In this wonderful talk from the 2012 EyeO Festival, playfully titled Designers on Top, MoMA Senior Curator of Architecture and Design Paola Antonelli offers a sweeping look at the evolution of design over the past few decades, and the past few years in particular, illustrated with examples from her most recent MoMA show, Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects.

Beauty and elegance are a right, not a surplus… . We must demand, at least, intention.

Particularly insightful is this slide by Anthony Dunne, chair of the Interaction Design program at London’s Royal College of Art, and his partner, Fiona Raby, depicting the directional evolution of design from past to present.

For more, see the book based on Talk to Me, and follow Paola on Twitter for a steady stream of progressive design discernment.