As Arctic winds blast through London and announce that the end of 2022 is nigh, Disegno’s editors sit down with warm mugs of tea for our annual round-up episode of The Crit, looking back on key design stories that sum up this wild and tumultuous year.

In honour of the launch of Disegno’s newest family member – Design Reviewed #1 – we have updated the format of this year’s annual review. Design Reviewed is organised around 10 categories, each of which correspond to a different design output, so we’ve borrowed these same sections for this special episode of the podcast.

In the technology category, the Elf Bar impresses us with its sudden ubiquity and intuitive design, while making us despair at the ecological havoc of so-called disposable batteries. On a more hopeful note, for ecology we discuss the increasing number of projects that take a more-than-human perspective, particularly The Planetarian exhibition in Beijing.

Continuing down the line of caring for the planet, the object category explores the innovations of Carmardy Groarke’s Ghent Waste Brick made from local construction waste, while the policy section ponders the impact of a meat advertising ban in Haarlem.

For our interface, we wrap our heads around AI image generators such as Dall-E, while the systems category looks at the swelling unionisation movement. The phenomena section takes a somewhat trepedatious look at the rise of subscription services in automative design.

We get our design-geek on over the furniture featured in our media choice, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, whose production designer Hannah Beachler participated in our roundtable discussion of The Met’s Afrofuturist Period Room for Disegno #32 this year. Our selection for space is the the Elizabeth Line, particularly its Map Project Office-designed carriage interiors.

We conclude the podcast with a gift – our carefully chosen design hero and villain of the year. Listen to the end to find out who they are.

And that’s a wrap. Thank you all for filling your ears with The Crit throughout the year, and happy 25th epsisode to us!

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Show Notes: Ep.25 - ‘The 2022 Review’

Technology: Disposable vapes - 04:04

Ecology: Beyond human design - 13:03

Object: Ghent Waste Brick - 20:14

Interface: Dall-E - 27:27

Body: Nike sports bra - 36:53

Policy: Haarlem’s meat advertising ban - 43:45