Core77

The candidates have until next Tuesday, but you? You have just nine hours left, to get your brilliant Voting Booth concept finished up and posted to our 1 Hour Design Challenge forum. The competition, with guest judges William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand (of Winterhouse, Design Observer and Polling Place Photo Project fame), closes tonight at 9pm sharp, Pacific Time, meaning those of you out east have all the way until midnight, and the rest of you have until...breakfast or happy hour or something.

Specifics are as per usual: spend no more than one hour (honor system) not including time spent thinking it up; submit your concept as an image to the 1HDC forum; use whatever digital or analog media you prefer; and completely blow our minds with inventiveness, clever commentary or sweet imagery. The clock is ticking, and design democracy hangs in the balance--we're counting on you.

>>See all entries, and submit your own here<<

Cannondale is hoping their Bad Boy will be a good incentive for design; they're giving a BB to the winner of their "Commuter Bike for the Masses" design competition.

Do you have an idea for a bicycle that might persuade the average person, with no prior interest in cycling, to park the car and pedal to work? That is the main idea behind this competition. The scope is up to you--choose to come up with a whole new form factor for a pedal powered machine, or focus on specific details that you consider key to accomplishing the goal of getting the average non-cyclist to consider riding a bike for transportation.

Don't be constrained by products that are currently on the market, but do make sure that your concepts are based in reality (don't break the laws of physics, etc) and that they are manufacturable using existing technology. All concepts submitted will be considered, so be creative and have fun.

A jury of 6 industrial designers and 1 journalist will review and discuss the submissions to choose a winner. The jury will be looking for creative and sound concepts that are clearly defined, original, and innovative. Presentation counts too, so do your best to sell us on your concept.

Deadline's December 5th, so get those pedals churnin'.

Good entries keep rolling in for this months 1 Hour Design Challenge - Design Democracy edition - and you all seem to be having a lot of fun with it. Recently we've gotten several proposals that take the concept of the voting booth to some ridiculous, commentary-laden extremes, like this one from jknodell, that puts voters through a hudraulic-enabled carnival ride showing the potential consequences of their vote before letting them stagger dizzily to the adjacent voting booth:

Then we've got Brett_nyc's keen observation about the similarity between the decision Morpheus poses to Neo, and the one we're all facing on Nov. 4:

Vinishree turns the booth into a sculpture, depicting a barren tree that bursts into life as votes are added to it:

But the most fun so far is probably this gem from TheMunesterOfPortSalut. Not much to look at:

but read the description:

...November 4th, all channels broadcast recordings of debate/discussion during voting hours.

-Cameras behind the screen identify the viewer's retina and track eye motion.

-A monkey with a tamborine is superimposed between the candidates.

-The candidate who gets the most attention gets the viewers passive vote.

-Attendance at a polling place replaces the passive vote with an active vote.

-If the monkey wins, congress must entertain a motion that the US recognize the next American Idol as Supreme Dictator of the Known Universe...

You've still got three more days to submit your democracy-saving design, and remember, every entry gets personally reviewed by no less than William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand, who constitute two-thirds of Design Observer's editorial staff, and founded The Polling Place Photo Project now featured on the New York Times. So you know you'll be getting some good feedback.

>>See all entries, and submit your own here<<

It's a bit broad and uneven, but the Volvo- and Vice-sponsored Creative30 competition/website offers some great creative eye-candy, in the form of 3-minute videos of some of the most phenomenally talented young designers and artists the UK currently has to offer. As the name implies, thirty subjects have been selected to showcase and talk about their work, which ranges from sculpture and visual arts to music, fashion and furniture design. Visitors to the site are invited to cast a vote for their favorite, and the winner drives off in a Volvo (runner up has to settle for £10,000 in cash "to help launch their career").

As a bunch of product designers, we're drawn immediately toward Julian Mayor's structurally complex one-off furniture pieces:

but we have to admit to falling hard for Glaswegian Katie Paterson's beautifully nerdy conceptual art, which includes records made of ice that play back the sounds of glaciers moving:

Voting runs until November 16; vote as many times as you like, but only once per person per day.

Indeed it is that time of year again, and in honor of Halloween, Core77's taking part in Instructable's DIY Halloween Contest. Here's the (brief) design brief:

We want to see what delightfully frightful items you've made and we have dozens of awesome prizes to give away! You can enter an Instructable, photos, or video, just make it amazing and it will be eligible to win in one of our six categories: Hack-o-Lantern, Costume, Gadgets and Gizmos, Decorations, Food, and Green, or our Photo and Video categories!

Core77 Editors' Choice Prize
Core77 will select one entry for its Editors' Choice. The prize is a custom Core77 Dremel kit worth $85! There are also tie-ins with Ponoko and a pile of interesting prizes up for grabs, so fire up those glue guns and get in the game!

And how can a trip to Helsinki be complete without the obligatory Nokia mention? Textually.org informs us about Nokia's Music Almighty Headset Competition. Here are the essential details,

a quirky design contest that asks anyone to submit designs for Nokia headsets, with the five winning design concepts actually being tailor made into real-life fully working products and showcased as a collection in Nokia's flagship stores.

The competition will run until the end of December. Any designs that are submitted will be uploaded to the Gallery on the Music Almighty Headset Competition site.

Once up there anyone can vote for the designs. The top 10 highest rated will be whittled down to five winners chosen by a panel of design and music experts.

Comments on nokiaconversations inform us that the headset designer sure is fun to play around with, so give it try.

Our friends at iLounge have launched a new competition, challenging readers to "submit an original high-resolution photograph of an iPod or iPhone in a provocative setting--a person, people, and/or eye-catching background can appear along with the device." The entries are just starting to bubble in, and apart from the (obvious) goat and chicken entries, we're just not feeling it yet. This is either too easy or too hard, but check out the rules and see if you can help raise the bar here. (Yup, that was intentional.)