Awards Bring Visibility to the Designers in Our Midst

The year 2001 will not be remembered for a dazzling trend or a seductive must-have product. But if the design revolution slowed along with the economy, someone did manage to reinvent the trophy.

To be sure, there’s a need. This year alone, three prestigious awards programs identified 13 leading talents working in fields as diverse as performing arts and digital typography. Their names are familiar chiefly within their professions, but their high-performance design is omnipresent. Just look at a hip CD package like Lou Reed’s “Set the Twilight Reeling.”

As for the updated trophy, it’s a model of new form and enhanced function. The shape is a barbell, so much easier to grasp than a Wimbledon-style urn. The aluminum finish won’t need polishing. And it’s interactive. The object glows on contact. What’s more, little noisemakers inside begin to rattle when the prize is picked up. The subliminal idea is nice: Long after the crowd is gone, a winner can bask in simulated applause.

David M. Kelley, irrepressible founder of the industrial design firm IDEO, created the trophy for the annual Chrysler Design Awards. For nine years, the Oscar-style event has provided a window on the innovators behind cutting-edge landscapes, architecture, film work, furniture, typography, flying machines, graphic design, even the look of software icons.

Years before the iMac, Chrysler jurors sized up Apple’s design team as the one to watch. Architect Frank Gehry was honored long before the Guggenheim Bilbao museum turned him into a mainstream celebrity. And the Chrysler Awards gave recognition to Gael Towey, the creative director behind all that Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia produces.

This year, Kelley’s trophies glowed on contact with six mid-career risk-takers: Architect Thom Mayne, head of the edgy Morphosis firm, turns notions of conflict into built space with slashes of glass and swirling forms. (“This is not a vocation for people who are risk-averse,” he says. “Buildings shouldn’t always be liked.”)

Landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson has designed a Garden of Forgiveness in Lebanon, as well as public works in France, New York and her native Pacific Northwest. Her work is a symphony of color, composition, textures and moods, expressed as walkways, waterfalls, stripes of stone and curves of earth.

The Studio Works team of Mary-Ann Ray and Robert Mangurian, who teach at Southern California Institute of Architecture, describe themselves as the “method actors” of their profession.

Stefan Sagmeister, Austrian-born designer of graphics and CD imagery, including the one for Reed, has created his own raw art form. (He once carved words into his body and photographed it for a poster.)

His work earned him a place on Time magazine’s 10 best list in design for 2001. Susan Kare, a digital innovator, dreamed up icons such as the tiny trash can to make computer screens more human.

Daniel Rozin, a consultant and educator, is exploring the “secret lives of pixels” in new media design that almost defies description. But remember the name.

The Chrysler program is both older and edgier than the National Design Awards from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. But there is plenty of cross-pollination. Chrysler winners Gehry and Apple were the first National Design Award winners. (This year, theater artist-designer Robert Wilson and Tupperware took the top prizes for lifetime and corporate achievement; architect Peter Eisenman, landscape designer Julie Bargmann, digital artist John Maeda and IDEO chief Kelley won in individual categories.)

Kelley picked up a Chrysler last year for influencing the industrial design profession, as well as for designing the Palm V. Maeda, who molds minds at MIT’s Media Lab, won a Chrysler. Architect Will Bruder, jewelry designer Ted Muehling, furniture designer Niels Diffrient and inventor Chuck Hoberman won Chryslers and were also National Design finalists.

Harvard Design School offers its own distinction, an Excellence in Design award. Past winners include theater designer Wilson, fashion designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons, and furniture and hotel maestro Philippe Starck. This year, Harvard chose automotive designer J Mays.

Now head of global design for Ford Motor Co., Mays is credited with the new Beetle for Volkswagen and the 2002 Thunderbird for Ford. He also brought in Marc Newson to create Ford’s high-design 021C Concept Car. (Mays showed up at the National Design Awards as co-chair.)

What do the winners get? Chrysler encourages risk-taking with a $10,000 stipend. The company also produces a neat booklet and puts the designers’ work on the Web (www.chryslerdesignawards.org). Cooper-Hewitt invites honorees to lecture or give workshops.

So far, events are mostly in New York, but the program is evolving. A complete calendar will be online come January (www.si.edu/ndm). Winners are also on the Web, but the site could be easier to use. Harvard treats its winners to an exhibition at the school (next year, Jan. 28-April 7). Mays will also turn up on Cooper-Hewitt’s lecture circuit.

With so many winners--and so much overlap--the design world begins to look like an overstocked fishbowl. The issue is not too many prizes but too little visibility. Chrysler co-chair Chee Pearlman at the school says of one talent’s distinctive graphics, “You can recognize a Sagmeister design a mile away.” She can.

But until the rest of us can, awards programs--and trophies that shake, rattle and glow--are needed to spread the good works.