Hasta La Ideas

Bill Moggridge accepts his lifetime achievement award at the Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Awards gala, held last October in New York City. (Photos: UnBeige)

Fresh off his 2009 National Design Award win for lifetime achievement, IDEO co-founder Bill Moggridge has been named director of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, the museum announced today. Moggridge will take office in March, replacing Caroline Baumann, who has served as interim director since Paul Warwick Thompson departed last July to helm Britain’s Royal College of Art.

“Bill Moggridge is an entrepreneur, innovator, and visionary leader in the design world,” said Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough in a statement issued today. Moggridge, 66, describes his career as having three phases: first as designer, then as a manager of design, and now as a communicator, working as a writer, graphic designer, and video maker. His early achievements include designing high-tech products, such as the Grid Compass and the first laptop computer (watch him caress a sturdy prototype in the documentary Objectified). With the co-founding of IDEO in 1991, he turned his focus to developing practices for interdisciplinary teams and built a client list of multinational corporations. Since 2000, he has been a spokesperson for the value of design in everyday life, writing books such as Designing Interactions (MIT Press). Moggridge is now putting the finishing touches on Designing Media, a book due out this fall that examines connections between traditional media and the emerging digital realm.

Previously on UnBeige: