In April, London's Design Museum awarded its top honour, the Design of the Year Award, to the British government's website, gov.uk

摘要

A few observers grumbled that this was an unfortunate endorsement of a government that is busy ruining the country (and, ironically, doing its best to remove design from the national curriculum). But viewing it in such partisan terms was missing the point. What was being rewarded here was not the government but the design of a public service. Gov.uk will eventually replace 2,000 different governmental websites, currently hosting a billion transactions a year, with one simple platform. By using an in-house team, the Government Digital Service, to create this mini revolution, the government will save itself millions of pounds-and we all know how keen it is to cut spending. Nevertheless, this is a rare return to the public service commissioning of Britain's paternalistic heyday in the 1950s, when Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert were hired to design a national road signage system. Indeed, the fact that Calvert also designed the font for gov.uk suggests a certain nostalgia for the good old days.