WINNER OF THE NATIONAL DESIGN AWARD
TEN YEARS. ONE BELIEF.
We’re honored to share that Thought Matter is the winner of the 2026 National Design Award for Communication Design from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
This award recognizes a body of work, not a single project. That distinction matters to us. This moment isn’t about one identity, one campaign, or one launch. It reflects a decade of relationships, collaborations, risks, and a shared belief in what communication design can do.
For ten years, we’ve designed for consumer brands, cultural institutions, and civic spaces. At first glance, those worlds might seem far apart. For us, they’ve always been connected by one idea: design is never neutral.
Communication design shapes how people understand the world. It influences where we place our trust, how we imagine the future, and what we pay attention to. It can clarify or confuse. Invite participation or shut it down. That responsibility has guided the projects and partnerships we’ve chosen, as well as how we approach the work.
We’ve partnered with consumer and founder-led brands working to earn trust and establish reach, cultural institutions navigating relevance and change, and advocacy organizations advancing equity, access, and public participation. Across it all, the goal remains the same: move ideas from intention to impact.
Since the beginning, studio-initiated civic work has been central to our practice. From reimagining the U.S. Constitution through the For the People Project, to designing protest posters for the Women’s March, to documenting collective memory during the pandemic with Covidity, to creating public murals and events like Where Democracy Begins and Censor This!, these initiatives reflect our belief that independence is not simply a business model, but a creative stance.
We believe that the most meaningful work is full of complexities and never created alone, which is why this recognition belongs to a much larger community:
Clients who have trusted us with ambitious, uncertain, and high-stakes work
Collaborators and partners who have helped bring these ideas to life
Emerging designers, strategists, and peers who continue to challenge and inspire us
And our Thought Matter team, past and present, who have built this studio practice project by project, year after year
Awards are often described as milestones. That is true, but incomplete. What matters most to us is what this recognition means for the field of communication design as a whole. It signals that the role of design is expanding. That communication design is about participation, trust, and public life.
We’re grateful for the past decade. And we’re excited to continue building a practice that stretches how we fund imagination, design with intention, strengthen public life, and expand what communication design can do.
Thank you for being part of our journey.