The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design, together with the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, has awarded SOM with three 2014 GOOD DESIGN Awards. The awards, which recognize SOM’s rebranding, website, and SOM Foundation posters, celebrates the new brand identity of the firm, which is designed to reflect the ethos of SOM.
The SOM rebranding was a comprehensive effort to reflect the simplicity, clarity, and structural expression of the firm’s architecture, as well as the caliber of the firm’s work. New, global communication tools were created, along with standards and guidelines for the production of all SOM collateral. The rebranding is perhaps most visibly expressed through the firm’s new logo and its website.
The SOM website, relaunched in February 2014, reinforces the firm’s brand identity and conveys its proven track record as one of the world’s preeminent architecture firms through its emphasis on easy navigation, impactful imagery, and strong point of view. SOM’s Firmwide Communications team conceived the website in collaboration with the New York-based graphic design firm, For Office Use Only.
Established in 1979, the SOM Foundation helps enrich the education of the most promising young architecture students through research and travel support. The Foundation’s 2014 call for entries poster nods to the human and messy process of design, as the hand of the designer is visible in the craft of the poster. Additionally, the graphic, which consists of two lines, alludes to the process of design — often idealized as a straight line from Point A to Point B — while the reality is a path that is anything but straight.
Founded in Chicago in 1950, GOOD DESIGN remains the oldest and the world’s most recognized program for design excellence worldwide. For 2014, the Museum received submissions from several thousand of the world’s leading manufacturers and industrial and graphic design firms, representing the most important and influential forces in the design industry from over 48 countries.
In October of 2014, the jury met in New York and Los Angeles and selected product designs and graphics worthy of the GOOD DESIGN Award. All awards and winners can be viewed on the Museum’s website.
About Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) is one of the leading architecture, interior design, engineering, and urban planning firms in the world, with a 75-year reputation for design excellence and a portfolio that includes some of the most important architectural accomplishments of the 20th and 21st centuries. Since its inception, SOM has been a leader in the research and development of specialized technologies, new processes and innovative ideas, many of which have had a palpable and lasting impact on the design profession and the physical environment. The firm’s longstanding leadership in design and building technology has been honored with more than 1,700 awards for quality, innovation, and management. The American Institute of Architects has recognized SOM twice with its highest honor, the Architecture Firm Award — in 1962 and again in 1996. The firm maintains offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Abu Dhabi.