suffice:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
10) The Battle of Algiers - A remarkable film with a beautiful piece of packaging. This is faux-documentary filmmaking at its best. Watching this is like reading 18 long articles about the “grey areas” of torture and terrorism.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
9) Pierrot Le Fou - Remarkable colour usage on this Godard classic. This is one of Criterion’s recent releases, and of late they’ve been branching out to various illustrators and comic book artists for some covers, while still managing to use one-sheets and various film stills to make the best covers in the business when necessary.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
8 ) The Bad Sleep Well - Many of the Japanese films Criterion releases have some splendid artwork, often far more detailed than this minor Kurosawa picture, but the design and execution, as it ties into what the film is about (an executive hunting down his father’s killer in the corporate environment of postwar Japan, thank you Criterion website summaries), is brilliant.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
7) Boudu Saved From Drowning - Here’s what Criterion does beautifully: if there’s a wonderful piece of artwork already available for a film, especially period artwork, they use it. They fix it up and they present it perfectly, using original typography or extremely close reproductions. This cover is an absolute joy to look at.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
6) Breathless - The best minimalist packaging they’ve ever done. Take a look inside to see the rest of the set, it’s equally beautiful and brilliant. Godard gets all the good designs, so he does.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
5) The Honeymoon Killers - My favorite of Criterion’s alternative-context covers (also see Ace in the Hole). Every ad that surrounds the circled one has a thematic link with the film itself. Seriously, when do you ever see DVD covers this good?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
4) Traffic - Not Soderbergh’s film, but the new release of an older Tati film. Here’s another example of some old illustration, freshened and updated to work perfectly. Beautiful typography and design. I’d pay for that on a shirt, I would.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
3) Contempt - Another one of my favorite let’s-use-an-old-poster covers, this image of Brigitte Bardot is so linked to the film itself that I’m immediately transported back to when I first saw it, in the one arthouse theater in Ottawa. I was in high school, I saw a quotation from Martin Scorsese (or Coppola) calling it “the best film ever made about film-making”, and decided to go. I’d never seen an arty French film before and at the end I had absolutely no idea what was going on, yet I can remember scenes from that film better than hundreds I’ve seen since. I love this packaging and require it on a poster immediately.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
2) Berlin Alexanderplatz - Another very recent release. I don’t have much to say about it, having not seen the film, but the design is seriously pushing me towards a nearby CD/DVD store, where in a few hours I could find myself at the counter, in a kind of consumerist trance, hastily paying for and running home with this set. It is 15+ hours or so… would a single day’s viewing time suffice?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
1) Le Samourai - A beautiful, dark, brilliant film, and my favorite cover of the list. Nothing but Alain Delon adjusting his hat before he goes out to shoot some people and live by a perverted version of the Bushido code, but in Paris, in the 1960s. Incredible.