Design Observer Battles Hearing Aid, Helvetica for People’s Design Award

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s website provides a helpful clock that ticks away the days, hours, minutes, and seconds left in the voting for the 2008 People’s Design Award, and as we enter the home stretch, Design Observer is in the lead. The ur-design blog—helmed by Michael Bierut (winner of this year’s Design Mind award), William Drenttel (who designed the asterisk-themed National Design Award statuette), and Jessica Helfand—is currently listed first among the site’s ever-changing list of top vote-getters. Other nominees nipping at DO’s well-designed heels include Stuart Karten Design’s Zon Hearing Aid, the foldable Strida bicycle, and Helvetica: The Movie. Meanwhile, we were struck by the plethora of nominated ring designs: satellite rings, moss-growing rings, orbiting rings, amoeboid rings, rings made with zip ties. Cast your vote for one of the 257 (at last count) nominees by 6:00pm EST tomorrow and then be sure to check back here on Thursday night, when we’ll post the winner (via the UnBeige Twitter feed) mere seconds after its announced at the National Design Awards gala.

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