Design of the year 2012 – Design museum London

Every year the design museum london holds an exhibition of the best design of the past 12 months. This years exhibition had a wide range of graphic, product and environmental design; including a redesign for an ambulance; multiple different types of table and chairs; and a re-branding for a business magazine.

While walking round the top floor of the design museum I wondered why the chair had to be redesign so many times. There must have been 10 separate designs for chairs, some made of recycled materials and some that could change shape depending on how many people wanted to sit on it. Sure they were inventive, I just don't understand the need for quite so many in one show.

My favourite piece from the show was the Bloomberg Businessweek magazine design. Considering I don't understand or care much about business, I would consider buying this just for the design of it. The re-design uses clean, bold covers with well balanced, justified text to give an easy to read article around the generously sized graphic images. The design of the magazine is on par with that of Time magazine and Filter (a graphic design magazine based on quality over regularity).

One of the curious entries was the Stanley Parable which is a short story played out within a video game (Half life 2 engine). The story is narrated by an omnipotent voice that explains what your character is doing as you do it. The voice seems to be able to say what your about to do and where you will go. Following this path you are lead through the world (mainly offices) and shown how trapped and controlled the character was before the start of them game and thanks to your intervention is now free from the control of those higher... or are you? By disobeying the narrator and going deliberately against what he says, the story changes. Depending on what you disobey and when, you get a different ending and a more complex path. Some ending in your death, some in your mind falling apart as the world falls down around you. I think it's a brilliant example of voice acting bringing a story to life as the narrator seems quite friendly at the beginning but as soon as you go against him, he switches to a vindictive over watcher. If you don't want to play it yourself, there are videos on youtube going through every eventuality. After doing just that myself, I realised I had missed so much on my play throughs. I think the stanley parable questions our sheep like behaviour and our willingness to do as we are told because we think we a free to choose. I enjoyed the show but I was disappointed that it was such a small space.

Though I did hear the V&A show which covers 50 years of the same such thing was worse...