The winner of the Prize, which recognises an outstanding contribution to UK business and society through design, will be announced by H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh at a ceremony held at the Design Council on Wednesday 5th November.

The UK’s longest-running annual design award, the Prince Philip Designers Prize, celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2009.

This year’s finalists cover a wide range of disciplines - from industrial and fashion design to engineering and branding - and between them provide a snapshot of the creative and commercial strengths of the UK design industry:

• Ian Callum RDI has made a prominent contribution to automotive design, first at Ford, where he worked on the Escort Cosworth, and later at TWR and Jaguar, where he is director of design. Here he has taken a classic marquee in a new and commercially successful direction with models such as the XK and the new XF.

• Sir Jeremy Dixon and Professor Edward Jones are architects whose modernist work takes on board many elements of the classical tradition. Their work – including extensions to the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery, the Royal Opera House and Somerset House, exemplifies some of the best ideas that have been current in UK architecture in the past 30 years.

• Professor Max Fordham OBE FREng FCIBSE FRIBA is a pioneer in environmental design for buildings, his firm specialising in developing sustainable solutions for building surfaces such as heating water and electrical installations. Forty years after he set up his professional practice in environmental engineering, low energy and low carbon methods have never been in more demand, and sustainability is a driving design force.

• Sam Hecht is regarded as one of the most thoughtful and rigorous product designers of his generation. Previously Head of Industrial Design at consultancy IDEO Europe, he co-founded Industrial Facility in 2002 and has brought his logical and modest design style to global corporations such as Epson and Whirlpool in addition to overseeing the utilitarian simplicity and elegance of Muji designs.

• Betty Jackson CBE RDI is one of Britain’s most respected fashion designers who has run her successful business for over 25 years whilst being an inspirational teacher at the Royal College of Art and an advocate of design education.

• Amanda Levete is one of the UK’s leading architects, whose agenda-setting Future Systems practice has been recognised worldwide for its ability to challenge traditional preconceptions of space. Levete has also turned her hand to products, interiors and furniture: her solos show earlier this year at Established & Sons contained pieces that push material and design to their limits while being functional and spatially innovative.

• Mary Lewis formed brand identity Lewis Moberly with Robert Moberly in 1984, and the practice remains one of the UK’s most outstanding design companies, with work such as Duchy Originals, Cafe Direct and St Pancras International to its name.

• Richard Seymour and Dick Powell are one of the UK’s most high-profile and successful design duos and have arguably done more than any of their peers to further the cause of good design. Their practice, Seymourpowell, set up in 1984, is a standard bearer for the design industry, having created successful products for an international client list including Samsung, Unilever, Tefal and Nokia.

• Sir John Sorrell CBE and Lady Frances Sorrell have worked together for 30 years first in their design business, Newell and Sorrell and, since 1999, in their educational charity the Sorrell Foundation, which aims to inspire creativity in young people and works with thousands of school pupils every year.

David Kester, Chief Executive of the Design Council, commented: “At a time when industry at large is looking for ideas and ingenuity, the Prince Philip Designers Prize reminds us that Britain is a well-spring of extraordinary creative talent. All of this year’s nominees are internationally renowned in their field for shaping the world around us and for defining design today and for future generations”.

Former winners of the Prize include Thomas Heatherwick (2006) the architect Lord Foster of Thamesbank (2004) Habitat founder Sir Terence Conran (2003) Pentagram founder Kenneth Grange (2000) and inventor Sir James Dyson (1997).