With 1.13 billion people worldwide with unique needs, it's becoming even more important to create design solutions that empower, advance and include groups often overlooked in the design process. Metropolis Magazine's annual Next Generation Design Competition encourages designers to consider solutions that help a broad range of people to live better lives, beautifully.
With $10,000 USD in prize money for the winner, the competition strives for solutions, "at all scales, from systems, experiences, places, to spaces, products, or any area that needs to be made inclusive and empowering." Think of your aging parents, grandparents, younger siblings and peers. With a deadline of February 18, 2013, the opportunity is too good to pass. Learn more about the competition here!
Not positive, but I think this machine is designed to turn one leg pink
More than a few industrial designers (including your correspondent) have had to pay the bills by designing something we're, ah, not exactly proud of: forgettable gewgaws and temporary tchotchkes that aren't exactly MoMA material. But the luckiest among us get to design objects with purpose and meaning. Anyone who designs medical products is up near the top of that pile, and if you're one of them, here's your chance to shine.
The 15th Annual Medical Design Excellence Awards are now seeking submissions for 2013, with a deadline of December 7th (or January 11th if you're made of money and don't mind paying an extra $100). There's ten different categories ranging from emergency & critical care to surgical and packaging (full list here), and as you can imagine of the medical field, the evaluations will be rigorous:
Entries are evaluated by a multidisciplinary panel of jurors with expertise in industrial design, engineering, human factors, manufacturing, medicine, and other design and healthcare-related fields. Selected products must not only pass design and engineering excellence, manufacturing effectiveness and innovation, but also the overall benefit to the medical and healthcare industry.
"Most [design] competitions," says Sam Hecht, "are a way of predicting what the judges are looking for. But with the Lexus Design Award, what's intriguing is that we can go past the act of persuasion, and we can get into the realms of real thinking and real dialogue."
There's a new international design competition in town, and it's not the type that's finished once you send in your concept—in fact, your initial entry could be just the beginning. Winners of the Lexus Design Award will be invited to work with Hecht and/or architect Junya Ishigami, to develop their ideas into prototypes that'll be shown at Milan Design Week next year.
The LDA has a Logan's Run-style age cut-off of 30, but ten talented twentysomethings (or teens, if you can stop texting long enough to read this) will make the final cut. As for the theme, you'd assume the entries must be vehicle designs, but Lexus is keeping the design brief abstract:
The theme of the LEXUS DESIGN AWARD 2012 is motion—a word and concept directly connected to people's everyday lives. Under this theme, Lexus welcomes innovators and calls for works that display a deep understanding of Lexus design, uniquely interpret concepts and provide original perspectives on and solutions to various issues of daily life. Lexus welcomes designers' from all fields, such as architecture, product design and fashion.
Here's Hecht expounding on the concept a bit:
I realize most non-designers don't know who Hecht is, but it's weird to see him ride a bicycle around London anonymously—I wonder if Starck could get away with the same in Paris. (It's also a bit odd that the subtitles don't quite match Hecht's diction, but I assume they're trying to make it easier to parse for those who can read English better than they can speak it.)
Interested entrants have until December 31st to apply.
Just a friendly reminder that there's just a few more weeks left to enter The Battery Conservancy's Draw Up A Chair Competition for innovative, portable outdoor seating in the public park. The 25-acre green space on the south tip of Manhattan overlooking New York Habor welcomes six million tourists annually. Juried by MoMA's Paola Antonelli, the Campana Brothers, The New York Times' Allison Arieff, Founder of Design Within Reach and CEO of Public Bikes Rob Forbes, and Co-Founder and Director of Grupo de Diseño Urbano Mario Schjetnan, finalists work will be prototyped and showcased at the Design Miami/ fair. The winner will be awarded a US$10,000 prize and their design will be fabricated for use in the park. As Adrian Benepe, New York City Parks & Recreation Commissioner explains:
New York City is known for its innovative landscapes and we look forward to improving Battery Park with a great new design for outdoor seating. The Battery is New York City's birthplace and as the original waterfront park, it has long served as a social hub and a place of arrival for newcomers. This creative competition will highlight ideas on how we can continue capturing the spirit of one of New York City's most cherished landscapes and meeting places.
The Battery Conservancy Americas Design Competition Draw Up a Chair
Call for Submissions Now through October 30th
Installation of winning design, June 2014
The competition is open to students and professionals across the Americas: Canada, The United States, Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean. Download the brief and sign up for competition updates today!
Battery Park Garden of Remembrance. Image courtesy of Battery Conservancy
The BraunPrize wrapped up a record year, honoring 39 designs from around the world in their 2012 program. Over 100 design professionals (including former Heads of Braun Design Dieter Rams and Peter Schneider) making up this year's Design Forum gathered at Braun's Frankfurt headquarters today to hear final presentations from 3 Student and 3 Professional/Design Enthusiast finalists to award the winners for 2012's BraunPrize.
Olivier Grabes and Dieter Rams
The jury, consisting of Oliver Grabes (Head of Braun Design) Naoto Fukasawa (Naoto Fukasawa Design), Jane Fulton Suri (Managing Partner IDEO), Dr. Dirk Freund (Director of R&D Braun) and Anne Bergner (Former BraunPrize Winner and Professor of Integrated Product Design at University of Applied Sciences Coburg) had done most of the heavy lifting over 3 days in June. They combed through over 10 kilometers of paperwork (almost 2,400 entries) representing 73 countries from around the world and emerged with 3 finalists for the Student, Professional and Sustainability categories, as well as 15 notable entries from both student and professional entries representing National Winners.
Naoto Fukasawa and Jane Fulton Suri
The Global Gold Winner for the Student category was awarded to Sebastian Reichel for Agil, a flexible walking aid. Using innovative materials and construction, Reichel started with the notion that a walking stick could be an extension of one's arm to provide stability and support. Through careful design research and engineering considerations he found that creating hollow chambers within an "S"-shaped handle allowed for a dynamic and natural motion from the user.
The audience got a special surprise when Dieter Rams raised his hand and approached the podium to do some user testing. Unfortunately, the product on display was just a design display, not a functional prototype. Congratulations to Sebastian on his win! His work sheds light on the importance of designing for the aging population as well as those with disability.
Silver for the Student category was awarded to former boyscout Jussi Koskimäki for his First Aid Cover, an emergency blanket that can provide basic CPR and aid guide to timid bystanders in an emergency situation. The Cover could be distributed through first aid kits and emergency locations in public places. Bronze went to Dirk Hessenbruch for Mo, a flexible bike share and urban mobility system (as seen on Core77).
Dirk Hessenbruch's Mo System
The Global Gold Winner for the Professional/Enthusiast category went to Känguru, designed by Berlin-based designer Oliver Klein. The father of two designed a baby carrier and bicycle seat in one as a "mobility concept for the urban context with Infant." While presenting his concept to the Design Forum, Klein shared his 6 driving design considerations: Ergonomic transition between baby carrier and bike seat, a lightweight frame design that was inspired by the hollow bone structure of birds, a quick and easy bike mount, tool-free disassembly for easy cleaning and care, and an option for custom-made frames through rapid prototyping. I particularly liked the adjustable sling for the baby that can accomodate children as they grow from 6-24 months.
Along with Mondo Guerra of Project Runway and Jill Fehrenbacher of Inhabitat, our own Executive Editor LinYee Yuan was one of the three judges in HP + Project Runway laptop bag design contest. Earlier this month, they narrowed down the pool of applicants to their 40 favorites, which have been posted in an online gallery for your viewing and voting pleasure in order to determine the five lucky entrants who will make the cut for the final round and a chance to win the $10,000 grand prize.
The 12-day public voting period has flown by: public voting closes at midnight tonight, so head over to the Jury's Choice gallery, check out what your friends and fellow designers have come up with, and vote for your favorite one.
We can't believe there's less than one week left before this year's Interaction Awards entry period closes! And as you IxDA members busily ready your entries, we are proud to announce that Adobe Typkit has joined in on the fun as a sponsor. Their involvement will help support the costs of this year's Interaction Awards jury session in New York City, as well as the subsequent documentaries highlighting this year's Interaction Awards winning work.
And if you want a taste of what the jury members Marc Rettig, Founder & Principal at Fit Associates (USA), Steve Baty (Australia), Matt Cottam (The Netherlands), Liz Danzico (USA), Matias Duarte (USA), Dan Hill (Finland) and Anab Jain (UK) might have to contend with, see the below short film covering last year's jury deliberations.
Remember, the last day to enter the IxDA's Interaction Awards is on Monday, October 1st. We'll be live at the Interaction Awards celebrations at the IxDA Conference in Toronto this coming January and we look forward to seeing you all there!
This post is sponsored by the sleek, stylish, lightweight HP Spectre XT Ultrabook™, inspired by Intel. Vote for your favorite bag design!
Phase One of HP Ultrabook's Bag Design Competition is over and the Contest Experts have spoken. There were plenty of great designs and we at Core77 would like to congratulate all of the entrants. However, in the end, 40 semi-finalists have been selected to move onto the next phase of this competition in pursuit of designing the ultimate HP Bag.
It's now time for YOU to determine which five of the top 40 semi-finalists are worthy of the potential grand prize. Voting will remain open until September 26th, with the top five vote-getters advancing to the final phase where the Contest Experts will choose one of those five as the Grand Prized Winner.
Remember, there's a lot on the line for these forty potential winners—the five finalists will receive a new HP Spectre XT Ultrabook, undoubtedly a nice prize, but nothing compared to the $10,000 cash prize for first place (plus the laptop!). So make your voice heard and VOTE TODAY to let us know who you think truly deserves to win.
Do you believe in better living through better design? The Spark community was founded on the principal that great design can help us get to a better world—better lives, better health, better water, better air.
The countdown clock is ticking on the entry period for this year's SparkAwards! Monday, September 17th is the deadline for regular entry and October 7th is their late deadline. It's not too late to enter this year's SparkAwards program.
Five unique categories of entry, not to mention a special "All:Spark" designation, are open to all design levels from novice to professional. Find out more details about this year's categories below:
Don't miss your opportunity to enter today! As a bonus, the winners of the 2012 Spark:Concept Awards, Spark:Communication Awards, Spark:Product Awards, Spark:Spaces Awards and the Spark:Mobility Awards will become the stars of the next Spark Annual book, to be published in 2013.
Just a reminder! You only have two more weeks to participate in HEINEKEN's challenge to Reinvent the Draught Beer Experience! With their focus on innovation, HEINEKEN is asking you to help them design the ultimate draught beer-drinking fantasy for a chance to participate in a two-day expert-led workshop in Amsterdam and to win a share of $10,000 in prize money! The sky's the limit as HEINEKEN encourages you to take inspiration from new technological advances in music, entertainment, UX and product design. Enter your designs by September 28th! We checked out some of the current submissions and here are a couple of our faves:
Pitt Withbeck's Mile High Drinking Club
David Dryer's Digital Tap—Happy Hour is only a Tap away!
Robin S, Beer As I Like It allows consumers to personalize their beer.
This post is sponsored by the sleek, stylish, lightweight HP Spectre XT Ultrabook™, inspired by Intel. Design a bag that is just as stylish!
Don't miss out on this opportunity to win $10,000 and an HP Envy Ultrabook by designing the ultimate laptop bag. HP and Project Runway are teaming up to sponsor this creative contest, a perfect start to your school year or fall season. Juried by Jill Fehrenbacher, founder of Inhabitat, Mondo Gurerra of Project Runway and LinYee Yuan, Editor at Core77, the designs should display innovation, style, design details, practicality, marketability and appropriateness for the HP Ultrabook ENVY.
Mondo's bag is on show here in this post...can you do better? Don't wait! Get your ideas together and enter TODAY. The entry period ends this SATURDAY so start sketching your laptop bag designs now. See full contest details here!
This post is sponsored by the sleek, stylish, lightweight HP Spectre XT Ultrabook™, inspired by Intel. Design a bag that is just as stylish!
We all have one—you know, one of those bulky, semi-functional laptop bag. It might be utilitarian black or pop paisley, but chances are it's more protection than style statement. There's no room to complain...here's your chance to throw your hat in the ring to win $10,000 and an HP Envy Ultrabook by designing the ultimate laptop bag in the HP + Project Runway Design Contest.
As a sponsor of Lifetime TV's Project Runway, HP has a commitment to style and design. Their new, sleek HP ENVY Ultrabook laptop weighs in just under 4 pounds with a slim profile of 14.72"W x 9.95"D x 0.78" H and is in need of your designs. The jury panel composed of Jill Fehrenbacher, founder of Inhabitat, Mondo Gurerra of Project Runway and LinYee Yuan, Editor at Core77 will be looking for designs that display innovation, style, design details, practicality, marketability and appropriateness for the HP Ultrabook ENVY.
First, design a bag to hold an HP ENVY Ultrabook: the dimensions are 37.4 cm (14.72") W x 25.3 cm (9.95") D x 2 cm (0.78"). Then check out the contest site where you can:
Upload up to five images of your design (in a .jpg, .png, or .gif format at 800x600 pixels wide)
Enter a Title of your Design
Enter a short explanation of your bag design: concept/design/inspiration and include materials used, size/dimensions of bag, and production/manufacturing process
Don't wait, enter your designs today! The deadline for entries is Saturday, SEPTEMBER 8th! The second phase of the contest opens up voting to the public to identify five finalists who will win their own HP Envy Ultrabook. The jury team picks a winner for the $10,000 prize!
A truly original contest needs a true original to kick it off. Watch the official announcement from Project Runway winning designer Mondo Guerra and Inhabitat's Jill Fehrenbacher.
The second annual Interaction Awards is now open for entries! This year's program looks to honor six categories of work that speaks to the intention behind the interactions designers create: optimizing, engaging, empowering, expressing, connecting and disrupting.
Have your work reviewed by an international panel of experts including Jury Chair Marc Rettig, Founder & Principal at Fit Associates (USA), Steve Baty (Australia), Matt Cottam (The Netherlands), Liz Danzico (USA), Matias Duarte (USA), Dan Hill (Finland) and Anab Jain (UK). Read full bios of this year's jury team here.
In its inaugural year, the IxDA 2012 Interaction Awards honored 26 projects with San Francisco-based agency Stimulant taking home Best in Show and Best in Category, Expressing for Loop Loop, an innovative music sequencer app for Sifteo cubes. Check out the full lineup of the 2012 winners here.
So IxDA member ready your projects!! Entries will be accepted from now until October 1st. A shortlist of 75 projects will be announced in October 2012 and showcased online to be evaluated by your peers for a coveted People's Choice award. Final awardees will be announced at this year's IxDA Conference in Toronto. Don't wait! Register today!!
New York residents are generally pretty savvy about waste management companies' rules for putting out recycling—glass and plastics in transparent bags, newspaper and cardboard bundled—and I remember seeing (somewhat baffling) rows of recycling bins in Tokyo, but it requires diligence on a broad scale. Hence, statistics such as: "The average Dane generates about 624 kg of waste per year [but only] 12% of the daily waste is recycled."
Cause for concern though this may be, the situation also presents an opportunity. Denmark's largest waste mangement company Vestforbrænding is partnering with Join.dk to hold an international design competition to motivate Danes to "Sort Your Trash Can."
The brief? To create a "version of a user-friendly sorting-can that fits the private Danish household." Entries will be judged on five criteria: behavior change, design communication, flexibility, context and functionality.
...citizens are not just citizens. They are a collection of very diverse people with different needs. There are large families and small families, single people, older people and some with special needs. Some people need big bins, others need small bins. Some citizens would like to have their garbage cans out of sight, while others want to flash their environmental awareness. Some want their trash out by the garage, others want it right outside the kitchen window.
But there's a twist, of sorts: the community is encouraged to comment, tossing out ideas for a chance to win additional prizes such as an iPad 3.
The ideal process is to upload a brainstorm sketch of your initial thoughts as early as possible, while end users, Vestforbænding and everybody else on Join.dk can give suggestions for improvements of your idea. If lots of people like and comment on your design or idea and you also implement modifications, your design will get more positive attention.
As any red-blooded beer drinker can tell you, there's something special and refreshing about draught beer. HEINEKEN reinvented the category in 2005 when they introduced the DraughtKeg, a portable draught beer system that was a feat of engineering and design. Fast-forward to today's Ideas Brewery Challenge and designers have an opportunity to take inspiration from new technological advances in music, entertainment, UX and product design and implement these ideas into a full-service on-premise Draught Beer Experience.
The Ideas Brewery asks designers to take into account the following areas as hotspots for innovation:
Sitting on a public bench in any number of New York City's increasing green spaces is a revelation. For one, the diversity of these settings has become a hallmark for both residents and visitors to the City. Public benches come in the form of wooden chaise loungers on the abandoned railroad tracks of the Highline, Ignacio Ciocchini's sleek laser-cut stainless steel CityBench popping up along Broadway, the iconic wooden slatted NYC Park benches in the solitude of Central Park or the more recent sprouting of cafe tables and folding chairs in the public plazas taking over the streets of New York.
Here's your chance to be part of a great New York City tradition. The Battery Conservancy has announced a design competition for innovative, portable outdoor seating for The Battery. The 25-acre green space on the south tip of Manhattan overlooking New York Habor welcomes six million tourists annually. Juried by MoMA's Paola Antonelli, the Campana Brothers, The New York Times' Allison Arieff, Founder of Design Within Reach and CEO of Public Bikes Rob Forbes, and Co-Founder and Director of Grupo de Diseño Urbano Mario Schjetnan, finalists work will be prototyped and showcased at the Design Miami/ fair. The winner will be awarded a US$10,000 prize and their design will be fabricated for use in the park. As Adrian Benepe, New York City Parks & Recreation Commissioner explains:
New York City is known for its innovative landscapes and we look forward to improving Battery Park with a great new design for outdoor seating. The Battery is New York City's birthplace and as the original waterfront park, it has long served as a social hub and a place of arrival for newcomers. This creative competition will highlight ideas on how we can continue capturing the spirit of one of New York City's most cherished landscapes and meeting places.
There is a sanitation crisis in India. Thousands of children die every day from preventable diarrhea. Women spend 200 million hours collecting water every day. For every $1 invested in water and sanitation, $8 is returned in increased productivity.
Armed with these startling facts, WASH United (WAter, Sanitation & Hygiene) and innovation consultancy Quicksand is launching a 6-week campaign to proselytize with song, dance, theater and art about their message of clean water and sanitation for all. Taking inspiration from typical Indian mela, village carnivals, the Great WASH Yatra is a traveling mega-event journeying across 8 locations in 5 Indian states this Fall. Along with the standard fare of rides, performances and vendors of all kinds, the Great WASH Yatra will feature projects from a select group of Yatra Fellows.
Funded through the Swiss Agency for Development & Cooperation, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and GIZ, you can be part of a unique entertainment experience while enacting behavioral change through a robust educational outreach program. The program fellows have an opportunity to participate in both the grassroots promotional campaign as well as the actual caravan for the Great WASH Yatra. Festivities kickoff on October 2nd, Mahatma Gandhi's Birthday, and wrapup on November 19th, World Toilet Day (who knew?)
If you're passionate about design for social impact and interested in a little adventure, here's your opportunity to participate:
Create a proposal for what you would like to at the Great WASH Yatra.
Check out the video below to get a taste of what's in store. The performance highlighted is the culmination of a month-long collaborative project undertaken as part of the Unbox Festival. A collaboration with an international team of performance makers, writers, artists, designers and traditional Indian puppeteers, the production will be on tour with the Great WASH Yatra.
Winner of our Redesign Challenge, Sham Bakrania's lightbulb of innovation.
Design to the Rescue!
We asked and you delivered! Earlier this summer we asked you to help us redesign the Designed in USA brand certification logomark. Our jury panel of Lance Hussey, Principal at RKS, and LinYee Yuan, editor at Core77, evaluated a strong pool of submissions encompassing a wide range of design perspectives. In the end, we evaluated the submission using a guiding criteria for review: 1) Flexibility of logomark across materials, color, packaging and products 2) Legibility at differing scales 3) Clarity of Intent 4) Iconic Potential.
After much deliberation, we are pleased to announce the winning designs, runner-up and notables:
WINNER - Sham Bakrania
A testament to our global pursuit of design excellence, the winning entry is simple, recognizable and iconic. A floating star, "represents the United States and the American way of innovation," reflects Lance Hussey, Principal at RKS.
Since the birth of the nation, the only thing that propelled the country to grow were those who were brave enough to see things in a new way. The light bulb (symbol for an idea) combines with the star to represents the "Yankee ingenuity" that made America what it is. Beyond that, a more specific meaning that the logo might relate back to is the ultimate American inventor/designer, Thomas Edison, creator of the light bulb. Design has to do with creativity, ingenuity, innovation, and hard work. Edison's quote "Genius is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration" represents the ideals of a true designer. Design includes the hard work of research and hours of molding physical models and trials before the desired product/experience.
Overall, the logo uses a simple icon that represents many ideals of design to embody what true design is all about. Over the next few weeks, Sham will work with Lance and his team at RKS to refine his design before releasing the final version, available for download and usage at DesignedInUSA.com.
RUNNER-UP - Justin Desilva
Our runner-up was the design by RISD alum, Justin Desilva. This logo was subtle and simple and made a statement with 6 bold lines. A flexible communication system, Desilva's design can be expanded to highlight different methods of production with unique adaptations to represent each function (Designed in USA, Assembled in USA, Made is USA).
From Harlem to Hell's Kitchen, Little Italy to the Lower East Side, Manhattan used to be all about buildings bursting to the seams with families. But while NYC's outer boroughs still retain that model, Manhattan has taken a sharp turn in a different direction. Today a staggering 46.3% of Manhattan households consist of just one person, making it, in the words of AP News, "the U.S. capital of solo living." Which isn't cheap—the average price of a single-person studio is now $2,000 a month. But now, under direction from NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, design is being called upon to address this trend.
Yesterday the Mayor's Office announced the adAPT NYC Competition, which seeks designs for rental apartment buildings featuring "micro-units" of just 275 to 300 square feet—a significant step as up until now, NYC laws have required apartments no smaller than 400 square feet.
A test building at 27th Street and 1st Avenue has been allocated to receive the winning design:
At least 75 percent of the units in the building will be micro-units, which are expected to measure approximately 275 to 300 square feet. These efficient, self-contained units will include kitchens and bathrooms. The... design guidelines encourage the development of a mixed-use building with apartments that have substantial access to light and air to create a sense of openness. Responses will be judged on affordability and competitive land purchase price; innovative micro-unit layout and building design; and experience developing housing in New York City....
"adAPT NYC is a fantastic opportunity to create a model of housing that could be replicated in other locations and contexts to expand New York City's housing stock," said [Department of Housing Preservation and Development] Commissioner Wambua. "We're looking for creativity, affordability, imaginative design and responsiveness to the needs of real New Yorkers. Show us something we haven't seen before that is ingenious, sustainable, replicable and practical, and we will work with you to make it a reality."
Interested designers should plan to attend a pre-submission conference on July 31st at the American Institute of Architects' Center for Architecture on LaGuardia Place.
Earlier this year, we told you about the "Live/Work" Design Contest, which challenged designers to dream up the next "classic of tomorrow" for the home office. Today, our friends at Dwell on Design and Design Within Reach gave us a little heads up and shared with us this year's winner, whose design could potentially be manufactured and sold by DWR.
Besting 587 entries, the grand prize winner is Chicago-based designer Amanda Ip with the Innermix Desk, created with the designer's own live/work preference. The desk offers a large workspace and simple storage solutions that together create a clean, organized work area. That touch of color also adds a sense of fun and play, a welcome change to a predominantly gray and bleak office furniture.
Congratulations, Amanda! We hope to see the Innermix Desk in DWR stores soon!
The Panther by Volido, excerpt from the original DIY Furniture Book
Although we love to checkout (and write about) beautiful home furnishings, there's really nothing more satisfying than building it yourself. And as we shared in our 2011 End of Year/End of the World Gift Guide, the DIY Furniture Book is a step-by-step guide to building your own, modern furnishings for home or bomb shelter!
Lucky for all you DIY builders, the editors of DIY Furniture are preparing for a sequel with a call for submissions. Along with the editor's curated list of designers, they are seeking works from builders like you!
Use readily available off-the-shelf parts (from the hardware store or online like McMaster-Carr) as the materials for your original design. No variations or reproductions of existing designs! The goal is to create unique gallery/boutique worthy furniture that no one has seen before.
Optimus Prime was a Mack truck in the cartoons, but in the Transformers movies he switched over to Peterbilt. And if the Peterbilt brand is good enough for the leader of the Autobots, they're surely worthy of your design attention.
Peterbilt Motors, in conjunction with (Core77 Design Awards Transportation Judge) Local Motors, is holding a competition to redesign their next-generation Peterbilt Icon cab. Entrants are asked to incorporate traditional Peterbilt styling into the new RIG2 (Road Icon Generation 2), to "Provide a design to stir the emotions of the owner while still communicating practicality and functionality."
The competition's splash page is pretty helpful, spelling out the terminology of the parts entrants will need to be fluent in, and both Photoshop and CAD models are provided to serve as underlays.
Here's a quick look at how you've got some wiggle room with some of the underpinnings:
Congratulations to our friends at the BraunPrize—in it's 18th year, the competition seeking "genius design for a better everyday" has received a record-breaking number of entries. Almost 2,400 entries from 73 countries were submitted for consideration. For the first time in the BraunPrize's history, the competition was open to design professionals, enthusiasts as well as design students. The expanded audience is part of Braun's mission "to make industrial design more widely accessible." To support that mission, Core77 and Braun challenged our readers to find Design in the Wild—a photo challenge identifying genius design for a better every day in categories like eat, work, play, relax.
This year's BraunPrize also established a new Sustainability Award recognizing design projects with a strong focus on sustainable solutions. National Awards were also added to increase awareness across local design communities.
Top, L to R: Naoto Fukasawa, Jane Fulton Suri, Anne Bergner; Bottom, L to R: Oliver Grabes, Dirk Freund (Director of Braun R&D)
The BraunPrize jury—consisting of Professor Oliver Grabes as jury chairman and Head of Design at Braun, Dr. Dirk Freund as Head of R&D at Braun, and the globally renowned design experts Naoto Fukasawa, Jane Fulton Suri and Professor Anne Bergner—also had to decide on the global Sustainability Award winner as well as the respective national award winners. We look forward to recognizing the winners of this year's BraunPrize 2012 this year at the BraunPrize Ceremony taking place September 26, 2012 in Kronberg, Germany.
From time to time we post word of notable design competitions, where all it takes is a designer with a good idea and skills that can net them thousands in prize money. But what we've got here today is something like a super-competition, with a lot more money at stake (millions), broader requirements than just design skills, and a much higher barrier to entry.
The U.S. Government's Advanced Manufacturing Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge is a US $26 million initiative to boost regional economies. If the competition's name doesn't tip you off, let us spell it out: This being the U.S. Gov we're talking about, the Challenge will be a fiendishly complicated course to navigate involving tons of paperwork and an alphabet soup of organizations you'd have to deal with. You can't apply as an individual, but must be part of a nonprofit, institution of higher learning or a business entity. But there's $2.3 million in it for every winning project, and by virtue of the fact that this involves manufacturing, it means designers can be players.
What the Challenge is hoping to set up is not on the scale of individual products, like a Kickstarter or Quirky project; they're trying to get clusters going, those interconnected networks of different types of firms that spells out, long-term, more jobs. Here's a more specific description:
Clusters are made up of industries, and build on a region's traditional strengths and assets. Because every region has a unique competitive advantage that is built on unique regional assets, the existing and emerging clusters present often differs from community to community.
For example, one region with strong university and research centers may leverage their technical expertise in composite materials to support the regional composites cluster by helping support supply chains and providing technical expertise on how to advance existing composite materials while another region that has a strong transportation and manufacturing sector may focus on leveraging their university and community colleges to advance the automotive and aerospace companies in the region.
The bottom line: If you've got an idea for a cluster, and are part of an organization that you think could successfully navigate the bureaucracy required to get your project off of the ground, dive in here.
Designers! This is your last chance to enter the Core77 Redesign Challenge for the DESIGNED IN USA Logomark! After much discussion, you asked and we delivered a challenge to let you flex your communication design muscles to redesign the USA brand certification logomark for Designed in USA.
Current design for the Designed in USA Logomark
Between now and midnight PDT Sunday, June 3rd, 2012 designers are invited to submit your redesign of the DESIGNED IN USA Logomark. Entries will be judged by the editorial department of Core77 and the Creative Team of RKS, and the three best will be determined and revealed. Winning designs will then be added to the website for download and use by the design and business community. Designs will be judged on the basis of creativity, appropriateness, applicability, and iconic potential. Good luck!
PRIZES
Winner: $150 from RKS and $100 Gift Certificate to Hand-Eye Supply and opportunity to work with Lance Hussey to refine the final design.
In the end, the team of Johanna Lapray (ENSCI), Florent Julien (ENSCI) and Joseph Willet (SCAD) impressed our team of jurors: Core77 Editor-in-Chief Allan Chochinov, Dror Benshetrit, Giulio Cappellini, Simone Rothman (TaiPing) and Chantal Hamaide (Intramuros).
"The SUV Lamp impressed the jury because it was a big idea, perfectly executed and off the beaten path from most laser-cut modular lamps. It's sly use of the marble-ized 3M film, the front grill pattern, the 'volume described by a curved plane'—these were all very sophisticated elements that combined to create a very resolved, unique product." Core77 Congratulates all the students for a job well done!
FRIEZE NEW YORK 2013
INTERNATIONAL HOME + HOUSEWARES SHOW 2013
TOKYO DESIGN WEEK 2012
BEIJING DESIGN WEEK 2012
Battery Park Garden of Remembrance. Image courtesy of Battery Conservancy
Olivier Grabes and Dieter Rams
Naoto Fukasawa and Jane Fulton Suri
Dirk Hessenbruch's Mo System
Pitt Withbeck's Mile High Drinking Club
David Dryer's Digital Tap—Happy Hour is only a Tap away!
Robin S, Beer As I Like It allows consumers to personalize their beer.
Winner of our Redesign Challenge, Sham Bakrania's lightbulb of innovation.
The Panther by Volido, excerpt from the original DIY Furniture Book
Top, L to R: Naoto Fukasawa, Jane Fulton Suri, Anne Bergner; Bottom, L to R: Oliver Grabes, Dirk Freund (Director of Braun R&D)
Current design for the Designed in USA Logomark
