Light is right at the Brit Insurance Design awards 2011 today

The only object in the exhibition that stands out as a potential overall winner is in the product design category: the iPad. So successful has this game-changing piece of technology been that it should have its own category – indeed it pretty much does, since most of the entries in the interactive design section are apps for the iPad, displayed on iPads. But it's possible that the judges will avoid the obvious, popular, zeitgeisty choice and stick it to Apple – especially since one of the judges confessed, to me, "I don't like the internet". I rather liked Ingo Maurer's Flying Future hanging light, a diaphanous membrane inserted with organic LEDs (OLEDs). So energy efficient that they last almost indefinitely, these films of organic semiconductor are the light source of the future. They hold the potential for light to be treated as a material in itself, like cloth, draped as luminous surfaces. With the relentless march of digital technology, the graphic design section of the show seems to be retreating into a world of nostalgia. It is wonderful to see the beauty of printed books reasserted, though I wondered why so many of those here are new editions of 18th- and 19th-century novels. Ironically, the work that jumps out here does so because it's miniscule (and, yes, light): Irma Boom's Boom. The most respected book designer in the world has produced a 704-page catalogue raisonné of her work, but it's just two inches high. One doesn't see that kind of modesty often. Or perhaps it's not modesty at all, but mystical devotion to her craft. The book is reminiscent of one of those medieval miniature Qur'ans written with a horse's hair. Of all the disciplines, lightness is most a virtue when it comes to transport. For all the talk of electric cars and high-speed rail, we are realising now that only by reducing the weight of our modes of transport so that they consume less energy can we make them more sustainable. Here, there's another clear winner: an aluminium bicycle by Dutch brand Vanmoof. I'll take it any day over the YikeBike, an electric penny-farthing that could have been designed by HR Giger and appears, like some Sinclair C5 of bikes, to be dead on arrival. The fashion category is anyone's guess. There's a reason why the Design Museum calls on an international panel of experts to nominate all the entries, and that's because design is a bewilderingly broad field and no one's an expert on all of it. As a show, it's hit and miss and there may be no agenda, but I recommend you go and see it. There's bound to be something there that will surprise you.