The Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt design museum’s annual People’s Design Award instead honors a pair of canvas espadrilles.
At a Gala event in New York City October 18th, Fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi announced that TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie had won this year's People's Design Award. The award recognizes outstanding acheivement in design and is determined by popular vote. Voting is open to anyone.
So, why are we issuing a press release announcing something we didn't win? Well, not everything is about winning, and not everything is about being popular. When it is about winning and being popular it doesn't always mean crushing the competition. Sometimes its just important to be included in critical discourse. Indeed, MINE's entry generated more comments and dicussion than almost every other nominated idea.
“We’re just happy we made a strong showing,” says Christopher Simmons, creative director of the San Francisco design office MINE™ of his firm’s top 10 finish, “It was great to see all of the interesting comments and interpretations of the design, and to see people really engaging with the concept.”
Out of a field of more than 300 nominees MINE finished in the top 4% of the voting. At one point MINE's nominated project, entitled Everything is ok, ranked 2nd in the overall voting, prompting attention from popular design blogs such as Dwell, Gizmodo, FastCompany and Unbeige, the latter of which heralded the project as a "surprise hit" while quietly lamenting the efforts of other nominees to solicit votes with giveaways, contests and even free beer!
Despite the relative obscurity of the Everything is ok project (which is simply a roll of barricade tape emblazoned with the upbeat message that is its namesake), the design concept gained more popular votes than such ubiquitously celebrated 20th-Century American designs as the Eames Lounge Chair, the Bandaid, the Airstream Trailer, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, and a host of Apple products including the iPhone. "I think it shows that a simple idea can still capture the imagination, " says Simmons, "Design is about making people think, and feel and motivating them toward action. I think we saw that in the winners as well. Simmons gives credit to the overall popular winner, TOM's shoes, saying that the product has a great story behind it, whatever one may think of the design. "It was also very satisfying to see GOOD magazine finish ahead of us," he says, "It's a beautifully simple idea that, like Everything is ok, taps into the best in all of us."
The Everything is ok project was recently feature at the Pasadena Museum of California Art as part of the California Design Biennial, and is the cover story of the most recent Graphic Design: USA magazine.
