Quick Look: The Design Museum Collection for iPad

All images from The Design Museum Collection

We at SMATOOS love it when museums produce apps, and when we find an educational app that goes beyond ABC-123. Museum apps are a wonderful way to learn about something that’s not right in your backyard (read more about this in our post on virtual field trips), and we were excited to find this app from London’s The Design Museum, which introduces its collection of innovative design objects to users in an approachable and interesting way.

The collection at the Design Museum is made up of more than 2,000 objects, the objects ranging from last-century Modernism to the very latest thing. The app showcases 59 of them, from the Dyson vacuum cleaner to the My First Sony radio to the cover of The Face magazine. Each object comes with photos, some easily comprehensible text on the object’s gestation and creator, and a short video (less than a minute) on the designers and objects. These are narrated by Deyan Sudjic, the Museum’s director. You can “turn” pages to examine more images of the objects you’re hearing about while the video is playing, which is a fantastic feature.

As befits an app about design, The Design Museum Collection is a pleasure to use, with a vertical menu on the left-hand side of the screen that allows users to view objects by category or all at once. It’s a great introduction to design for adults or children, and it’s free to boot!

Download the app here:  

By Nell Wulfhart