Author: Cara McCarty, Director of Curatorial Playful, humorous, poetic, and humble are not words typically associated with lighting design. It is considered a serious discipline. But the work of the prolific German lighting designer Ingo Maurer, who sadly passed this week, is just that. His endless fascination with the “magical and mystical” qualities of light...
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,...
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...
