Hurrah. The Incidental has been shortlisted for Designs of the Year at the Design Museum. “Recognising the best of contemporary design around the world” the little tiddler is in heady (and eclectic) company indeed. Which is one of the things we have enjoyed about the reformatting of the award from the previous Designer of the Year – we’re with Patrick Bourgoyne over at Creative Review who last year enjoyed the ‘the quirky and the controversial’ array on display…

It’s been interesting though. Apart from our surprise at making it through to shortlist, there’s a couple of other things about the process that have left us scratching our heads. Not least the credit: The Incidental was a genuine, honest to goodness, collaborative project (rare as hens teeth in our not inconsiderable experience). We might have initiated and steered it but Berg, Abake, electronest and the client were key, and foremost of dozens who input not least the reporters and tweeters. Plus the category question – what exactly is The Incidental? To reference it as newsletter or a website is to underplay some of it’s more interesting aspects – in particular the novel production and dissemination processes which are equally part of the design.

But hey we’re not complaining; very happy to be there and looking forward to seeing the exhibition (opening 17 February at the Design Museum).

O dear, whatever we’ve been doing recently it evidently hasn’t included updating this website. We’ve been busy busying ourselves with:

• The Incidental, back (better?) for the British Council at the London Design Festival. Abake refined and polished and Jerome Rigaud at electronest crafted this online.

• Grassworks at the Aram Gallery – utility driven, flat pack, exceptional design – one of the better shows of the London Design Festival? Icon thinks so.

• The Design Museum has signed on their new building and we’re helping them think about their future.

• And last but not least a growing number of consultancy projects see us advising strategy and delivery issues on a number of museum, digital and branding related projects.

Now heads down and turn up the heating. It’s getting cold outside and we’ve got a top secret project to develop. More here (eventually).

We’ve been working with the Design Museum in London for a couple of years now, looking at future strategies for their Collections. More recently in addition Daniel has been curating not 1 but 2 exhibitions due to open there this summer. Now we’re just counting the days until the first, Super Contemporary, “celebrating the fearlessly progressive spirit of London’s greatest creative minds, past and present”, opens to the public on June 3 (and our lives get a lot less hectic).

For Super Contemporary (in spite of my pleading to be more sensible) he has commissioned 15 pieces of new work from London designers including Thomas Heatherwick, David Adjaye and Industrial Facility as well as a series of personal maps of London from for example Airside, Michael Marriott and Imagination. It’s really unusual to have all new work for a design exhibition of this scale (which usually would focus on existing material)… And the proof will be in the pudding, or actually in the Design Museum from 3 June til 04 October. More here and elsewhere soon I spect.

In the meantime there’s a cool tool, also commissioned as part of the exhibition, which invites the design or close-to-design community to map their collaborations and locate themselves in the London design landscape. Check out The Collabregater. With a name like that how could you resist?