Design's Night of Glamour

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He had an assistant write the details of the event on his chest with an X-Acto knife and photograph the result.

Few would argue that Sagmeister didn't deserve a National Design Award. What isn't so obvious is why Sagmeister won the award over the other two finalists, Pentagram partner Paula Scher and the rising stars at the New York firm 2x4. One could argue that, as the designer of Jon Stewart's America: The Book and one of the designers involved in the sparkling new Bloomberg headquarters in Manhattan, Scher deserved the 2005 prize. Or that 2x4's cross-disciplinary work should be celebrated as the leading edge of communication design—and, indeed, the firm won this year's award. How do you compare the stellar careers of three groundbreaking graphic designers from the same area code?

ALL ACCOMPLISHED

The Product Design category suffers from the same apples-to-oranges problem. Last year's winner was Burt Rutan, the X Prize-winning aerospace designer who is the "Wright Brothers" of commercial space flight. Rutan won over finalists Bill Stumpf, the pioneer of ergonomic design whose Aeron chair is the best-selling office chair of all time; and Constantin and Laurene Boym, the chiefs of a small New York firm with big-name clients and products in the Museum of Modern Art that is known for its experimental, edgy style.

This year's Product Design finalists reflected the same pattern of two designers whose impact is unquestionable and one promising-but-younger firm: Stumpf (again); Apple's vice-president of design, Jonathan Ive; and Antenna Design, the small shop that designed the MetroCard kiosks for the New York City subway and the check-in kiosks for JetBlue Airways. This year's award went posthumously to Stumpf, who died in September. Rather than helping the public understand what makes great design, these decisions leave you scratching your head. What criteria do you use to judge such disparate accomplishments?

NEW CATEGORIES?

Just in its seventh year, the National Design Awards program is still evolving, tweaking its process, and deciding whether it wants to recognize the obvious designers—established names like Stumpf and Sagmeister—or younger, edgier designers like Antenna or Local Projects, nominated in the Communication Design category this year. The truth is that the program can do both: recognizing luminaries with the Lifetime Achievement awards and the Special Jury Commendations, and focusing on younger designers in the category-specific awards or with a new emerging-talent recognition. It could also create a category to recognize a designer who has made a significant impact in the previous year.

With more well-defined criteria, the jury's decisions would seem less capricious, and the National Design Awards would fulfill its important mission of celebrating greatness in and raising public awareness of design. The glitz of the awards ceremony aside, the NDA is something that all designers know well: a work in progress.

Scanlon is Innovation & Design editor for BusinessWeek.com.