Jonathan Barnbrook’s Bowie artwork and the Norwegian passport nominated for Designs of the Year

Date
31 August 2016
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Jonathan Barnbrook: ★ (Blackstar), David Bowie

The Design Museum has announced the nominees for this year’s Beazley Designs of the Year prize, with 70 designs across six categories: Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Graphics, Product and Transport.

The Graphics category features Jonathan Barnbrook’s album cover for David Bowie’s Blackstar, which uses the open-source Unicode star symbol, allowing fans to share and interact with the artwork. Also nominated is the Channel 4 rebrand by DBLG and Brody Associates; a set of pictograms for a refugee first aid kit; and the Norwegian passport redesign by Neue Design Studio.

Nominees for the Product category include The Drinkable Book, a publication made from silver paper water filters — one of which can purify 100 litres of water — that are printed with lifesaving information. Also nominated is the BBC micro:bit, the gravity-defying Space Cup, and Adidas x Parley, a running shoe made using recycled plastics from the ocean.

Tate Modern Switch House by Herzog & de Meuron and Rem Koolhaas’ Prada Foundation feature on the Architecture shortlist. MTV’s Martin Luther King Jr. day programming and Marshmallow Laser Feast’s augmented reality project In the Eyes of the Animal are on the Digital shortlist.

A winner will be selected in each category and one overall winner will be announced on 26 January 2017. In recent years the overall prize has been awarded to Human Organs-on-Chips, a microchip hosting living human cells; Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Center; and the UK Government website by GDS.

The nominees for the Beazley Designs of the Year will be exhibited at the Design Museum from 24 November — 19 February 2017.

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Neue Design Studio: Norwegian passport

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Neue Design Studio: Norwegian passport

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Neue Design Studio: Norwegian passport

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Erwin K. Bauer, Anne Hofmann, Dasha Zaichanka, Katharina Hölzl, Miriam S. Koller: First Aid Kit for Refugees and NGOs

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Channel 4, DBLG and Brody Associates: Channel 4 rebrand

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Brian Gartside, Aaron Stephenson and Theresa Dankovich: The Drinkable Book

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Adidas x Parley running shoe

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Marshmallow Laser Feast: In the Eyes of the Animal

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Mark Weislogel, Andrew Wollman, John Graf, Donald Pettit and Ryan Jenson: Space Cup

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Herzog & de Meuron: Switch House

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Jenny Brewer

Jenny oversees our editorial output across work, news and features. She was previously It’s Nice That's news editor. Get in touch with any big creative stories, tips, pitches, news and opinions, or questions about all things editorial.

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