The public is to be given the chance to vote for the best designer of the year in an award set up in an attempt to mirror art's Turner Prize.

The Designer of the Year award was launched by London's Design Museum on Monday. It will carry a prize of �25,000.

Fashion designer Sir Paul Smith is among the four-strong panel of judges.

Those eligible for the competition are UK-born or UK-based designer or designers working in fields including cars, graphics, furniture and technology - but not fashion or architecture.

Four nominees - which can be teams or individuals - will be shortlisted for the title Designer of the Year.

The shortlisted designers will then stage an exhibition at the Design Museum, which will run from March to June 2003.

Sir Paul Smith is at the forefront of fashion design

The public will then have the chance to vote for the overall winner, either by visiting an exhibition or by seeing it online.

The winner will be decided by compiling the public's votes with the decisions of the judges, in order to prevent vote-rigging.

"Many of the world's most innovative designers are based in the UK and the design studios of such multi-national companies as Apple Computers, Jaguar and Motorola are run by UK-born designers." said a Design Museum spokesman.

"Yet there is no national design award of the stature of the Turner Prize in art or Stirling Prize in architecture.

"The Design Museum's Designer of the Year award will fulfil that role at a time when UK design has never been more innovative - or more popular."

The judging panel also includes industrial designer Marc Newson, Paola Antonelli of New York's Museum of Modern Art, and design historian Emily King. It will be chaired by Alice Rawsthorn, director of the Design Museum.