If you've got a good imagination and great sketching skills, here's a fun way to win a free Wacom tablet: Design the winning entry in ID Sketching's 72-Hour Survival Kit Design Sketching Competition.
Scenario - Imagine being stranded after a major disaster in a major city. Most of the city's power is out, the water is undrinkable and food is scarce. As we've learned in the last few years from many a sad sad experience, most people just aren't prepared for conditions following a natural or otherwise major disaster. What would you take with you? What would be the ultimate 72 hour survival kit?
Challenge - Design a backpack or other portable soft-goods product that could be used to carry equipment in an emergency situation, store a 72-hour supply of food and water and a few other survival tools as well. Think of the needs of an individual stranded or isolated in a disaster situation and come up with a unique and interesting concept that is visually compelling and functionally exciting.
First prize gets a spanking Intuous 4 drawing tablet. Second and third prize ain't too shabby either--free copies of Alias Sketchbook Pro 2010. Enter here!
The Lightcycle competition registration is now open! The site says it all:
LightCycle is a sustainable light fixture design competition held as part of the 2009 State of Design Festival. Using 1m of LED strip light and your imagination you have to create a light fixture that represents environmental sustainability. In keeping with the festival's theme of Sampling the Future, entries will be judged for their aesthetic and sustainable qualities - the interpretation of which is up to you. Shortlisted entries will be displayed in an exhibition at the Guildford Lane Gallery in Melbourne between 17-26 July.
If you're curious, check out the 2007 winners here.
Though the winners of the INDEX: Award 2009 won't be announced until late August, work from all 72 of the finalists have been posted here. This group of international designers addresses the theme "Design to Improve Life" through the categories of Body, Home, Work, Play and Community. Pictured above are Brad Pitt's Pink Project (related to the New Orleans housing project mentioned here), Christien Meindertsma's Pig 05049 Book, and Kennedy and Violich's Portable Light.
To celebrate the achievements of the finalists, Index:Design to Improve Life has launched a special project called "In Their Own Words," featuring interviews from the designers. While you are browsing, be on the lookout for these highlights in the descriptions of each project. The first few installments can be found here and here.
Where the heck's that little "English" button? Sigh....
While most design competitions take pride in drawing entrants from around the world, the city of Montreal is moving in the other direction. Their recently announced design comp to create "mobile urban furniture" (for street fairs and festivals) is described only in French, on a flash-based website that stymies Google Translator; furthermore, a press release states that "Only those candidates who have picked up the [registration] documents at the Design Montreal office will be considered."
Anyways, if you're Quebecois and/or a French-speaker that lives close enough to pop over to the Design Montreal office...send us some English-language updates!
...Answer our call for something useful and beautiful with upcycled materials; specifically, carpet samples. Ample Sample is again challenging designers to rethink and repurpose carpet samples after their usefulness to a design project, to make a design product. The best ideas will be showcased at NeoCon 2009 and featured on the website, complete with blueprints and instructions for their designs.
Got any ideas? You've got about a week to get it together! Click here to read about the contest and see the most recent submissions.
Your correspondent was lucky enough to live in Japan for a year, and while there were many great things about it, the one thing I could've done without were the frequent, if miniature, earthquakes. It seemed like every other month a little tremor would shudder through Tokyo, and it was terrifying to be in a basement-level-three store (not uncommon in such a space-tight city) during a temblor, wondering if you were going to be buried alive.
There were products you could buy to mitigate the effects of earthquakes, for example, many homes I saw had curtain-rod-like braces wedged between the top of bookshelves and the bottom of the ceiling. But now the Dynamic Designs Challenge is looking for design to take a larger role in dealing with the problem: They're putting out a call for student-designed earthquake-proof buildings.
Of course, design is just one of many moving parts (sorry, poor choice of words) required for this competition:
The competition will require participants to demonstrate many of the core attributes and skills required by employers and universities including teamwork, creative thinking, communication and the ability to solve complex challenges. The students will also apply skills in and knowledge of science and engineering, art and architecture, project management, finance and socio-economics.
LG Electronics has just announced their "Design the Future" phone concept Competition, held in conjunction with creatives services website CrowdSpring. First prize is $20,000, and here's the kicker:
LG isn't looking for a deliverable design.
"They are looking for sketches," [CrowdSpring co-founder Ross] Kimbarovsky said.
Whether the winning entry turns into a mobile phone for LG remains to be seen, but Kimbarovsky said it's "very realistic that a prototype will be made. The designs submitted could influence the phones we will see next year."
At the dawn of the '90s, a silly Jim Belushi/Charles Grodin movie had an ex-con finding a business executive's Filofax (remember those?) and using the information inside to essentially take over the businessguy's life.
In those pre-Palm days, all of that information could be contained in a thick book; nowadays, it's all in that tiny cell phone of yours that tends to fall out of your pocket in taxis.
Recognizing that, yesterday the UK's Design Council launched the Mobile Phone Security Challenge, a "search for designers and technologists to create 'crime-proof' mobiles:"
...research shows that 80% of phones contain data which can be used by criminals to access bank accounts, steal identity, or sell on personal data.
The Mobile Phone Security Challenge is offering a total of 400,000 pounds to designers and technology experts to come up with new ways of securing handsets, the data they contain, and their future use as electronic 'wallets' when m-commerce technology is introduced in the UK.
The Challenge is part of Design out Crime, an initiative from the Home Office Design & Technology Alliance Against Crime and the Design Council. The Mobile Phone Security Challenge is supported by the Technology Strategy Board.
"Lighting up the Gesu" was a rather unusual competition sponsored by the Design Montreal agency, in which entrants were asked to light the Gesu, Montreal's premier creative center, at night. Thirty-seven entries from architects, designers and students were fielded; the winning results can be seen here.
"MOY koncept is made for generation who uses technology as a means to express themselves and communicate with others.
The idea behind MOY koncept is that everyone can design their own car on their own computer and then apply the design to the vehicle using wireless data transfer or share it with other people through web-site, forum, e-mail etc.
To those who lack the necessary skills or time to create their own design, we offer the option of downloading ready made designs. The vehicles are interconnected, so the change is possibble in motion. Movement recognition technology enables us to draw on the car in real time. Since MOY can display both static images and videos, it can be used as a new medium of promotion.
Vehicle is powered by batteries that charge electromotors set in wheels and controlled by drive-by-wire technology. The body of the car is made of outer and inner policarbonate layers, with layers of liquid cristals, LED diodes and electrochromic foil (film) inbetween. "
"Acclaimed toy sculptor Dave Cortes' first designer toy - Pugzee is a gangster Pug from Red Hook Brooklyn. While working for the mob bosses in the old days, he got knocked and was serving jail time. When he heard that his old stomping grounds of Red Hook, Brooklyn was undergoing changes (gentrification), he decided it was time to break out of jail and reclaim his old hood. Pugzee is out!
Standing at about 4.5" tall, the piece comes with a removable hat, cigar, baseball bat, comic book, thought bubble cards and a dry erase marker to express your Pugzee's mood by writing on the thought bubble cards!
Limited pieces. First 100 pieces sold through Cookies -n- Cream will be signed by Dave himself!"
The Nature Conservancy, in conjunction with the Forest Stewardship Council, is sponsoring a materials-based design competition aimed squarely at industrial designers, furniture designers and architects.
The Going with the Grain Challenge is to design an original and compelling object that can be made from a single sheet of FSC-certified plywood measuring 4-feet x 8-feet x 1-inch.
Entries must be flat-pack designs using nor hardware or glue, which ought to make things tricky but interesting. The deadline is June 2nd, with the results to be announced just two weeks later. Click here for more information.
21 Million Americans live with diabetes, yet the devices we rely on generally don't hold a candle to the sleek design of consumer electronics (think iPod)... So patients are going "grassroots" to improve the design of tools for treating diabetes:
Do you have an idea for an innovative new diabetes device or web application? This is your chance to win up to $10,000 to realize your design concept, and potentially help transform life with diabetes for millions of people.
This competition is open to all. We welcome entries from any individuals or organizations passionate about diabetes and product design--patients, parents, caregivers, students, entrepreneurs, developers, engineers, etc. We also welcome entries from kids under age 18, which will be judged in a separate category.
Deadline: May 1st, 2009
PRIZES
- $10,000 in cash for the Grand Prize winner
- $5,000 cash for the "Most Creative Idea" category winner
- $2,000 cash for the winner of the Kids' Category
Last month we got you excited about the Green Sled Design Challenge, and now the results are in. If you weren't able to contribute this year, don't worry, the event is going annual.
The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) Boston hosted their first ever Green Sled Design Challenge 09, a contest that required participants to think, design and build a green sled made of 90 percent recycled materials.
For prizes, the Greenest Award went to team Epic from Ecovative Design for their recycled cardboard sled. Radius took the Best Aesthetic Award with its ironing board sled. Best Overall was awarded to team Dwight Ideas (a Mass Art student team) for a design that combined recycled skis and bicycle parts to create a unique and high performance sled.
Other entries consisted of sleds made of recycled/reused soda bottles, mailing tubes, tree limbs and chairs, among other things. The Co-sponsors were extremely pleased with the results. "The eco-benefit, industry support, and great turnout have us planning a 2nd annual Green event next year" - said Mario Gonzalez, Event Organizer and Designer at Radius Product Development - "It's a good way to keep everyone thinking green while having fun doing it."
This isn't bailout money, this is sustenance for the sustainable:
The Green Business Competition is a groundbreaking platform to promote emerging green businesses in New York. The competition will reward investment funds to companies that have the ability to revolutionize their industry by working with our ecological resources while creating economic opportunities.
Through participation in the competition, companies will gain valuable exposure to financial institutions, venture capitalists, consumers, prominent business leaders, government officials, and the media to help ignite the green economy. The Green Business Competition will be the first competition of its kind to showcase small businesses across all industries as the foundation of New York's emerging green economy.
Below are only some of the prizes. Check out the rest here:
Cash Prize:
1st Place: $8,000
2nd Place: $1,000
Office Space provided by Green Spaces:
1st Place: 1 year of desk rental ($6000)
2nd Place: 6 months of desk rental ($3000)
3rd Place: 3 months of lounge space ($675)
Website Development and Support provided by Squarespace:
1st Place: Design of your company's website (up to $2000) + 1 year of web hosting ($360)
2nd Place: 6 months of web hosting ($180)
3rd Place: 6 months of web hosting ($180)
Poor thermal insulation in buildings causes a massive waste of energy every day. In some cases the locations of poorly insulated areas and thermal bridges are quite obvious, but in most cases they are invisible to the human eye. The Thermal Torch combines the features of a thermal camera with the features of small handsized projectors. By panning over a wall or a window frame, the thermal image is projected on the surface directly at the spot of detection.
Since we take our gadgets with us everywhere, Greener Gadget Top 50 Semi-Finalist sunLight, designed by Hermann Eske, is a portable, scalable, versatile solar charger and flashlight, perfect for our everyday, everywhere needs.
sunLight represents a unique type of product. It embodies all aspects, such as generation, storage and consumption of electrical energy in one unit. All that sunLight needs to work is solar energy - you simply unfold it so that solar cell film is exposed to the sun and the enegry will recharge the batteries. Received power can be used in different ways, as a flashlight or for loading up connected gadgets (mobile phones or music players, for example).
For convenience sake, Greener Gadget Top 50 Semi-Finalist Laundry POD, designed by RKS Design Team, combines the salad spinner and the laundry machine, creating a new way to clean our clothes while saving energy at the same time!
While re-engineering and re-designing a salad spinner, we learned resourceful women were buying salad spinners to wash their delicates. This sparked the idea that the salad spinner technology we innovated could be used to create a portable, hand-powered laundry machine that would be far more appropriate for the task, than a salad spinner. The Laundry POD combines innovation and eco-conscious style to save energy, water and answer the need for a quick, easy, eco-friendly way to do small loads.
The International Energy Agency estimate that between 5 and 15% of the world's domestic electricity is wasted by gadgets left on standby. Scary, eh? Standby Monsters are packs of small, sticky-backed lenses with a reflective internal surface. They are designed to be stuck over the standby lights on gadgets at home - turning them into little pairs of glowing red eyes. They give us a little extra emotional nudge to remind us to turn our gadgets off properly - especially when we head off to bed.
It's that time of year again. Not Valentine's Day, we're talking about Electrolux's annual Design Lab competition:
The brief for the competition's 7th edition is to create thoughtfully-designed home appliances that will shape how people prepare and store food, wash clothes, and do dishes over the next nine decades.
The design ideas should address key consumer insights such as being adaptive to time and space, provide learning and allow for individualization.
A limited number of finalists will be invited to participate in the final event in London September 24, 2009, to present their entries to a jury of high-level designers and experts. The jury will review the entries based on intuitive design, innovation and consumer insight and then select a winner.
The Design Lab 2009 has a First Prize of 5,000 Euro and a six-month paid internship at one of the Electrolux global design centers. The second prize is 3,000 Euro and third prize 2,000 Euro.
Entry deadline is May 31, 2009. Click here for more info.
It's the last day to enter our new 1 Hour Design Challenge: Design a laser-cut grip tape inlay for a Longboard! Easy enough to bust out in an hour no problem, this competition welcomes designers of all flavors to create a longboard grip tape graphic, upload it to our discussion board, and win that design, laser-cut by Ponoko and mounted to a sweet Bustin Board. Enter as many as you like! Tell your friends!
THEME:
Laser-cut Grip Tape Inlay for a Longboard!
DOORS CLOSE:
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
9 PM PST (4 AM GMT)
BRIEF:
After a string of increasingly complex 1HDCs we figure it's time for a simpler task: make a graphic for a longboard skateboard! The twist here is that the design will be produced by laser-cutting grip tape for use on the top of the board (not the customary printing of a design on the underside of the board).
A colorful design competition: The American Design Club is calling for entries, on the theme of "Color"--with the intent to highlight emerging and contemporary design work within the United States.
Submission is free, but accepted applicants will pay a US $30 fee to cover associated costs with showing work.
Venue: The show will be held in March at Future Perfect Brooklyn, with a simulcast at TENOVERSIX in LA.
Also, don't let the name of the org fool you--you don't have to be American (or even a designer) to enter. Click here for more info, and ignore the deadline printed at the link; it's been extended to January 31st.
A current obstacle to the widespread adoption of OLEDs is that devices incorporating them are currently expensive. One way to clear that obstacle is by improving manufacturing techniques, which companies are working on; and once those lower-cost components come out, there will need to be objects designed to accomodate them.
The European Union is getting ready for these things by forming CombOLED, an Integrated European Project dedicated to reducing OLED's costs. We designers can't do anything about the cheaper manufacturing stuff--there are R&D geeks working on this around the clock--but ComboLED is sponsoring an OLED Design Contest to get ready for the new tech.
Participants are invited to submit solutions preferably on the following market fields:
We know it's kinda tricky to design an object around a technology that hasn't been solidified yet, but hey, no one said design was easy. Prizes for winning designs are in the thousands of Euros which, these days, is a damn sight better than getting paid in dollars. Click here for more info.
Plastic bottles deserve another chance. They take care of their precious liquid cargo when you have to drink on the go, then most of them get the old heave-ho when empty. This just isn't right, so we've teamed up with Tap'dNY for a Keep the Bottle Contest!
Tap'dNY pioneered the awesome concept that you should be drinking local tap water directly when you can, out of a bottle when you need to, and refilling, reusing or recycling the bottle when it's empty. They're working hard to save the planet, but we need to help out with more great ideas for reusing those bottles!
Show us what cool things you can do with a plastic bottle. After you've quenched your thirst, use your head to come up with some cool and funky uses for it. Whether it's super useful, artistic, or just plain silly, we want to see the creative ideas you come up with.
Winners will receive Voltaic solar-powered backpacks, and though you can only win one prize, there's no limit to the amount of ideas you can enter. Click here to get started!
As part of Core77's photo competition with Braun, we present periodic highlights from some of the best, most inspiring images. Make sure to visit www.core77.com/braunprize2009 to vote on your favorites, and enter your own inspiring photographs right here.
Matthew Carden, United States Broccoli Crown
Elisabeth Ouni, United States Unidentified Flying Objects
We mentioned the Vice Magazine sponsored Creative30 competition here a bit more than a month ago, in which 30 young British artists and designers presented their work in a fascinating collection of 3-minute videos ranging from music and graphics to furniture and conceptual art.
The two winners, recently announced, are extraordinary milliner William Chambers (see one of his many precise, exotic toppers above) and artist Katie Paterson, whose video describing records made of ice (above) and bouncing Morse Code off the moon made it into our initial post. Congratulations to Willilam and Katie--judging by the videos, it couldn't have happened to nicer people, or more thoughtful, meticulous work.
Of curious note, both winners are from Glasgow, despite a good fraction of Londoners in the running. Why's that, exactly?
NEW YORK DESIGN WEEK 2009
MILAN DESIGN WEEK 2009
PICTOPIA FESTIVAL 2009
HOME AND HOUSEWARES SHOW 2009
TRANSVERSALE 2009
NEW YORK CITY TOY FAIR 2009
IMM COLOGNE INTERNATIONAL FURNISHING SHOW
NORTH AMERICAN INT'L AUTO SHOW '09
TOKYO DESIGN WEEK 2008
LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL 2008
BICYCLE
100 PERCENT DESIGN SHANGHAI
