House of Cards Has Winning Hand

The House of Cards campaign for Shelter created by Leo Burnett and our own Domenic Lippa has reaped several awards this year.

Lippa was approached by Leo Burnett’s Richard Brim and Daniel Fisher and asked to create the identity for the campaign and auction event last September as well as an exhibition catalogue and a limited-edition box of A5 playing cards.

Awards for our portion of the project include: two Golds in the 2010 Andy’s, In book for Integrated in the Creative Review Annual, four Merits in this year’s One Show, a Gold from the New York Festivals, and a Gold Design Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Festival.

Litl Wins Big in the 2010 IDEA Awards

Our collaboration with Litl on the graphic design and user interface for its Litl webbook has received two honors in the 2010 International Design Excellence Awards. The awards are presented by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and sponsored by Fast Company, Dow Corning and The Henry Ford.

The Litl webbook packaging, designed by Litl with Abbott Miller, received a Gold in the Packaging & Graphics category, while the Litl OS won a Bronze in the Interactive Product Experiences category. Lisa Strausfeld and her team worked with Litl and Cooper on the design of the graphical user interface for the webbook OS.

Miller designed the brand identity for Litl. The webbook packaging is simple, straightforward and designed to appeal to a wide range of ages, embodying Litl’s mission as technology for everyone. The entire package is made from recyclable paper with no plastics or foams used, and the packaging doubles as its own shipping box.

“The Litl webbook is for families who aren’t necessarily tech savvy, and the wit and charm of the brand language translated in how the packaging was presented and unfolded,” commented IDEA juror Fumi Watanabe, creative director of merchandising at Starbucks. “The smart use of corrugated box structure, which made the packaging look thoughtful and giftable, also functioned to protect the product. Attention to details and emotional connection granted this packaging the design excellence.”

The Litl webbook itself, designed by Litl with Fuseproject, won a Bronze in the Computer Equipment category.

Design for a Living World, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum exhibition designed and co-curated by Abbott Miller, was a Finalist in the Environments category.

Lisa Strausfeld Wins National Design Award

Lisa Strausfeld’s dynamic media wall for Bloomberg L.P. corporate headquarters in New York.

We are thrilled to announce that Lisa Strausfeld has been selected to receive the 2010 National Design Award for Interaction Design. The National Design Awards celebrate outstanding achievement in design and are sponsored by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. First Lady Michelle Obama serves as the Honorary Patron for this year’s awards, and the recipients will be honored at a gala on October 14 in New York.

Strausfeld was a Finalist in the Interaction Design category last year, the first year the discipline was honored by the awards. She specializes in information visualization, and her work ranges from software prototypes, user interfaces and websites to interpretive displays and large-scale media installations. Recent work includes user interfaces for One Laptop per Child and Litl; data visualizations for GE and The New York Times; websites for the Cleveland Museum of Art, Gallup, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro; and installations for the Museum of Arts and Design, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the corporate headquarters of Bloomberg L.P. She holds four patents relating to user interfaces and intelligent information search and retrieval.

Strausfeld has won five awards from the prestigious International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), and Fast Company magazine selected her as one of its 2009 Masters of Design. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Congratulations, Lisa!

DJ Stout Is Top Dog in Texas

The American Institute of Graphic Arts Austin Chapter has announced that it has awarded DJ Stout with its prestigious Fellow Award, the highest honor provided by the chapter. Michael Bierut will present the award to Stout at an awards gala on June 26.

“AIGA is proud to recognize DJ Stout as the 2010 AIGA Austin Fellow award recipient for his exceptional contributions to the field of design,” said Jennifer Idol, president of AIGA Austin. “DJ was the unanimous choice for this year’s award.”

“With his inexhaustible displays of passion, imagination and plain old hard work, DJ reminds me over and over again why I got in this field in the first place,” said Bierut. “He makes design fun, and frequently funny, yet no one is more serious about the importance of quality, intelligence and attention to detail. Pentagram has a lot of design talent, but our secret weapon speaks—and works—with a Texas accent.”

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‘The Guggenheim’ Book Wins Top Honors from AAM

The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum, the book published to commemorate the museum’s 50th anniversary last year, has been awarded first prize by the American Association of Museums (AAM) in the Books category of the 2010 AAM Publications Design Competition. The competition recognizes excellence in graphic design of museum publications and is the only national juried competition of its kind.

Designed by Abbott Miller and Susan Brzozowski, the book chronicles the process behind the landmark modernist building. The book’s layout was inspired by architectural journals of the 1950’s, and a full third of the book is comprised of an extraordinarily detailed timeline that describes the museum’s design and construction as told through archival drawings, correspondence and press clippings. Read more about the book’s design here.

DJ Stout Wins National Art Director Award

Austin partner DJ Stout will receive the 2010 Richard Gangel Art Director Award from the Society of Illustrators tomorrow evening at the Museum of American Illustration in New York City. Established in 2005, the Richard Gangel Award singles out one art director a year and honors them for their outstanding contributions in promoting and advancing the art of illustration. The award was named in honor of Richard Gangel, the award-winning art director for Sports Illustrated, who for 21 years—from 1960-1981—built an extraordinary collaboration with illustrators. Past recipients of the award have included Fred Woodward, Steve Heller, Rita Marshall, Patrick JB Flynn and Gail Anderson. “I’m honored to be mentioned in the same paragraph with these great art directors, design innovators and illustration lovers,” says Stout.

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Pentagram Wins at the Transform Awards

Pentagram partners Harry Pearce and Angus Hyland scooped seven awards between them at last night’s Transform Awards 2010, including the Grand Prix for excellence in rebranding for The Co-operative. The Awards are the UK’s only dedicated celebration of rebranding, brand transformation and reputational change.

In a ceremony hosted by the BBC’s arts editor Will Gompertz, Harry Pearce’s work for the Co-operative won a further two gold awards; for best brand architecture and best national rebrand. Angus Hyland’s AkzoNobel identity won two golds and a silver and his work for Grant Thornton received a gold.

The Transform Awards were established by Communicate magazine, the UK’s leading magazine for corporate communications and stakeholder relations.

Pentagram on Fast Company’s List of the 10 Most Innovative Design Companies

Quick Link: Pentagram on Fast Company’s List of the 10 Most Innovative Design Companies

Awards: Type Directors Club 56

The Type Directors Club Annual has always been one of our favorite competitions, because we are type geeks at heart, of course, and we love the big beautiful book that the TDC continues to publish every year to showcase the winning work.

We are happy to announce that several of our projects have been selected for inclusion in the 56th Type Directors Club Annual Exhibition. In the Corporate Identity category, Paula Scher’s work for the Museum of Modern Art was honored, as were Michael Bierut’s identities for Guitar Hero and The Oak Room. Michael’s cover for Nabokov’s Speak, Memory was cited in the Book Jacket category, and his signage for the Harley Davidson Museum won in Environmental Graphics. Harry Pearce’s posters for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (above) and DJ Stout’s poster for Pentagram Austin’s Signs fundraiser were selected for the Poster category. And Lisa Strausfeld’s WNET online annual report was honored in Websites.

Thanks to all our designers, teams and clients who contributed their fantastic energy and vision to these projects.

AkzoNobel’s ‘A’ Magazine Wins Again

‘A’ The AkzoNobel Magazine has won the ‘External Publications’ category in the European Excellence Awards. The Awards were announced at the Hofburg in Vienna on the 10th of December and honour outstanding achievement in communication on an international scale. This recognition follows a Bronze at the ADC 88th Annual Awards earlier this year. Angus Hyland and his team designed issue one and collaborated with AkzoNobel designer Pepe Vargas on the subsequent issues.

Previously: New Work: ‘A’, The AkzoNobel Magazine