The Design Museum‘s annual Designs of the Year Awards are back for the fifth year, celebrating the best in global designs from the past twelve months. Industry experts have nominated designs across seven categories: Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Product and Transport and the results are showcased at the museum.

DESIGNS OF THE YEAR, 8th February-15th July 2012

DESIGN MUSEUM

28 Shad Thames, London SE1 2YD (020 7940 8790)

The nominees cover a strong mix of designs including the Olympic Torch 2012 for London designed by Barber Osgerby, the Duchess of Cambridge’s Wedding Dress designed by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen and a wind-propelled Landmine Detonator which costs $40 to produce.

All of the nominations are on show at the Design Museum in the Designs of the Year exhibition. From this comprehensive list, a jury will select the seven category winners and an overall winner for the Design of the Year 2012.

The exhibition is curated by Ria Hawthorn. The winners will be announced on 24th April 2012.

Images – from top: Guangzhou Opera House by Zaha Hadid Architects (photo by Iwan Baan); 787 Dreamliner (photo by Ed Turner); Jawbone Jambox by fuseproject; Textile Field by Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec (textile by Kvadrat); Harbour Chair by Ed Carpenter for Very Good & Proper. 

Midcentury Modern, the popular one-day show of 20th-Century design classics and modern collectables, returns to Dulwich College. The event is a great opportunity to snap up rare or unusual products without high mark-up prices.

MIDCENTURY MODERN, Sunday 20th November 2011 (10am-4pm)

Christison Hall, DULWICH COLLEGE

London SE21 7LD

Entrance: £7 on the day

Browse around some of Britain’s leading mid-century dealers of Scandinavian, European and American furniture and decorative arts. Merging the past with the present, young British designers sell their designs upstairs.

Midcentury Modern is an unpretentious one-stop shop for busy people who love collecting beautiful pieces for their homes.

Participating dealers and designers can be seen on the Midcentury Modern website.

Copies of LONDON DESIGN GUIDE 2012-2013 are available to purchase at the show – head to the stand of contemporary design retailer Theo.

The Design Museum is marking the 80th birthday of the UK’s grandfather of design – Sir Terence Conran – with a major exhibition that explores his impact on contemporary life in Britain and abroad.

TERENCE CONRAN – THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

16th November 2011 – 4th March 2012

DESIGN MUSEUM

Shad Thames, London SE1 2YD (020 7940 8790)

The Way We Live Now explores Conran’s impact whilst painting a picture of his design approach and inspirations. The exhibition traces his career from postwar austerity through to the new sensibility of the Festival of Britain in the 1950s, the birth of the Independent Group and Pop Culture of the 1960s, to the design boom of the 1980s on to the present day.

The serial entrepreneur has transformed the look of the British home. He has established a design studio and an architectural practice with a worldwide reach. He was the founder of Habitat and The Conran Shop and a pioneer of the new restaurant culture driven by a passion for simplicity.

When it comes to design, business, food and ‘lifestyle’, there is little this man hasn’t achieved. Now in his 80th year, he has certainly contributed considerably to The Way We Live Now.

Images – from top: Terence Conran, photographed by Neil Wilder, John Parkinson Agency; Terence Conran circa 1950, photographed by Ray Williams

Now in its fifth year, the SuperDesign event returns with a collective exhibition of specially commissioned studio pieces by both well known and emerging designers, taking place at The Dairy in Bloomsbury.

SUPERDESIGN, 13th-17th October 2011

THE DAIRY

7a Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PG

SuperDesign seeks to emphasise the current synergy between design and the visual arts with inventive displays that present contemporary design in a fresh light. Yearly, this show brings together collections from leading galleries and international designers at a crucial time in the art calendar year, during Frieze Art Fair.

Galleries include The Apartment, Nilufar, Spring Projects and Vessel Gallery.

SuperDesign, devised by gallerist Patrick Brillet, has cemented its reputation as an important exhibition of contemporary design-art pieces. The event is open both to the general public and to an audience of international collectors, critics and designers.

It’s official! The new edition of LONDON DESIGN GUIDE 2012-2013 is now available, featuring totally new content and plenty of great features. Order your copy now for only £12 and we will dispatch it to you wherever you are in the world.

LONDON DESIGN GUIDE 2012-2013 gives a fresh insight into the city’s contemporary and vintage retailers, as well as design galleries, museums and bookshops. All 140 new and established hotspots are compiled and reviewed by design commentator Max Fraser.

Shops are categorised by neighbourhood and accompanied by detailed maps – plus walking tours written by local tastemakers including Sheridan Coakley, Tom Dixon and Kit Kemp – to help navigate the best that the city has to offer.

You’ll find restaurant, bar and cafe recommendations, selected as much for their design credentials as for the quality of food and service.

And we’ve commissioned 10 short essays by local experts including Naomi Cleaver, Hugh Pearman, Benjamin Hubert and Libby Sellers, each discussing an aspect of the industry, be it designing, producing, selling, communicating, collecting, even discarding design.

The 2012-2013 edition also introduces 4×4, a new 16-page supplement featuring the top furniture, lighting and accessories designs available in London design stores. The survey does your homework for you, evaluating the designs based on quality and longevity.

The 208-page LONDON DESIGN GUIDE is a snapshot of the design scene today, a celebration of creativity and a practical tool for Londoners and tourists alike. There’s no better incentive for exploring the wealth of design in the capital.

It’s “a must-read” according to the New York Times.

Publisher: Spotlight Press

Editor: Max Fraser

Book designer: Richard Ardagh Studio

Cover designer: Peter Crawley 

London’s Design Museum is celebrating items from its permanent collection in an exhibition titled ‘This is Design’, which examines the impact of design on the modern world and how it shapes our lives and contemporary culture.

‘THIS IS DESIGN’, 24th August 2011-22nd January 2012

DESIGN MUSEUM

Shad Thames, London SE1 2YD (020 7940 8790)

The collection contains pieces ranging from early items of mass manufacture through to cutting edge contemporary design and includes furniture, fashion, transport, products, ceramics and graphics. By using themes such as Identity, Manufacturing Innovations, the Digital Revolution and Lifecycle the exhibition looks at how design provides a visual language to help use the objects around us.

Prototypes, drawings, couture samples, models, first editions and finished industrial objects are on display demonstrating the design process and subsequent influence of design on the contemporary culture. The exhibition also explores ‘quiet’ design, demonstrating how design surrounds us and how whether accidental or subtle, design plays a role in shaping the way we live and enables us to understand the world around us.

In the forthcoming new home for the museum at the former Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, there will be a dedicated gallery space to display the collection and celebrate the importance of design through a permanent display.

Images – from top: Vespa Clubman, designed by Corradino d’Ascanio (1946); National traffic light system (1966); Road Signage, designed by Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinnear (1965); Anglepoise Lamp Type 1227 (1934); Candlestick Telephone (circa 1920). Images courtesy of Design Museum.

Show RCA, Royal College of Art‘s annual postgraduate exhibition, returns this year to showcase the next generation of artists, designers, writers and thinkers simultaneously for the first time since the 2007 Great Exhibition. Show RCA 2011 features a culmination of the studio work and research of 431 graduating art and design students in a range of disciplines.

SHOW RCA 2011, 24th June-3rd July 2011

ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART

Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU

Catherine Aitken – Textiles. Top: Louis Thompson – Ceramics & Glass

Jack Smith – Design Products

Makiko Nakamura – Ceramics & Glass with Marina Dragomirova – Design Products

Pia Wustenberg – Design Products

Sarah Wiberley – Ceramics & Glass

After a successful outing during the Milan Furniture Fair in April, the Royal College of Art Design Products Department is presenting a small selection of products in the Brompton Design District.

RCA MILAN EXTRACT 2011, 26th-30th May 2011

THE GARAGE

1 North Terrace, London SW3 2BA

Recent graduates showing work include We Do Studio who will be installing their bag machine (pictured top), making Kvadrat fabric bags for visitors to buy; Seongyong Lee’s lightweight Plytube stools constructed from innovative tubes of wood veneer, recently nominated for the Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award; Iain Howlett’s colourful tables made from paper pulp; Yoav Reches ingenious plywood furniture assembled using only a length of rope; and Fredrik Paulsen’s innovative table system.

Other pieces include tables made from tree trunks and lighting that were used in the Milan exhibition. Selected works are for sale.

We’re giving away 5 signed copies of “The Design Work of Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby” – the first monograph celebrating the work of this leading British design duo (published by Rizzoli). Enter our competition to win a copy! (entry deadline: 1st June 2011)

The award winning studio, founded in 1996, is headed by two of the most innovative industrial designers Britain has to offer, Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby. Distinguished by clean, modern lines, BarberOsgerby works across a wide range of disciplines to create everything from furniture and products to consumer electronics and architecture.  The duo make their mark with technical craftsmanship, formal vigor, and inspired use of colour.

In permanent museum collections worldwide, BarberOsgerby’s work includes iconic designs like the best-selling Tab Lamp for Flos (2008) and the recent Tip Ton chair for Vitra (2011).

With a portfolio ranging from accessible work to custom one-off pieces, their work has been produced by manufacturers and clients such as Cappellini, Swarovski, Stella McCartney, and Coca-Cola.

The book presents images of the pair’s iconic designs and the inspiration behind them, as well as concept sketches and technical drawings revealing the true craftsmanship involved. The publication is organised thematically with an emphasis on materials and process and includes essays written by some of the industries biggest names: Deyan Sudjic (Design Museum), Zoe Ryan (Arts Institute of Chicago) and Simon Andrews (Christies).

COMPETITION: To win one of the 5 signed copies of “THE DESIGN WORK OF EDWARD BARBER AND JAY OSGERBY” (worth £45), simply email your name and delivery address to competitions@londondesignguide.com with ‘BarberOsgerby’ in the subject line.

Five winners will be chosen at random and notified by email on 1st June. The competition is open to readers from any country and books will be dispatched to the delivery address you supply.

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED. Congratulations to our winners: Oliver Rix, Patricia Chavez, Scott Berry, Nathan Morse, Ross Kimball.

Clerkenwell Design Week is a three-day festival located in the creative hub of East London, with over 150 events taking place amid the area’s concentration of furniture showrooms. The festival celebrates contemporary design by focusing it’s attention on a packed programme of exhibitions, installations, workshops, presentations, and debates.

CLERKENWELL DESIGN WEEK, 24th – 26th May 2011

Clerkenwell Design Week returns with exhibition hubs in The Farmiloe Building on St John Street and a new venue called The House of Detention. Both spaces are hosting exhibitions showcasing some of the design industry’s leading talent as well as numerous well-known brands.

A plethora of activities are likely to catch you attention over the three days. For a full listing of events, visit the Clerkenwell Design Week website for more information.