As I do every 3 years, I made it over to the Cooper Hewitt to check out the National Design Triennial. This year, the tagline is “Design Life Now.”

This particular Smithsonian Museum is housed in a gorgeous mansion, and while I’ve never enjoyed their exhibits as much as the Design Museum in London, the gift shop sure is cool

I found some of what was to be expected—Joshua Davis Flash animations that were chugging veeeerrrrryyy slowly from being left on too long, A door decorated with some really cool Chip Kidd book cover designs, Processing (well deserved, too), Hunter Hoffman’s works (who knew video games could relieve pain?!), and the incredible work of PSYOP.

Besides having the PSYOP videos make me wish I was a video designer, I thought to myself, “if Nike is their client and is truly the one financing the design, why isn’t Nike here?” After all, it’s those hip companies like Apple, Target, and Nike that are paying people like me to do what I enjoy.

Eh, I was swiftly answered in the next room by a case of shoe soles.

Adjacent to the Pixar display I found a glass case decorated with Kid Robot toys, and here is my one problem with the exhibit—Kid Robot toys are ART, not design!

How is it that we decide what are and aren’t design toys, anyway? I love Kid Robot, but the toys certainly aren’t for kids, and while they’re “designed” by designers, are they really answering a problem like good design should? Even Kid Robot founder Paul Budnitz mentions in his podcast that people have a hard time differentiating whether his toys are “art” or “design.”

I’m taking a stand. They’re art! And while I admit to shopping at Kid Robot and do enjoy their pieces, I say that artsy riff-raff doesn’t belong in the DESIGN museum!!!!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 11:16 pm and is filed under NYC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.