New Work: National Design Triennial
“Why design now?” is the title question posed by the 2010 National Design Triennial, opening Friday at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York. The fourth in the popular series of triennials established by the museum in 2000, this edition focuses on design that addresses themes of environmental sustainability and social change. Curated by Ellen Lupton, Cara McCarty, Matilda McQuaid and Cynthia Smith, the survey covers work from 2006 to 2009 and includes 134 innovations like Twitter, the iPhone, Kindle, the XOXO laptop for One Laptop Per Child, interactive visualizations for The New York Times, and Masdar, the experimental car-free community planned for the United Arab Emirates. Previous triennials have focused on projects created in the U.S. or abroad by American designers; this edition goes global, including designers and projects from 44 countries around the world.
Michael Bierut’s Green Patriot Poster campaign is one of the graphic design projects selected for the triennial, and he and Yve Ludwig have designed the catalogue accompanying the exhibition. Bierut was the 2008 Design Mind honoree in Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Awards. Bierut and Ludwig will discuss the design of the catalogue in a special presentation with Bill Moggridge, director of the Cooper-Hewitt, on Thursday, May 27. Registration information here.
A look inside the catalogue after the jump.
Like the exhibition, the triennial catalogue has been organized into eight themed sections: energy, mobility, community, materials, prosperity, health, communication and simplicity. In the catalogue these sections are each represented by a different color. Each section is introduced with an original essay on the theme, and passages in the essay text are highlighted in the section color to indicate they are illustrated by images in the margins.
The catalogue is printed by Toppan Printing Co., a Forest Stewardship Council-certified printer that is the only printer included in the Global 100 List of the Most Sustainable Companies in the World. The catalogue is printed on FSC-certified papers, made with trees harvested from sustainably managed forests and using soy-based inks. Carbon credits were purchased to offset the printing process, making the production of the catalog “carbon-neutral.” The shrink-wrap that each catalogue comes in is 100 percent recyclable.
Project Team: Michael Bierut, partner-in-charge and designer; Yve Ludwig, designer.