Last night, at a joyful ceremony at the Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian Design Museum bestowed its coveted honors on the winners of the 2023 National Design Awards, recognizing innovation and impact across 10 categories. Holler loud and holler proud. The winners deserve it all.
At the top of the list, Seymour Chwast, 92, received due recognition as “Design Visionary” for his lifetime of work as an editorial and children’s book illustrator, typographer and type designer, and co-founder of the legendary Push Pin Studio.
Who would have thought in 1954, at the inception of Chwast’s commercial art career, that this humble creator of posters, advertisements, animations, books and packages would be one of the preeminent figures—a pioneering and influential creator—in the firmament of global visual culture. Certainly, he was more surprised than the public, who for decades have enjoyed Chwast’s wit, imagination and aesthetic joie de vivre. This honor, the capstone to an otherwise stellar (and decidedly unending) career, brings joy to his many fans, including the throngs who attended the Cooper Hewitt ceremony last night, and to his colleagues and friends who have gained so much from the instincts and insights embedded throughout his art.
For 24 years, the National Design Awards have recognized the diverse ways in which design enriches everyday life. Recipients are selected by a multidisciplinary jury of practitioners, educators and leaders from a wide range of design fields. This year, the rest of the illustrious winners are:
- Biocement Tiles by Biomason, Climate Action
- Beatriz Lozano, Emerging Designer
- nARCHITECTS, Architecture
- Arem Duplessis, Communication Design
- Clement Mok, Digital Design
- Naeem Khan, Fashion Design
- The Archers, Interior Design
- Kongjian Yu, Landscape Architecture
- Atlason, Product Design
“This year’s National Design Award winners are a highly diverse group—from a handcraft-focused fashion designer to one of the early pioneers of digital design—but they share many common traits: a highly rigorous process to their discipline, a truly collaborative approach and putting people front and center in their practice,” said Dung Ngo, chair of the National Design Awards jury. “These are design core values worth celebrating.”