Tobias Frere-Jones, winner of the 2019 National Design Award for Communication Design, is one of the world’s leading typeface designers, creating some of the most widely used typefaces, including Interstate, Poynter Oldstyle, Whitney, Gotham, Surveyor, Tungsten, and Retina. He started designing letterforms in 1986 at the age of 16 and became a professional type designer...

IwamotoScott Architecture, winner of the 2019 National Design Award for Interior Design, is a San Francisco-based architecture and design firm founded by Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott in 2000. Committed to pursuing architecture as a form of applied design research, the firm believes that each project can achieve a unique design synthesis. Conceptual themes of...

Tinker Hatfield is the recipient of the 2019 National Design Award for Product Design. After studying architecture at the University of Oregon, where he was coached by Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, Hatfield joined Nike in 1981 and currently serves as vice president of creative concepts. Known for his inventive imagination, relentless drive toward improved performance...

Patricia Moore is the recipient of the 2019 National Design Award for Design Mind. From 1979 to 1982, Moore traveled throughout North America disguised as elder women—her body altered to simulate the normal sensory changes associated with aging—to better respond to people, products and environments. Moore’s clients include Johnson & Johnson, Maytag, NASA, OXO, Pfizer,...

MIT D-Lab is the recipient of the 2019 National Design Award for Corporate & Institutional Achievement. Founded in 2002 by MIT senior lecturer Amy Smith, D-Lab began as a single course known as The Haiti Class, which sought to apply engineering and design principles to the complex issues faced by people living in poverty. That...

Derek Lam is the recipient of the 2019 National Design Award for Fashion Design. His work is known for its calculated simplicity and thoughtful detailing that creates a sophisticated modern sensibility. A San Francisco native, Lam began his fashion career in 1990. He spent eight years as a designer at Michael Kors before launching his...

TRIBUTE Author: Ellen Lupton, Senior curator of contemporary Design  Wim Crouwel (Dutch, 1928–2019) was a giant figure in the history of graphic design. This tall, elegant man produced an astonishing body of work that is at once functional and experimental, objective and personal. His contribution has special importance for museums. A pioneer of graphic identity,...

SCAPE Landscape Architecture is the recipient of the 2019 National Design Award for Landscape Architecture. Founded by MacArthur Fellow Kate Orff in 2005, SCAPE believes landscape architecture can enable positive change in communities through the creation of regenerative living infrastructure and public landscapes. The studio works to integrate natural cycles and systems into environments across...

Susan Kare is the recipient of the 2019 National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement. For over 35 years she has designed many notable icons and graphics that have become familiar to anyone who uses a computer. Her early work was developed using a minimalist grid of pixels and constructed with mosaic-like precision; despite the low...

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum presents “Tablescapes: Designs for Dining,” an exhibition that offers a creative timeline of dining experiences through three distinct installations. At the center of the exhibition is Cooper Hewitt’s surtout de table, a magnificent, newly conserved treasure from the museum’s expansive collection of over 210,000 design objects that once ornamented the...

As guest curator of the next exhibition in Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s acclaimed “Selects” series, artist and designer Rebeca Méndez investigates the interaction of humanity, nature, design and science. Drawn from the diverse collections of Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Smithsonian Libraries, “Rebeca Méndez Selects” is the 17th installation...

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s summer performance series Cocktails at Cooper Hewitt returns to the Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden Thursday evenings from June 21 to Aug. 9. The eight-week season activates one of the largest enclosed museum gardens in New York City with live music, DJ sets and performances from a talented roster of...

Caroline Baumann, Director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, received the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by Bénédicte de Montlaur, Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy, at a ceremony in New York on March 5. Baumann received this distinction in recognition of her significant contributions to the fields of art and...

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum presents “Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color,” an exhibition on view May 11 through Jan. 13 that explores the elusive, complex phenomenon of color perception and how it has captivated artists, designers, scientists and philosophers. Featuring over 190 objects spanning from antiquity to the present, the exhibition reveals how...