Voting Opens for People’s Design Award

Last year, the Braille Alphabet Bracelet won the People’s Design Award, launched by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 2006 to complement its annual National Design Awards. Voting is now open for the 2011 award. Through the evening of October 17, you can browse and vote for your favorite nominated design—or submit and nominate a new design. The winner will be announced on October 20 at the National Design Awards Gala in New York City and will be streamed live on the Cooper-Hewitt’s website that night.

Stay tuned to UnBeige, as over the next few weeks, we’ll be checking in with the Cooper-Hewitt to see which designs have received the most votes so far and monitoring the user comments on nominated designs. And as you nominate and vote, keep in mind that previous winners of the People’s Design Award (such as TOMS shoes and the Katrina Cottage) were notable for their socially conscious approach, what former Cooper-Hewitt director Paul Warwick Thompson described as a “design that not only looks great, but helps the lives of less fortunate people around the world.”

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