Design Museum unveils new visual identity for Designs of the Year awards
The Design Museum in London has revealed a new visual identity for the tenth anniversary of its awards programme Beazley Designs of the Year, created by advertising agency Leo Burnett.
The annual competition and exhibition, on display at the Design Museum between 12 September and 6 January, aims to showcase the best of design across six categories: architecture, digital, fashion, graphics, product and transport.
London-based agency Leo Burnett replaced the awards programme's previous identity – which featured the words Beazley Designs of the Year in a pink, sans-serif font – with the acronym "DOTY".
"We wanted to create something that people will know. DOTY, The DOTY Awards or the DOTYs is a cuter way of talking about it and is a bit more social," Will Rees, a senior designer at Leo Burnett, told Design Week.
As well as the introduction of a more streamlined title, the rebrand sees the agency create a series of six brightly-coloured posters for each of the categories, by filling the outlines of the letters with photographic imagery related to the six fields.
For example, the repeated imagery of red headphones on a blue background represents the product design category, while there is folded denim clothing for fashion and monochrome images of a reflective building for architecture.
"The new identity shows how design is so much more than the aesthetic but inherent in everyday life, and that the Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition offers access to this vast range," said the designers.
"Every year since 2008, Beazley Designs of the Year celebrates design and designers that deliver change, enable access and extend the design practice," said Alice Black, director of the Design Museum.
"The awards themselves are a celebration of the best, most surprising and important work from around the world – we hope we can help bring as many people to this amazing exhibition and get them excited about design in all its amazing forms," said Chaka Sobhani, CCO at Leo Burnett.
All of the nominations from the Beazley Designs of the Year shortlist will be on display at the Design Museum in Kensington 12 September onwards.
Last year's nominations included a pink "pussyhat" with cat-shaped ears, which became a symbol of the Women's March on Washington following Trump's inauguration, and Wolfgang Tillmans' Remain Campaign for the Brexit referendum.