Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum announces winners and finalists of the 11th Annual National Design Awards, which recognize excellence across a variety of disciplines.

The Product Design Award is given to an individual or firm for exceptional and exemplary work in the design of consumer goods, technology, or home and office furnishings.

This year, the award has been given to Smart Design.
Founded in 1980, Smart Design is a multidisciplinary design consultancy led by Davin Stowell and Tom Dair. Smart Design uses insight and innovation to develop consumer products that meet peoples’ needs, answer market demands, and solve critical manufacturing challenges. Projects are designed with a focus on connecting with the end user and have included OXO Good Grips kitchen tools, the SmartGauge instrument cluster for the Ford Fusion Hybrid, New York City taxi graphics, medical devices for UCB, and HP Photosmart compact photo printers.

OXO Good Grips Kitchen Tools
Starting a revolution, one potato peeler at a time.

New York Taxi Graphics
Checkered past, bold new vision.

Johnson & Johnson Reach Wondergrip
Designed for kids, not miniature grown-ups.

Johnson & Johnson Operating Gowns
Breathable protection in the OR.

UCB/OXO Cimzia® Prefilled Syringe
Cimzia® is an innovative biological medication that can greatly alleviate the symptoms of Crohn’s Disease and Rheumatoid Arthritis.

The 2010 National Design Award nominations were solicited from a committee of more than 2,500 designers, educators, journalists, cultural figures and corporate leaders from every state in the nation.

Exploring Materials invites you to get inspired by physical forms and substances. Materials are like words. The richer your design vocabulary, the more design solutions you can see and express. Foam, mesh, wood, plastic, and wire each have behaviors and properties that suggest different types of structure, surface, and connection. Each has its place, consequences, and cost.

Understanding materials is essential to design, and understanding materials through hands-on experiment is absolutely crucial.

Use this book to begin looking at design with new eyes. Ignore what you already know, and find out how substances such as cardboard, cloth, metal, and rope can yield surprising structures with unexpected functions.

The book opens with case studies of the design process. Lively examples show how designers can interact with physical materials to jump-start the course of thinking and inventing and how they can involve real people and real environments to take a fresh look at real problems.

At the core of the book is a visual glossary of materials, organized both to inspire and inform. Everyday uses of each material are juxtaposed with experimental projects that reveal how designers from around the world have exploited materials in surprising and creative ways. The book concludes with a section on making it real, moving beyond the prototype to create a product that can be manufactured and marketed.

Book for sale on Amazon: Exploring Materials: Creative design for everyday objects
by Ellen Lupton and Inna Alesina (Princeton Architectural Press)

Lace in Translation is a new exhibition of contemporary work inspired by historic lace. Lace in Translation explores the intersection of luxurious hand-craftsmanship with modern, mass production. The Design Center’s historic Quaker Lace Company collection is the inspiration for three artists and designers reconsidering conventional notions of lace. European designers Tord Boontje and Demakersvan, and Canadian artist Cal Lane have created installations specifically for TDC’s unique and intimate space — a 1950s era, Hollywood-style ranch house, one of the first in Philadelphia, and situated on the edge of Fairmount Park.

Cal Lane, partially cut oil tank

Oil tank drawing by Cal Lane	Cal Lane prepping oil tank

Cal Lane working on oil tank (Photo by Kerry Polite)	1000 gallon oil tank, Oxy-Acetylene cut and welded steel, paint, burnt lawn, Cal Lane, 2009

Quaker Lace inspiration for Cal Lane's work; from the collection of The Design Center at Philadelphia University

From the intricacy of a handwoven raffia curtain, to the industrial art forms of laser-cut fabrics, a welded filigree oil tank, and a lace chain-link fence, Lace in Translation plays with the concept of lace, utilizing unexpected materials and new technologies to transform the Center’s grounds and galleries.

Lace fence, Galvanized PVC-coated wire, Demakersvan, 2009 (Photos by Kerry Polite)

Lace border by Demakersvan	Lace fence Netherlands by Demakersvan

A special exhibition website is available at www.laceinstranslation.com which invites visitors to preview the exhibition and to submit their own designs and handwork.
 
A short film running at the exhibition explores the history of the Quaker Lace Company and its role in transforming lace from luxury product to mass market consumable, as well as the creative processes of Boontje, Demakersvan, and Lane. The film features historic footage of Quaker Lace being manufactured, the designers’ contemporary production techniques, and interviews with the designers and curators. Directed by Glenn Holsten, the film will also be available online.

Grass Hair Piece by Tord Boontje                           Rafia sample by Tord Boontje

Sofa, Aramide and Dynema fibers; powder-coated steel, Studio Tord Boontje, 2009 (Photo by Beth VanWhy)

Original lace inspiration for Tord Boontje's work, collection of The Design Center at Philadelphia University	Ten Lighting Fixtures,  Raffia, Studio Tord Boontje, 2009 (Photo by Kerry Polite)

Lace in Translation
Exhibition from September 24 2009 to April 3 2010
The Design Center at Philadelphia University
4200 Henry Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19144, USA

What qualifies as a crisis? Royal College of Art Design Products students’ Sold Out Shop will offer the stimulus to rethink what a crisis actually is...

George Fereday - Perpetual Crisis Manifesto	Krystian Kowalski - Something out of Nothing

During the Milan Salone 2009, a team of young design students from Platform 10, one of six teaching units within the College’s department, will be taking up residence at the prestigious Seves glassblock showroom in the heart of the city.

Claire Ferreira - Rush Bag	Billur Turan - Crisis Chocolate

The fourteen postgraduate student designers will stage a makeshift Crisis Shop, exhibiting a range of crisis products. The shop layout will embody the very nature of a potential crisis - a canopy, attached by suction pads, hooks and grommets will stretch across the glass surfaces of the showroom. Under extreme tension, the canopy serves to communicate a sense of urgency, a material under stress and physical tension.

The Shop isn’t about making a commodity out of a crisis but investing in the means to respond to crises at large. One man’s crisis is another man’s opportunity. All products in the Crisis Shop are examples of opportunities in disguise.

Maciek Wojcicki - Snooking Corner	Florie Salnot - Plastic Bottle Jewellery

The collective response to this state of alert can be broken down into two clearly defined product categories: those that require an ‘Immediate Response’ and those that opt for ‘Mutations’. The group have deliberately emphasised the ‘closeness’ in crisis and consequently closeness to the body. Subsequent incarnations frequently deal with this through solutions of wear-ability.

Exhibition from April 22 to 27 2009
Showroom Seves glassblock - Via Lodovico il Moro 25/27 -  20143, Milan, Italy

The magazine focuses on the international trends in the Neocraft movement. Following the revival of craft, the magazine deals with the latest news in illustration, graphic design, textile art, ceramics, glass and book art. The initiators, Katja Kleiss and Pascal Johanssen, intended to launch a magazine which presents and discusses international trends in new craft.

The title is programmatic: OBJECTS is interested in the individual artistic craftwork, the object. "Unique things remind us of our individuality in a standardised world," says Pascal Johanssen, "the selection of these "objects" is a statement. While design is made for the masses, craftwork is dedicated to the individual." Each issue features academic essays, non-academic interventions of artists and multipaged spreads.

Authors of the first issue are art critic Colleen Shindler-Lynch (Toronto), artist Robert Revels (San Franciso), designer Scott Ballum (New York) and art director Gregori Saavedra (Barcelona). The essays are complimented by plenty of illustrations.

The magazine is now distributed in Germany but you can order it to everywhere on the globe through Illustrative's online shop.