In this ten-minute gallery tour, curator Ellen Lupton talks about indie publishing, typographic spectacle, non-normative software use, and design as fiction. The exhibition explores some of the most vibrant sectors and genres of graphic design from 2000 to the present. Last day to catch this exhibition is September 3rd, 2012.

Nominations for the 2011 National Design Awards are now open! Conceived by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt to honor the best in American design, the Awards are now in their twelfth year. This year the nomination process is open to the public for the first time. The categories are Lifetime Achievement, Design Mind, Corporate and Institutional Achievement,...

  Two significant tools for American designers seeking to make their design process more sustainable have recently been announced. The first tool, which hopefully will have broad and positive implications for manufacturers of outdoor industry goods, is Eco-Index . Basically an assessment tool which evaluates a product’s environmental impact, Eco-Index allows manufacturers to measure six...

On May 14, 2009, Cooper-Hewitt opens Design for a Living World, an exhibition developed by The Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s leading conservation organizations. As part of our partnership with TNC, Cooper-Hewitt met the challenge of publishing a companion book that would emphasize the exhibition’s principal themes: sustainable design and materials, and responsible conservation...

At the end of the introduction to the Multiple Choice exhibition, the curator reflects that, “as contemporary design industries move to open-sourcing and electronic formats for the marketing of their products, physical samples may soon become obsolete.” From a future academic and archival view point, this is a sad possibility, as material sampling formats contain...

The makers of Make, the techie-geek D.I.Y. magazine featured in the Triennial, have a new publication out, now in its third issue, called Craft:. This hip and beautiful little zine got me thinking about the craft revolution, which has reinvigorated the lives of design professionals as well as the lives of a vast and passionate...