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A chance for students to win fame, acclaim, prizes…and a *&%t hot job!

Initiated by Think (the SA Communication Design Council) and Sappi, the Sappi Thinkahead Student Portfolio Awards is the ONLY awards platform aimed at helping final year designers prepare their portfolios for the job interviews and achieve recognition for an outstanding collection of work.

This year’s call to entry campaign challenges students to put their greatest design work into a “Best of 2009” hit compilation… which has the potential to go Gold or Platinum at the Sappi Thinkahead Awards and capture the attention of top design talent scouts.

The portfolio compilation must be uploaded at www.thinkaheadawards.org.za by 6 November 2009 to be eligible for judging by a panel of design legends.

Prizes

Students will be recognised for individual projects (Merits and Silvers), but the Top 3 awards will go to the best portfolio compilations of 2009!
Platinum Prize: Apple iPhone and Woolworths gift voucher
Two Gold Prizes: Apple iPods and Woolworths gift vouchers

The top 3 will also win a ticket to the Young Designers Simulcast at the 2010 Design Indaba. All winners will receive Design Books, sponsored by The Loerie Awards and Affinity Publishing.

Institutions can benefit to

The institution that is awarded the coveted Top Institution accolade will receive Design Books for the school, along with a one Ticket to the 2010 Design Indaba in Cape Town!

Promoting Best of 2009

In mid October, institutions will receive promotional material, to help students prepare their entries.

The red carpet event

On Wednesday, 25 November 2009, the prestigious awards ceremony will find out which campus has the hits…or the B-sides, whose compilations will go Gold and whose will achieve the coveted Platinum Portfolio of 2009!

Enter now!

Entries close 6 November 2009.

Visit www.thinkaheadawards.org.za for more info. (Entry website to launch soon!)

The Bookmarks – South Africa’s premier annual digital awards – is now open for entries!

From the website:

For those that have missed the hype, been in rehab, having a nervous breakdown, or just generally missing out on the hottest news – this year’s theme is Be Big In Digital. Let’s face it, haven’t all of us in wanted our 15 minutes of fame … or more? All those bright ideas, clever placements and tactical approaches need to be given their moment of glory. So here’s hoping you have some fantastic entries ready to wow the competition.

The Bookmarks celebrates digital media in all its guises, and is coordinated by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) as a means to promote digital media in South Africa, and establish it as a standard part of the marketing mix.

The flurry of activity over the next few months culminates in a glorious week-long digital event that will see everyone in the digital community gather together to discuss, debate, learn and ultimately reward all those that have made a difference. So check out the key dates, sign up for our regular updates and book your diary for the 2nd week in November.

About The Bookmarks

It’s Digital’s time to be big. Step aside print, TV and radio.

The 2nd Bookmarks Awards will celebrate the brave agencies and publishers who push the boundaries, come up with incredible creative concepts and manage, despite all the odds, to make a difference for advertisers and industry players.

The Bookmarks aims to benchmark the best in digital media, for both publishers and advertisers, whilst at the same time promote digital as an integral part of the marketing mix.

The Bookmarks will reward creativity, results and online media excellence. Have you performed miracles, or come up with a concept that really worked for your client or business? Have you come up with the most amazing creative execution that wowed users and got real results for advertisers? Or have you as a publisher achieved the balance between commercial success and audience appeal?

Learn more and to enter on their website.

Call for entries: Designs for the next 90 years!

Electrolux, a global leader in home appliances and appliances for professional use, launches the 7th edition of its global design competition Design Lab.

This year Electrolux celebrates its 90-year anniversary with its Design Lab theme: “Designs for the next 90 years”.

Undergraduate and graduate industrial design students are invited to compete for prize money and an internship by submitting their innovative home appliance ideas.

This year’s brief 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.

Prizes

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.

Registration

Entry deadline is May 31, 2009. Students may enter one entry HERE!

For more information go to their Award-winning website: www.electroluxdesignlab.com

Come on SA – let’s see what you’ve got!

OpenThinkBox™ has been challenging architecture and design students and professionals for three years to create innovative solutions to meet real-life imperatives. The 2009 edition of the competition, sponsored by Autodesk® Revit, continues to challenge industry players to demonstrate their imagination, insight and design prowess.

OpenThinkBox™ FirstFix 2009 provides entrants with the opportunity to display their imagination, creativity and skill within a context that they choose themselves. Designers are simply challenged to make a small part of the world a better place, through design. Entrants are to identify a need within a community for a built environment, and are to execute it effectively, using technology to produce a comprehensive answer to a real problem.

Entrants are to return to basics, considering the architectural conventions of plan, section and elevation in relation to a real site. The winning submission will communicate accurately and effectively, displaying the intelligence, memorability, functionality, relevance and uniqueness of their design within its chosen location.

Autodesk® Revit is the leading sponsor of the competition, seeking to encourage awareness of the capabilities and benefits of Building Information Modelling. Entries do not have be created using Autodesk® software, but there is a prize category for the best use of Autodesk® Revit BIM technology. The winning entries in the various categories will make the best possible use of the technology available to them to ensure that their designs are presented effectively, accurately, and to the exacting standards of international architectural competitions.

The OpenThinkBox™/ First Fix 2009 design competition is divided into three categories:

‘Built Environment Professionals’

This refers to any person registered in any of the built environment professions in South Africa or any other country and authorised to carry a professional designation.

‘Built Environment Students’

This refers to any student currently enrolled at a South African or any other country’s university, university of technology or private design school or institute, and studying for a qualification in any of the built environment professions.

‘Project teams’

Project teams may be formed, comprising any number of participants and combination of skills. However, each team must be headed by a ‘Built Environment Professional’ or ‘Built Environment Student’, who shall be identified as the entrant for the purposes of the competition.

Design Brief

OpenThinkBox^TM FirstFix 2009 sets a simple and personal challenge: You are challenged as a human being and a designer to make a small part of your known world a better place for now and for the future. Find a social or societal need, or a problem or desire that is close to your heart as a designer – one that is YOUR first priority in terms of social service delivery.

Your design must communicate the nature of the community in need, where it is, and why you have chosen to improve it with your design. Your design must be created for a specific piece of land, and you must submit a compact site analysis as part of your proposal, and land access and ownership must be investigated.

The solution to the identified community’s need has no size limit, and there is no budget applied – although the organisers of the competition may well build the winning solution, if it is within a feasible budget. It is therefore imperative that a budget is included as part of the submission.

The winning solution will stand out without being overpowering, it will show respect without being condescending, and it will show compassion before it panders to the vanity of design. It will change with time, it will be durable yet elegant, and it will be something out of the ordinary that is pleasant to live with.

The winning design will be careful about what it consumes – it must be good to itself, its community, those that use it, to history and to its future. It must be culturally confident within the South African context, and must resonate with the place in which it is built. It must be South African not just in the way it looks, but in the way that it is created.

The design can leave questions unanswered, but it must resolve its own problem statement in a complete and competitive way. It can be a solution in itself, or it can be a building block that is part of a greater end result.

Entry Guidelines

• Registrations close on 30 June 2009
• Submissions are to be made by 31 July 2009
• Judging will take place during August, with winners announced during September/October 2009
• Entries must be submitted electronically, and may not comprise more than two A1 sheets when printed out.
• Entries should be submitted in .pdf format
• A complete design manifesto must be included in the presentation, and may not exceed 1000 words. This must form part of your presentation and should be considered a design element. A brief budget and a description of the site on which the design is to be built are essential.
• No personal details may appear on the face of your entry.
• Entries from outside South Africa are welcomed and encouraged, but designs should honour the South African context to allow for possible construction of the winning solution.
• BIM submissions must be submitted separately on CD.
• The following entries will be summarily disqualified: late entries; entries with names on the design; corrupt files that can not be printed; incomplete submissions; submissions that have clearly been submitted for other competitions; entries that are plagiarised; entries that are illegible or badly spelled.

Prizes

PROFESSIONAL CATEGORY

First prize

• Dell Precision M65 mobile workstation, with dual-core processors, 4GB memory capacity and wide-aspect displays
• 1 x Revit Architecture (commercial version) valued at R35 000
• R15 000

Second prize

• 1 x Revit Architecture (commercial version) valued at R35 000
• R7 000

Third prize

• 1 x Revit Architecture (commercial version) valued at R35 000
• R3 000

STUDENT CATEGORY

First prize

• Dell Precision M65 mobile workstation, with dual-core processors, 4GB memory capacity and wide-aspect displays
• 1 x Revit Architecture (Commercial version) valued at R35 000
• R7 000

Second prize

• 1 x Revit Architecture (Commercial version) valued at R35 000
• R5 000

Third prize

• 1 x Revit Architecture (Commercial version) valued at R35 000
• R2 000

Best use of Autodesk Revit BIM Technology

• Overseas trip to Brazil, to get a taste of South American architecture, for two people, 6 nights, 7 days valued at R35 000
• R10 000
• Dell 24″ Wide flat panel screen

Most efficient, sustainable design

• Green Trophy
• R5 000

Publicity

The winning professional’s and student’s entry will be publicised in the local industry press, on the competition website, and via the Autodesk® publicity network. The competition website will remain active and will display electronic versions of the winning entries, as well as all other submitted entries, in the form of an ongoing archive.

For more information visit their website: www.openthinkbox.co.za

For thirty-one years the D&AD Student Awards have been kick-starting stellar careers in design and advertising. Past winners of the coveted D&AD Student Yellow Pencil work in the best organisations around the world producing some of the most creative work.

Students

The D&AD is looking for the next generation of problem solvers. You don’t necessarily need to be studying design or advertising to enter, you just need to provide them with creative solutions to the problems posed in any of their 27 briefs. The competition is tough, but if you win you’ll be amongst the best.

You have to register to be given access to the briefs. Register here.

Schools

The best schools are represented in the D&AD Student Awards. The briefs present a great opportunity for your students to practise the creative problem solving skills and conceptual thinking that you have taught them on real brands and communications problems.

Professionals

Here you will find the talent your agency needs to remain competitive. This year they have moved the Student Annual online, which means you’ll be able to look at all the winners as soon as the results are announced at the beginning of July. Register now to receive updates.

Visit the Student D&AD Awards website for more information.

View the 2008 D&AD Student Winners here.

Ist Prize – MTV Virus |  Student of the Year 2008

Created by Reinald Chee Weng Pin and Jason Feng Jiesheng
from Temasek School of Design in Singapore for the MTV Virus Brief.

If you see yourself as the designerati of international creatives. If the lights in your left brain is switched off
most of the time. If you think about everything in terms of perfect lines and colour palettes.

Then Art Vespa is the design competition for you.

The annual Art Vespa Competition is a South African design competition in which you get to dress the world’s most fashionable two-wheeler according to your idea of style. There is no theme. You have the freedom to let the creative juices flow without restrictions.

And if you prove yourself to be the designerista of designers, you can win a Vespa LX150 wrapped in
your own original design.

Last year’s winner Rory Allan from Ripe Design scooted away with his design of a delicious ice cream
melting down his sexy Vespa.

For some inspiration visit www.vespa.co.za/ArtVespa2009 to see images of all the past winners.

To enter Art Vespa follow the following steps.

• Visit www.vespa.co.za/ArtVespa2009
• Select one of the six different canvasses
• Download onto your hard-drive
• Digitally create your unique Art Vespa
• Convert into a 144 dpi PDF
• Give your Art Vespa a name
• Submit to artvespa@vespa.co.za before 15 January 2009
• Also send your name, surname, mobile, agency and your position

Some design tips:

The judging
The entries will be judged by an international team from Piaggio in Italy. The panel will be emailed the entries and will select three of the best Art Vespas according to these criteria,

• Design simplicity
• Design impact
• Conceptual sophistication
• Practicality of production.

Design tips
Remember, when designing your Art Vespa it’s like designing a new package. Apply the same design rules. Keep it simple, clever and bold. And make sure it stands out amongst the clutter and can be appreciated from a distance.

Important
Only 2 dimensional colour can be placed on the painted areas of the Vespa. Entries with designs that cover seats, lights or any area that does not have a paint finish will be eliminated.

Three Vespa LX150’s will be wrapped in the best designs and displayed at the Design Indaba Expo in Cape Town from 27 February to 1 March 2009. The winner will also be announced during the expo.

By emailing Friends of Design, Academy of Digital Arts a links to your best work (online), you stand a chance of winning a full 2 year study scholarship at their academy. The competition closes on the 15th December 2008 at midnight.

The email address is: eva@friendsofdesign.net

To Enter

1. Collect your best winning piece/pieces online.
2. Write a short text (no more than 300 words) motivating why you should win the prize.
3. Send this motivation, plus a link to your work online to Friends of Design by the 15th December 2008
4. Please DO NOT send them anything printed! This is a paper-free competition.
5. Please DO NOT attach any artworks in the email either!
6. Don’t forget to include an alternative contact number -you’ll receive a acceptance email, which will be delivered to you by the 5th January 2008

You may include up to 10 of the best samples of your artwork, be it illustrative drawings, cartoons, photography, film or music videos or 3D animations.

They are asking to please do not post anything or drop off any portfolio books. This is an online competition and Friends of Design would like to keep it paper-free.

The winner will be notified via email and telephone on the 5th January 2009.

To learn more about Friends of Design and the scholarship, visit their website: friendsofdesign.net

Sportscene gave us 10 of the awesome character boxes to give away – with a suprise T-shirt in 4 of the boxes. All you have to to do is to join our Facebook Group!!! Do it here!

You might have seen these shoebox packaging designs displayed in Sportscenes around the country.  5 South African artists were commissioned to design a shoebox package. The public then had the chance to vote for their favourite artist’s shoebox packaging characters. R10 000 worth of Sportscene vouchers was up for grabs for the voter and the winning artist.

You can see the packages here.

And the winners are… (drum roll please)……

Sindosu Nyoni (artist) and Nakita Misra (fan)!

SINDISO NYONI is a Zimbabwean designer who combines traditional and digital media to create his own subversive style called Guerill(art). His influences include social activism, indie films and graphic novels – all combine to create a uniquely African street style with an international, cosmopolitan feel. Art with Attitude – watch out. From the Sportscene website.

Sinduso is also a BTech Graphic Design student at the University of Johannesburg.

Congratulations guys!

Big up to Sportscene for supporting the local art scene. I’m sure the chosen artists received loads of exposure. Hope to see them here on HipnHopeful soon.

Fractal provides opportunities for young talented artists to expose their creations and abilities to a wider audience. One of their initiatives is an annual exhibition where young artists are chosen to exhibit their work.

HipnHopeful was one of the sponsors . We believe SA has great talent to show the world. We were invited to attend the opening of exhibition entitled “Bastersaad” and the artists did not disappoint.

Photos by Jeré Möller.

You can also visit the HipnHopeful Flickr page to see descriptions of the photos – and while you’re there, why not become a friend.