And Our Vote Goes To…
By Human Beans

Designer of the year is a new annual prize run by the Design Museum. The £25,000 cash prize goes to the designer, born or working in Britain who has had the biggest influence on design in the last year. Essentially a showcase for British design, it’s the design equivalent of the Stirling prize for architecture or the Turner Prize for art. The public gets a say too--you can vote on line or at the Design Museum itself where the work of the nominees is currently on display.

And so to the contenders: Up for the prize this year are jewellery designer Solange Azagury-Partidge, product and furniture designer Tord Boontje, Jonathan Ive of Apple Computers, and games designers Rockstar Games.

Solange Azagury-Partridge is nominated for her signature range and new collection for Boucheron, the 150 year-old Parisian jeweler. She produces exquisite Jewellery in sapphire, gold and diamond that draws on the non-traditional themes of confectionary, royal kitsch and novelty. Her sin ring is a witty and no-doubt pricey version of a novelty mood ring in gold and diamond: rotate a plate in the ring to indicate Envy, Lust or Greed. We particularly liked her fur lined boxes…we hope they’re fake, Solange.

Tord Boontje, plays similar tricks as Azaguary-Partridge, combining hi-tech processes with traditional materials and clever references. His ‘Chandelier’ for Swarovski combines the manufacturer's exclusive crystal with some flashing Christmas lights to create a delightful crystal flashing branch. Like a lot of Boontje’s work, it doesn’t easily categorize, (proabably a good thing), falling between tast- challenging ornament and a tech-enabled new craft. Also featured are versions of his frugal furniture made from sawn and untreated 2x2's, casually upholstered with a draped blanket. At earlier exhibitions he has given away the blueprints for these pieces for people to make their own--a kind of open-source furniture.

Rockstar Games were for some a surprise inclusion in the nominees, and it’s refreshing to see games designers getting recognition amongst the more traditional design disciplines. Rockstar are nominated for their game Vice City, the latest installment of the Grand Theft Auto series and the fastest selling video game in history. Set in downtown Miami circa 1983, the game is a lens-flared mixture of guns, girls, hi-speed chases and bad Hawaiian shirts--all backed by an 80’s soundtrack. The designers have recreated a city, a narrative, and the gameplay within this world, controlling the complete experience. No mean feat.

Of course, the smart money may be on Jonathan Ive, vice president of industrial design at Apple: he’s nominated here for the iMac and iPod, and he’d be a deserving winner. You can compare the beauty of the interior of the metalwork of a PowerBook with Tord Boontje’s laser cut and twisted brass light sculpture, but how can you compare the work of thousands with the singular expression of the designer-maker? Jonathan Ive didn’t design this stuff alone, of course-- there are large teams bringing the final product together--and to be fair, he’d be the first to give them due credit.

The exhibition asks you to judge the best designer, but unfortunately, does little to show you what the designers have contributed to the products. There are no images of the designers at work, no preliminary sketches, and not even any photos of the designers themselves. Only Rockstar get the chance to show of some behind the scenes activity, a concession for not being able to play the game itself. As if in a department store, we are presented with the finished items alone. (At least in a shop we’d be able to touch, pick-up, and play with the objects we wanted to buy.)

Designer of the Year is on exhibition at the Design Museum until 29 June 2003. You can vote online at www.designmuseum.org

Human Beans live, design and write from their home base of London.

> back to top

> submit a news item