HISTORY 1950-2023

GOOD DESIGN® is the oldest and the most prestigious Awards Program organized worldwide.

The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and Metropolitan Arts PressLtd.  present the Museum's annual GOOD DESIGN® Awards Program for the most innovative and cutting-edge industrial, product, and graphic designs produced around the world.

Each year, The Chicago Athenaeum presents the GOOD DESIGN® Awards Program for the most innovative and cutting-edge industrial, product, and graphic designs produced around the world.
The GOOD DESIGN® exhibition program began as a sponsorship between The Merchandise Mart in Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and continues today by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.

Founded in Chicago in 1950 by the former MoMA curator Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.,together with such pioneers in modern design as Charles and Ray Eames,Russel Wright, George Nelson, and Eero Saarinen, GOOD DESIGN® honors the yearly achievements of the best industrial and graphic designers and world manufacturers for their pursuit of extraordinary design excellence.

For more than seven decades since its inception, The Chicago Athenaeum continues the organization of the program to create a revived awareness about contemporary design and to honor both products and industry leaders in design and manufacturing that have chartered new directions and pushed the envelope for competitive products in the world marketplace.

Every year, designers and manufactures in about 50 nations are honored for their singular achievements in producing hallmarks of contemporary design.    For more than 70 years, everything and anything produced in and for the environment from a paperclip to a Boeing 787 Dreamliner or NASA Space Ship have been honored.