 We didn't start out designing a trophy. We started off designing an identity for the National Design Awards. We wanted something that could represent all of the design professions. The asterisk was what was really the exciting idea. When somebody suggested that we have it made out of silicon carbide, it's the same material that Intel makes computer trays out of. And I'm like, wow. In 1999, when we were designing this, we were in the middle of the birth of the internet. For an award to embrace so many disciplines, maybe there's something that links all those disciplines. Maybe the materiality is one of those things. Maybe the asterisk is one of those things. This is designers like to solve difficult problems or prototypers like to solve difficult problems. And so they figured it out. We mix up the resin and the powder. We degass it, pour it inside this sandblasted, scrape the surfaces, garnish that with steel wool, give it an application of beeswax. The National Design Award 2010. It's made in a slightly different way than it was originally. But the end effect is the same. It has that same feeling of quality. The Corning Museum of Glass is the premier glass museum in the world. We're located in Corning, New York. Here's a concept, the asterisk. Here's a graphic symbol. What are the forms that that graphic symbol can turn into when, on the end of a blowpipe, or when it's hot sculpted in hot glass? Glass is an amazing material in all the forms that it can take. Glassmakers speak of glass almost as if it has a personality. A tenet of design is truth to material. Our process is about exploration and discovering the possibilities of the material, working collaboratively with the Cooper Hewitt to realize concepts of the National Design Award in a material that hasn't been done before.