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Four designers shortlisted for Design Museum’s £25,000 Designer of the Year Prize
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The Design Museum announces the shortlist for Designer of the Year, the
£25,000 prize which is the UK’s most prestigious design award. Selected for
their work during 2005, the four nominees are: furniture designer Tom Dixon,
the design team of The Guardian newspaper, Jamie Hewlett creative director
of the virtual band Gorillaz and the humanitarian designer Cameron Sinclair.
Designer of the Year is the annual award for the UK designer or design team
whose work made the biggest contribution to design in the past year. Past
winners have included Apple’s head of design Jonathan Ive and the pioneering
multimedia designer Daniel Brown. This year Tom Dixon is nominated for his
furniture and lighting design, and The Guardian design team for the radical
redesign of the newspaper. Also shortlisted are Jamie Hewlett for conceiving
the graphics, promos, website, animations and simulated ‘live’ performances of
the virtual band Gorillaz, and Cameron Sinclair for his work with the humanitarian design group Architecture for Humanity after disasters including
the South East Asian tsunami, the Kashmir earthquake and Hurricane Katrina.
The public can judge the work of the four nominees in an exhibition at the
Design Museum from 4 March to 18 June 2006 and can vote for their favourite
to win the prize at the exhibition and on the Designer of the Year website at
www.designmuseum.org. The outcome of the public vote will count towards the
choice of the winner together with the votes of the four jurors: Christopher
Bailey, creative director of Burberry; Emily Campbell, head of design at the
British Council; Hilary Cottam, the public sector design reformer and last year’s
Designer of the Year; and the television presenter Kevin McCloud. The jury is
chaired by Alice Rawsthorn, director of the Design Museum. The winner will be
announced at a prize giving event at the Design Museum in late May.
“The Designer of the Year shortlist is a true indication of the breadth, depth and
creativity of design in the UK today,” said Christopher Bailey, creative director
of Burberry. “Though often not immediately apparent, design affects everything
we do. The shortlist reflects this, and the strength of the UK’s design talent.”
DESIGNER OF THE YEAR – THE NOMINEES
TOM DIXON
One of the UK’s most influential product designers, Tom Dixon is shortlisted for
Designer of the Year after an exceptionally prolific year in 2005 and for his
championship of emerging designers. During 2005 Dixon developed new
furniture and lighting designs for Tom Dixon Ltd and Artek, the Finnish furniture
maker, as well as products for other companies such as Cappellini, Habitat,
Magis, Swarovski and Thonet. Born in Sfax, Tunisia in 1959, Dixon was
brought up in London. After quitting art school in 1980 he taught himself how to
weld metal furniture and emerged as a force in London’s post-punk design
scene before working across Europe to build an international reputation.
THE GUARDIAN
One of the most ambitious design projects of 2005, The Guardian’s redesign
has already led to increased sales in the declining newspaper market. Having
decided to shrink its traditional broadsheet format, The Guardian redesigned
every aspect of the newspaper. Its design team, led by creative director Mark
Porter, chose the Berliner format with five columns on each page. They devised
rigorous grids to ensure legibility and coherence, and developed new ways of
using colour to enhance photography, illustration and infographics. The
Guardian also commissioned a new typeface – Guardian Egyptian – with over
200 different fonts, designed by Christian Schwartz and Paul Barnes.
JAMIE HEWLETT
Since the release of its first single in 1999, Gorillaz has become the world’s
most successful virtual band. The band members – 2D, Murdoc, Russel and
Noodle – are brought to life in artwork, promos, Gorillaz website and animated
performances conceived and designed by Jamie Hewlett. Born in 1968, Hewlett
designed the comic book anti-heroine Tank Girl before creating Gorillaz with
musician Damon Albarn. In 2005, they took the visualisation of the band to a
new level by working with the animation company Passion Pictures to stage a
groundbreaking digital performance at the MTV Europe Awards. Jamie Hewlett
works from his West London-based design company Zombie Flesh Eaters.
CAMERON SINCLAIR
In the year since the tsunami devastated the South East Asian coastline,
Architecture for Humanity has constructed schools, medical clinics and
community centres. It is now developing sustainable design solutions to the
crises caused by Hurricane Katrina and the Kashmir earthquake. Based in
Minneapolis, Architecture for Humanity was co-founded in 1999 by Cameron
Sinclair, who was born in London in 1973 and studied architecture at University
of Westminster and the Bartlett. Through its design, education and advocacy
projects, Architecture for Humanity – slogan ‘Design like you give a damn’ –
has established a global network of humanitarian designers and architects.
Submitted: 10 Jan 2006
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