y now at least some of you know that I hold designers in great esteem and have for most of my conscious life. Today, designers are hot, commercial, and highly regarded, thanks in large part to Target Corp., who fi gured out that mainstream consumers appreciate great design, but being reasonable people, prefer not to pay elitist prices. Hence the strategic decision to brand designer wares at budget-conscious prices. Be gone Michael Graves $300 Museum of Modern Art teapot, hello $39 edition.

There is a good reason for all this, of course. Design is magic, and designers are our culture’s newest magicians — the Merlins of the modern world. Their power and vision enriches our lives at every turn, transforming ordinary objects into wonders of awe and reducing impenetrably complex ideas into statements of staggering simplicity and inspiration. How else do you explain Jonathan Ives’ iPod? Or Tucker Viemeister’s Oxo Good Grips kitchen utensils? Or Homaro Cantu’s edible menu? Or Frank Stephenson’s Mini Cooper? Or Karim Rashid’s trash can into which more than 2 million Americans now throw their rubbish?

All that helps explain why I started the GRAVITY FREE Multidisciplinary Design Innovation Conference, a two-and-a-half-day program that showcases 22 of the best designers on the planet from 20 design disciplines ranging from architecture and graphic design to urban planning and molecular gastronomy. It’s a truly unique showcase of the greatest projects and most outrageous ideas all wrapped into a personal backstage conversation with designers willing to share their secrets. It’s small, intimate, and wildly inspiring.

You could also describe GRAVITY FREE as my very own magic show for people for whom using, making, owning, seeing, touching, and generally experiencing great design reinvigorates their loss of innocence — kind of like reliving that moment of sheer delight the fi rst time someone pulled a nickel out of your ear. Yes, it’s cool, and past attendees are still wondering where the nickel came from.

That same magic is what I look forward to each year when jurors gather to judge EXHIBITOR Magazine’s annual Exhibit Design Awards competition, the winners of which are showcased in this issue. Part of the thrill comes with that first backstage look at each year’s entries of amazing exhibit designs dreamt up by courageous designers for the best of clients. Part of the thrill is the East Coast hospitality, compliments of the folks at Pentagram who hosted this year’s judging event. And part of the thrill is hanging out with the judges, some of the brightest designers in the country, who went at the selection process for a full day with gusto and self assurance while awards coordinator Linda Armstrong and I did little more than eavesdrop, push laptop buttons, advance images, and clarify the odd-ball issue. Otherwise, we generally kept our mouths shut, as is appropriate to the situation.

Typically, the annual judging process produces at least one comment that becomes a running gag throughout the day and a commemorative T-shirt afterward. Two years ago, one judge, in response to Massimo Vignelli’s persistent concern over a red exhibit, chided him by saying, “Massimo, the color red is not a concept.” If you see someone wearing that T-shirt (with Massimo’s permission, I might add), you’ll know they were one of eight judges that year. Last year the phrase “Now those balls work!” took on iconic status, along with a credit line to Michael Carabetta, creative director at Chronicle Books LLC. This year’s T-shirt is still undecided. So while we continue to cull the judges’ most amusing quotations, check out the 2008 Exhibit Design Awards winners, be inspired, and discover the magic for yourself.e