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July 24: Design in D.C.

Plans are taking shape for the July 24th public programs in Washington, D.C., celebrating the 10th annual National Design Awards. These events will take place from 10 to 11 a.m. at museums around the Mall. First Lady Michelle Obama will host the White House ceremony for the winners and finalists later in the day.

Each designer has been paired with another designer from a different field, which will result in some great cross discipline conversations – fashion and interior design, technology and sustainability, product design and media.

• Join Francisco Costa (Fashion Design Winner) and Calvin Tsao and Zack McKown (Interior Design Winners) at the Corcoran College of Art & Design as they discuss the role of materials in their work and also share their visions, projects and inspirations.

• In the National Building Museum, you can find Christopher Sharples, Coren Sharples and Gregg Pasquarelli of SHoP Architects (Architecture Design winner) and Walter Hood (Landscape Design winner) discussing how design can be used as a tool to create a sense of community.

• Don’t miss the Boym Partners (Product Design winner) and Steve Duenes of The New York Times Graphics Department (Communication Design winner) at the Smithsonian Castle, where they will discuss the relationship between current events and their diverse design process.

• Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixel Inc. (Interaction Design winner) and Andrew Blauvelt of Walker Art Center (Corporate and Institutional Achievement winner) will be at the Hirshhorn Museum discussing the future of interaction design.

• Finally, at the National Museum of the American Indian, Amory Lovins (Design Mind winner) and Bill Moggridge (Lifetime Achievement winner) will discuss the relationship between technology and sustainability and the impact both will have on the future.

All the programs are free and open to the public so if you’re in the D.C. area, we hope you will take advantage of this great moment in design! Learn more about attending these programs.

Social Changemakers


Join in a Twitter-based Social Entrepreneurship Chat organized by Ashoka. The real time discussions on social entrepreneurship issues take place the 1st Wed of the month, 4-6PM US Eastern Time. The next conversation on Wed, July 1, focuses on mobile innovation.

Ashoka is now partnering with the Lemelson Foundation on a new initiative to support social innovators. The initiative AshokaTech now has over 70 fellows, individuals who are effectively aligning social entrepreneurship with technology.

On the Nicaraguan coast AshokaTech Fellow Mathias Craig is working with a local rural community to develop a hybrid wind/solar energy system. The aim is to create new industries resulting in local jobs and increased economic activity for a depressed area while providing basic energy needs.

Godisa’s SolarAid solar hearing aid battery recharger is expanding to other countries beyond Botswana. Transferring what he learned from this successful product AshokaTech Fellow Howard Weinstein is working with other underserved and disabled communities around the world.

In India Village Information Kiosks provide wireless internet access in remote areas. Fellow Amol Goje has developed low cost computer, video-conferencing facilities to help farmers to increase productivity, stimulate growth and educate the next generation. Using interactive communication technologies Amol looks to increase economic capacity beyond the cities; increasingly important as our urban centers grow at unprecedented rates.

National Design Awards + Summer in NYC

If you happen to be in New York this summer (one day it will stop raining, I promise), be sure to check out these design destinations, all featuring previous National Design Award winners.

Recently opened at the Museum of F.I.T., the very beautifully installed retrospective of Toledo Studio’s designs includes The Dress (i.e., the lemongrass shift dress and jacket designed for Michelle Obama on Inauguration Day) and many other (often more compelling) explorations of the relationship between geometry and the body. Introduced with a fascinating timeline of the history of the studio and the symbiotic collaboration between Ruben and Isabel Toledo, the exhibition also includes the most iconic garments of Toledo’s career. Not least, the exhibition is worth a visit because of the relationship between the beautiful garments and the mannequins (designed by Ruben Toledo), reinforced through the datum of watercolors and sketches that contextualize the rich trajectory of garments on display. For those who can afford it, these will apparently all be available in the fall for purchase in lieu of the studio’s usual resort line.

Heading slightly downtown and west, arrive at the elevated park otherwise known as the High Line. While we might be best advised to avoid the subplots of pie-eyed developers trying to capitalize upon the still-moneyed classes of the far west side, there was a more than healthy crowd waiting to climb aboard on a suddenly sunny June weekend afternoon this past Sunday, and everyone in the park would seemingly agree that it was worth the wait. As the intern for the exhibition that features this project pointed out, even the water fountains were integrated as a design idea. Go now before the charge to keep it simple, wild, slow, and quiet become quaint aspirations.

Moving further east and slightly south, the about-to-be-completed new building for Cooper Union features the aggressively robust architecture of Morphosis and the deliberately distorted signage of Pentagram. Previewed in the New York Times last week as a “tough and sexy statement,” the building embraces its context while, somehow, seeming decidedly of its time. A bold move for a consistently radical institution that has been able to test boundaries and foster dialogue at the edge of disciplines in a 19th century building before now. There will likely be no doubt about when this new iteration was built (or commissioned), but the role of the public spaces within and the “vertical campus” promised by its atrium both propose a building that will radicalize the relationship between student and public while capturing the spirit of dialogue and collaboration that is endemic to the institution.

WANTED: Apple products for the National Design Museum's Collection

As the Smithsonian’s National Design Museum, Cooper-Hewitt seeks to acquire the best examples of industrial design, and much of the permanent collection has been built through the generosity of donors. The Museum would like to invite the public to help expand its holdings of products by Apple, one of the country’s most important and influential design firms.

We are looking for donations of the Apple products listed below. The products must be in excellent condition, with original parts and power cords or batteries. All donors will be listed on the credit line whenever the works are displayed or published. If you have one of the products below and would like to donate it, please contact Cynthia Trope, Associate Curator of Product Design and Decorative Arts, at tropeci@si.edu to discuss arrangements. Many thanks for your help!

Apple wish list:
iBook (2001, white)
iMac G5 (2004)
Macbook Pro (2006)
Macbook Air (2008)

“Green” Exhibition Design



Most people go to exhibitions to look at the objects. Eggheads go to read the labels. Design geeks (and museum professionals like myself) want to study the installation itself. How are the platforms and cases constructed? How are the texts laid out? How are supplementary graphics handled?

Cooper-Hewitt’s new exhibition Design for a Living World was designed by Pentagram. The design team sought to make the exhibition conform not only to fire codes, ADA guidelines, and museum conservation practices, but to make the installation sustainable as well. Here’s how they did it.

How are the photo panels printed?
The exhibition features dozens of original images by photojournalist Ami Vitale. The photos are printed on aluminum panels that magically reflect light. Museums usually print photographic enlargements on paper or vinyl and mount them to foamcore or Sintra (a hard plastic). These materials are not biodegradable, and they can’t be recycled or reused. Pentagram used a process called direct-to-substrate dye-sublimation printing: when the ink is heated and transferred to the material, the ink embeds into the surface of the metal. The resulting print is durable and scratch-resistant, and each panel can be recycled (like a soda can).




How were the overlapping panels designed?
Overlapping the panels adds dimensionality to the graphics. The technique makes reference to shingles, a vernacular building method used around the globe. Jeremy Hoffman, a graphic designer on the Pentagram team, created paper models of all the shingled wall montages in order to test and calculate the overlaps.

Is this process significantly more expensive than using Sintra?
Direct printing on aluminum is slightly more expensive than traditional techniques, but it may be less expensive in the long run. Printing directly to a rigid surface eliminates the use of adhesives and a paper or vinyl substrate. It’s an almost a flawless process, so you avoid rejecting panels that have imperfections resulting from all of the handwork that comes into play with mounting and trimming traditional output.




What material is used for the casework and scaffolds?
The exhibition is designed to travel. Instead of creating solid temporary walls, most of the wall structures are made with exposed wood studs, reducing the use of materials. The open scaffolds also reference informal building techniques seen in many parts of the world. The wall structures and the legs of the casework are made of FSC-certified Spanish Cedar harvested from Bolivia. The wood thus comes from forests that implement sustainable logging practices.




What else makes the exhibition sustainable?
The aluminum panels are made from 94% recycled aluminum, and the decks of the cases are made of Medite II, a medium-density fiberboard manufactured from 100% recycled or recovered wood fibers bonded with formaldehyde-free resin. (Cooper-Hewitt often uses this material.) The exhibition catalog was produced with sustainable materials as well; for more info, see Chul R. Kim, “Green” Publishing.”

Exhibition photographs by Paul Warchol and Brian Raby

Exhibition Design: Pentagram Design / Abbott Miller, Brian Raby, Jeremy Hoffman, Kristen Spilman
Exhibition Fabrication: Design and Production, Inc.
Graphic Production: Mega Media
Lighting: Jeff Nash Lighting Design