Dubbed “the Oscars of the design world,” the Design Museum has released its Design of the Year 2012 nominees, which include the Olympic velodrome, the Met’s Alexander McQueen show, and a hospital in Rwanda designed by Boston’s MASS Design Group, among others.

It took him two years (nearly 6,000 hours) but his efforts weren’t wasted: David Imus’ U.S. map is the country’s best, according to the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. So just what makes a great map, anyway?

Modernist ceramics designer Eva Zeisel has died at age 105. Although her work is in the MoMA collection, she said her work isn’t art: “Art has more ego to it than what I do.”

The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts announced its 2012 grants to 55 individuals working in the fields of architecture and design. The list includes Fritz Haeg, whose Edible Estates series comes to the Walker next year.

After seeing Christophe Szpajdel’s wall of metal logos in Graphic Design: Now in Production, Rick Poynor writes extensively on the design of heavy metal album covers―its offensiveness, extremity, and commitment to imagery.