When Steven Heller comes a knockin’, you let him in, give him a beer, make sure he’s comfortable, pull out the best silver, whip up a five-course meal, toast him as the guest of honor, give him all money in your wallet and stick your first born child in his backpack when he leaves. And after that, when Steven Heller, author of eleventy-bajillion books about design, asks you to be in the eleventy-bajillion and first one, you drop everything else you’re doing and write an essay.

Design Disasters: Great Designers, Fabulous Failure, and Lessons Learned is the latest book edited by Steve and features the “flip side of success, bringing insight, solace, and energy to the act of failure.” I’m so honored that the moment he knew this book would be about failure, he immediately thought of me.

And he also thought of a bunch of other awesome peeps, who I’m thrilled to be in the company of: Henry Petroski • Alissa Walker • David Barringer • Allan Chochinov • Peter Blegvad • Ross MacDonald • Robert Grossman • Ina Saltz • Warren Lehrer • Rob Trostle • Ralph Caplan • Richard Saul Wurman • Marian Bantjes • Rick Meyerowitz • Amanda Bowers • David Jury • Veronique Vienne • Francis Levy • Colin Berry • Nick Curry • Debbie Millman

The book hasn’t hit shelves yet but you can pre-order it now and have it by Halloween, adding these design disasters to your repertoire of scary stories told with a flashlight held under your face.

When I got the missive from newly-named owner-editor John L. Walters about writing my very first piece for Eye, I was taken a bit aback. The subject, awards, didn’t faze me as much as the fact that John was looking for designers who liked them. “I’m looking,” he wrote, in a British accent, “for a positive outcome.”

Designers? Awards? Positive outcome? Everyone knows it’s much cooler to complain about how awards are rigged/racist/sexist/a rip-off/judged while drunk/just plain wrong.

Fresh from my first major judging experience for Print’s Regional Design Annual I can assure you great pains are taken to avoid such issues. For one, we drank only vodka, in very small glasses, and even then, only before noon.

Luckily, when it came down to researching my Eye piece, it wasn’t that hard to find several brilliant designers (most of them young and largely unscathed by the widespread corruption of the awards industry) who still had fairly good attitudes about the power of entering competitions. A few of them even had wonderful things happen to their careers as a result. In fact, I found the whole thing rather inspiring. My piece is in Issue 69 and it’s named “Mad About Awards.” In the same issue, Jason Grant has the slightly-more-cynical counterpoint, “Awards Madness.” Nick Bell’s “Confessions of an Awards Juror” can be found on the Eye blog.

Of all the awards you could win, a Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award is probably as good as you’re gonna get. The juried awards are given to around ten people every October, and the people they’re honoring this year are fantastic. Like my friend Scott Stowell, who designs Good; or my architectural hero Tom Kundig; or my old blog foil Michael Bierut.

But for the last three years, the Cooper-Hewitt has added a twist: the People’s Design Award. The premise is this: “Every year, Cooper-Hewitt gives out design awards chosen by a jury of distinguished design gurus—but do you agree with the experts?” The audience is asked to nominate examples of “good design,” whether “handmade or mass produced, high end or low brow.” You can vote on your favorite and see who’s received the most votes. The winner gets announced at the annual gala.

I know the Cooper-Hewitt is just trying to be all cute and open-sourcey, stir up some debate, get itself some press (~wink~). But looking back through the years, you’ll notice more insightful nominees like the escalator and the ball point pen have been replaced with Suzanne Somers’ ThighMaster Gold (to be fair, it firms and tones).

And now the designers who are nominated manage to spin this “honor” into a promotional opportunity, so October transforms them into a vote-crazy, foaming-at-the-mouse, online popularity posse. For three weeks. Meaning all us poor unsuspecting FOD (friends-of-design) spend our Octobers being assaulted with emails, blog posts, press releases and Facebook alerts: “We have been nominated [mock surprise] for this great honor [hold for applause] please support our cause by voting for us [now]!”

Nail clippers don’t have publicists; but the Zon Hearing Aid just surged rather rapidly to #3.

This year, the top vote-getter is currently Design Observer. Of course they deserve to win, and here’s why they will: 1) They are a website, which is the equivalent of a 24/7 stump speech. 2) They have a lot of Facebook friends (just topped 4000). 3) And co-founder Bill Drenttel has the campaign skills of a young Karl Rove (Bill knows it is this quality I adore about him the most).

I wrote my Eye piece in relative serenity, but such October Madness has poisoned my mind. That’s why when I saw this email from someone called commercialart45 AT gmail.com, I almost deleted it. Glad I didn’t:

We at CommercialArt have design award fatigue. We’re tired of all the insular backslapping. We’re tired of the pitching work to the judges rather than the people that might actually use it. We’re tired of the entry fees. We’re just tired of it all.

This isn’t a stunt. We’re not mad because we’ve never won awards, because we’ve won plenty of them. Instead, it’s a call for some discussion around design, its motivations, and its future. Or to simply acknowledge that maybe we just need to reconsider our reasons for making design in the first place. That the glut of awards and competitions aren’t necessarily helping design (or even the world) in the big picture.

Register your feelings by voting for “Design Awards Are So Over” in the People’s Choice National Design Awards and/or posting a comment (pro or con) at:

http://peoplesdesignaward.cooperhewitt.org/2008/nominee/1656

Also forward this email along to anybody you think would want to join in on the discussion.

With that, CommercialArt smacked the awards paradigm upside the head. And during this month of October no-surprises…well, I think they pretty much nailed it.

In fact, I’m thinking of setting up a phone bank to help get the word out.

Apologies for the delays in posting, I’ve been under the weather, which must mean I’m in pretty bad shape since that would put me below these low-hanging clouds that are producing rain, actual rain, in LA, in October.

But before I befell whatever virus was floating around a deceptively sunny Seattle, I was able to speak at Design Trends Seattle as part of a wonderful panel including Anita Engs, co-founder of Furnitureseen (who I’ve paneled with before); Debbie Kennedy, Director of Interiors at Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects (whose office I covered for a story in Fast Company); and John Tusher, founder of the web and now brick & mortar store Velocity Art & Design (where my mom and I stopped by after the panel; it’s a fantastic place). I promised to post the links we referenced for all the attendees, and the advice we cobbled together was so useful I thought I’d share it with all of you, too.

We talked a lot about the power of blogs when designers (and their clients) are sourcing materials or products, researching prices, finding inspiration and connecting with other designers. A great way to find new blogs to read is through the blog index Technorati, which is essentially a Google for blogs. It just so happens they recently posted their State of the Blogosphere report, which breaks down everything from who the bloggers are, to what they’re writing about, and how they’re profiting off their blogs (here’s that link in case you want to skip right to the moneytalk).

Another tool we all found useful was Google Reader, a great way to organize and subscribe to the blogs you like to read. A fun tool is the Wayback Machine, where you can look at what websites looked like more than a decade ago (how about Velocity Art & Design, say, May 2000?). And if you want to start a blog, two easy places to get started are Blogger and Wordpress. And if you’re looking for a graphic designer to help build or customize a blog or website, visit AIGA’s site to find the right person for you.

Social networking was also deemed an important part of how designers made connections on the web. Facebook and Linked In were two networking resources utilized by individuals and businesses alike, as well as design-specific social networking sites like StyleHive, Trendhunter and NotCot.

Sites we like included everything from furniture resources to architecture gossip blogs. Here’s a list, and don’t forget to check each blog’s list of links to see what blogs their authors like to read. Happy clicking!

1st Dibs: A fantastic resource for antique and vintage furnishings

Apartment Therapy: Fabulous interiors, DIY and inspiration; also has sites for baby, tech, green

Archinect: Invaluable architecture industry news and discussions

ArchNewsNow: A daily digest of all the architecture news fit to print; a must-read!

Architect’s Newspaper: Industry publication with New York and California-specific editions

BLDG BLOG: A thoughtful examination of architecture and environments, built and unbuilt

Coolhunting: Trends, style, gadgets, videos and all-around cool stuff

Core77: The industrial design supersite includes job listings and a great blog

Curbed: Real estate, architecture and development blogs for NY, LA and SF

Design Observer: Essays and (sometimes heated) conversation about current design issues

Design*Sponge: Design, furniture, DIY, interiors

Home Resource Network Seattle: A great example of a local contractor referral service

Inhabitat: Design with a focus on sustainability; also, Inhabitots

Material Connexion: Where to find new and innovative materials

MoCo Loco: A keen eye for modern and contemporary design

NotCot: A blizzard of design and style; also has a social networking component

Pruned: An intelligent and very funny look at the landscape design industry

The Sartorialist: Fashion snapped on streets around the world

swissmiss: Modern design, from graphics to gadgets

Treehugger: Authoritative blog on green design and architecture

Trendhunter: Trends with a social networking component

UnBeige: Design news and gossip with a great sense of humor

If you’ve got any design sites you love, feel free to leave them in the comments. And thanks to Design Trends Seattle for having us participate!

In Seattle this week for a speaking gig, where I always seem to find myself at the Olympic Sculpture Park, quite possibly one of my favorite places on the planet. The team at Weiss/Manfredi designed huge swaths of grass and native plants that bridge a glass box on the hillside with the industrial waterfront, zig zagging over cars, trains, bikes and people, pulling Seattle Art Museum’s annex all the way down to Elliott Bay.

First stop is the cafe where Geoff McFetridge’s In the Mind exhibit is still up, complete with giant pushpins.

Coming down the stairs, you can pull up a seat and enjoy the company of one of Richard Serra’s monolithic rusting hulks.

Which look especially good against the just-starting fall foliage.

This was also a good place to reflect.

Alexander Calder’s piece guards its square of grass like an alien dinosaur envoy who just beamed in via the Space Needle.

Dennis Oppenheim’s traffic cones shout out to the lanes of traffic surging underneath.

But as you start to weave down towards the water, you realize this isn’t some isolated meditative spot; it feels as if the guts of the city are churning all around you. Planes sail overhead, container ships glide out to sea, trains rock below you—like bonus pieces of kinetic sculpture especially commissioned for the park.

In fact, that’s what I think makes this place so remarkable.

Anyone could have slapped a green-topped cap over the “ugly” parts; this place interacts brilliantly with all them.

It makes you feel very small in the scheme of things.

Yet optimistic about the future of our cities.

And on that note,

We’ve reached the end.

A few more pics here.

Having just moved to a new neighborhood, I’ve been frantically trying to nail down my local services—coffeeshop, farmers market, and most importantly, gelateria—by culling recommendations from my neighbors, longtime residents, and my best friend, Internet. But it wasn’t always so easy to find local information online. For that, you’ll want to thank one Sean Bonner, who co-founded the Metblogs family of more than 30 city-specific blogs back in the olden days of 2003. When I recently interviewed him for Good, Bonner put this whole conundrum so, so beautifully:

“People think the great thing about the internet is that you can connect with the world,” says 33-year-old Sean Bonner, one of the founders of Metblogs. “But I want to connect with the guy down the street. I want to know what my neighbor thinks is the best sandwich in town. Or a secret shortcut to get home at night.”

Bonner is a guy who has had an internet presence longer than most web hooligans have been alive (he’s still a web hooligan, though:  case in point). But he’s not stuck behind the computer, he’s actually out there working the neighborhood. He rides that shiny bike up there everywhere and in just the first few days I started following him on Twitter for research, he went to our ‘hood’s infamous gelateria Scoops almost every day. How could I not take his advice? “Neighborhood Watch” is in the September/October issue of Good.

And while I’m talking up Good, I should mention that they not only have a new home on the internet, Good.is, they’ve also moved into shiny new digs over on Melrose (I swung by there on Parking Day). They’ve got tons of stuff planned there for their month-long, end-of-the-year spectacular Good December, so I’ll be sure to keep you posted!