Hasta La Ideas

It’s National Design Week, and tonight the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum will celebrate the winners of the 2013 National Design Awards with a ceremony and dinner at Pier Sixty in New York. Special guests including Tom Wolfe, Al Gore, and Kurt Andersen will be on hand to present the winners with their coveted glass asterisks, while the delightful Todd Oldham will announce the winner of this year’s People’s Design Award. We sent writer Nancy Lazarus to the National Design Awards Winners’ Panel, held at Parsons The New School for Design.

Richard Saul Wurman (center) moderates a discussion among NDA winners. Pictured from left, Tiya Gordon, Paula Scher, Gadi Amit, and Mike Femia. (Photos: Angela Jimenez)

Four of this year’s National Design Award winners appeared at a Tuesday evening panel moderated by Richard Saul Wurman, TED founder and 2012 lifetime achievement award winner. Topics encompassed winners’ early career experiences, current projects, and the award’s impact. Below are selected comments from each winning designer or firm.

Paula Scher, principal at Pentagram (communications design):
• “It’s a big deal that the U.S. government honors design, and it’s important to society. If the accolade is a seal of approval, that’s fantastic, but the next day, business is still business.”
• “At Pentagram we’re independent minded designers, there are no strategists. We establish direct client relationships using analogies and entertainment.”
• “With my hobby, large-scale paintings of maps, I use information to create the spirit of a place. It’s the antidote to my design life where I create corporate communications identities.”
• “During my earlier experience creating graphic design for music covers/albums, I learned about the relationship with the public. My work at Pentagram is still largely connected to entertainment, and much of the identity work is focused on making design accessible.”
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Celebrated since 1995, World Graphics Day is an opportunity to celebrate the community of graphic and communication design.

We came across this new mark (to the right) for the NY Philarmonic late last week. We were a little unsure about this one, but eventually it grew on us – so to speak.

This new mark coincided with the arrival of The New York Philharmonic’s new music director Alan Gilbert. Paula Scher and her team over at Pentagram were given the nod to come up with something new. Scher is no stranger to cultural institutional identities as she has designed identities for The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, and most recently The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Our initial reaction to the new identity was, “what the hell were they thinking?” We don’t intend to blast the obvious design quirks of this mark. You can go to Brand New for all of that. Most importantly where we think this mark gets lost is that it fails as an identifier. A solid identity is memorable. This one may be, but for all of the wrong reasons. It’s a good attempt at trying something new, but it’s execution feels clumsy and over thought at the same time. Paula has done some impressive work over the years, but this one falls into the “solemn” category as described in the video below: