People of the letter rejoice. In its eighth year, the London Design Museum’s ‘Designs Of The Year’ announces the nominees for 2015. The annual award celebrates design that “promotes or delivers chance, enables access, extends design practice or captures the spirit of the year” is a fest of creative thinkers. This year’s shortlist of 76 studios and design practitioners — from over thirty countries across five continents — include emerging practices, as well as some of the industry’s biggest names, were selected by design academics, experts and practitioners from across the world which the London Design Museum invited to suggest potential projects. Nominees come from over 30 countries across five continents as the award acknowledges the global breadth of creativity and design talent across the diverse sectors of architecture, digital, fashion, product, transport design and of course, graphic design and typography.

Nominees come from over 30 countries across five continents in this triumphant testament to the power of good design

The jury, chaired by Anish Kapoor and including members designed-turned-sculptor Nicole Farhi and architect Farshid Moussavi amongst others, will announce the winners in each of the six categories – Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Product, Graphics and Transport – on May 4, with an overall winner revealed on June 4. Graphics nominees span editorial, exhibition, type and identity design and we present them to you in all their glory. You can see every nominee on display at the London Design Museum from March 25 as this is a triumphant testament to the power of good design which TYPEROOM acknowledges and supports.

100 Years of Swiss Graphic Design

A survey of 100 years of graphic design in Switzerland, taking in posters, corporate design, advertising and type. More than in many other countries, Swiss graphic design shows an uninterrupted evolution of visual dictions and production techniques throughout the 20th century with recognised international influence.

Designing for the Sixth Extinction

Commissioned by Science Gallery, Dublin, Designing for the Sixth Extinction investigates synthetic biology’s potential impact on biodiversity and conservation. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s project imagines a future in which new companion species designed by synthetic biologists support endangered natural species and ecosystems. Modeled on fungus, bacteria, invertebrates and mammals, the designed species are ecological machines that fill the void left by vanished organisms, or offer novel protection against more harmful invasive species, diseases and pollution. But are they even ‘alive’? If nature is totally industrialized for the benefit of society—which for some is the logical endpoint of synthetic biology — will nature still exist for us to save?

Franchise Animated

Franchise Animated is a collaborative animated typeface created by one type designer (Derek Weathersby) and a roster of 110 animators from all over the world. Each animator has picked a glyph and animated it in their personal style. The result is a wide variety of styles and techniques, with a colour palette and letterforms which tie the project together. The file is completely open and contains all the keyframes, expressions and artwork from the artists, it is currently available at Animography.net.

Glasgow International

The biennial Glasgow International showcases the city as a unique major centre for contemporary visual art. Kellenberger-White’s hand-painted identity for the festival’s 2014 edition is a highly characterful typeface that captures the quickness and scale of large hand-painted lettering used on warehouses, docks and ships throughout Glasgow’s industrial waterfront. The hand-painted digitised font maximised inexpensive materials.

Inglorious Fruits & Vegetables

Created by Marche for Intermarché, the campaign run across film, print, billboards, radio, in-store, PR, social media to rehabilitate the imperfect fruits and vegetables by celebrating the beauty of the ridiculous potato, the hideous orange or the failed lemon. The idea was to show people that, though they might by ugly looking, there are as good as any others, but 30% cheaper.

Jurriaan Schrofer (1926-1990)

An extensive monograph on one of the defining figures in the field of graphic design in the Netherlands after the Second World War.

Kenzopedia

Kenzopedia was an article series published trough the spring of 2014 on the Kenzo’s web page.Created by Toni Halonen its aim was to open up the inspirations and themes behind the spring collection. The headlines of the 26 articles came from different letters of the alphabets and contained an illustrated story that was related to it.

MIT Media Lab identity

The MIT Media Lab is an interdisciplinary research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology devoted to projects at the convergence of technology, multimedia, sciences, art and design. Its new identity builds on the previous system, which launched with the Lab’s 25th anniversary in 2010 and was designed by Richard The and Roon Kang. The new solution developed by Bierut and Pentagram designer Aron Fay uses the seven-by-seven grid of The’s anniversary logo to generate a simple “ML” monogram that serves as the logo for the Media Lab. Using that same grid, the designers extended the identity to each of the 23 research groups that lie at the heart of the Lab’s activity.

Modern Design Review issue 1

Art-directed by GTF, Modern Design Review is a new covering modern product and furniture design. The dust-jacket illustrates the magazine’s content with components of Martino Gamper, Yrjö Kukappuro and Muller Van Severen’s products presented in a carved, flower-arrangers foam brick — referencing the Japanese art of Ikebana featured in this launch issue. The magazine templates provide structure and plasticity that allows each feature to forge its own visual direction. MDR’s own serif and sans-serif headline typefaces were created in conjunction with Housestyle to compliment the Starling and Haas Grotesk fonts used for the text setting.

No. 5 Culture Chanel

Created to accompany an exhibition in Palais de Tokyo in Paris, this exquisite book by Irma Boom is entirely white and made by embossing rather than printing with ink.

Proposals for banknote designs for the Central Bank of Norway

In spring 2014 Norges Bank (The Central Bank of Norway) held a competition for the development of a design for a new Norwegian banknote series, communicating the theme ‘The Sea’. Designed by Snøhetta and The Metric System, they feature a striking pixellated design on the reverse, inspired by the country’s coastline, using modern motifs on one side and more traditional illustration on the other.

Riposte magazine

Created by Danielle Pender (Founder & Editor) and Shaz Madani (Creative Director) each issue of this 'smart magazine for women’ features five ideas, four meetings, three features, two essays and one icon, profiling bold and fascinating women whose achievements speak for themselves. Essays and features cover a broader range of topics than the regular fashion or celebrity focus of women’s magazines, including art, design, music, business, innovation, politics, food and travel.

The Way of the Shovel: Art as Archaeology scratch-off campaign

This campaign by Romain André and Michael Savona for MCA Chicago’s exhibition responded to the brief that ‘Every piece of art is a story waiting to be uncovered’. The ads aimed to make the exhibition—which explores contemporary artists’ interests in history, archaeology and archival research—accessible to the general public. Four bus shelter ads placed around Chicago’s Loop and a tip-in newspaper advertisement gave users the opportunity to become archaeologists and archive their own histories through the familiar language of lotto scratch-offs. When users scratched off the silver layer, which depicted a shovel artist Mark Dion illustrated for the exhibition catalogue, they revealed local artist Tony Tasset’s colorful portrait of himself dressed as Robert Smithson, as well as an offer for two-for-one admission to the museum.

Wired custom typeface

The custom typeface that Sawdust conceived, was designed for use as section headers in WIRED magazine. The aim was to create an eye-catching bespoke design which was both playful and readable.