A bit of dazzle on the design calendar, Cooper Hewitt’s annual National Design Awards is back. Initiated as part of the White House Millennium Council in 2000, the Awards recognize disciplines spanning from products to landscape design and are somewhat unusual for focusing on design excellence in a body of work rather than on single projects.

This year, New York-based urban design firm Architecture Research Office won the Architecture Design award; the Interior Design award went to Shelton, Mindel & Associates; and the Landscape Architecture category rewarded Seattle-based practice Gustafson Guthrie Nichol.

The awards also credit distinguished careers and long-term achievements. The Design Mind Award was given to Steven Heller, author of numerous design titles, educator, and art director at the New York Times for 33-years. The Lifetime Achievement Award was handed to typographer Matthew Carter, who in 1981 co-founded Bitstream, a digital type foundry, and is now a Principal of Carter & Cone Type, whose clients include the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Microsoft, for which Carter designed the screen fonts Verdana and Georgia. Other winners include: Knoll for the Corporate and Institutional award; Rick Valicenti for Communications Design; J. Mendel for Fashion Design; Ben Fry for Interaction Design; and Continuum for Product Design.

The Awards begin an extensive summer program celebrating design, concluding with National Design Week, October 15-23.