Design Museum: Designs of the Year 2013 nominations

London-based Design Museum has announced the nominations for this year's The Designs of the Year awards. The award will showcase innovative designs spanning across seven categories: graphics, transport, product, fashion, digital, furniture and architecture.

Among those nominated., these includes the A Room for London, a pop up hotel currently sitting on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall building at the Southbank Centre; The Shard, Europe's newest tallest building build in the London Bridge district and Kapow!, the book set about in the Arab Spring.

From a digital/mobile technology perspective (only because I blog a lot about phones), Windows Phone 8, the Swiss style inspired mobile OS reboot by Microsoft - which I recently reviewed with the HTC Windows Phone 8X and Nokia Lumia 920, was also nominated.

According to Pete Collard, the exhibition's curator, “the language that Windows Phone 8 presents is a very digital language, it says ‘this is digital information presented on a smartphone,’ and as such is not trying to bring in other cultural ideas.”

Good riddance to faux buttons

“It is a nice, clean, pure color, interface. The tiling system is intuitive. It is not over-designed to bring in other narratives from other objects.”

Which he then compared to Apple's iOS design language.

“What was Apple doing in bringing in the faux-leather look? Were they suggesting that people miss their old leather books?”

Word.

Nominations will displayed at the Design Museum at Shad Thames from 20 March until 7 July, with winners announced on 17 April.