When American designers work with Italian materials great things happen. Confindustria Ceramica and the Italian Trade Commission are delighted to announce the winners of the 2008 Ceramic Tiles of Italy Design Competition. The competition, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary, recognizes extraordinary North American architects who create design masterpieces that employ innovative uses of Italian ceramic tile. Prizes are awarded for excellence in Residential, Commercial and Institutional architecture. This year’s projects are more inventive than ever, emphasizing the innate diversity and sustainability of Italian ceramic tile.

An international jury critiqued the artistic and technical aspects of each project. They considered the creative uses of tile, and how it fits into the overall design aesthetic. After an intensive selection process, the winner of the Commercial category was determined to be BKA Architects. The firm cleverly used Italian ceramic tile to design a fluid pattern on the floor of the Samsonite Corporate Headquarters, with the renowned luggage brand’s logo serving as the centerpiece. The Institutional award went to Richard Fleischman + Partners Architects for the Cleveland Job Corps Center for the Department of Labor, a project that innovatively used tile as the main exterior surface of a nine building campus. This year two awards were given in the Residential sector. One honored Division1 Architects for the Roberts Residence, which made extensive use of Italian ceramic tile on both the exterior and the interior of the house. The other recognized Koji Tsutsui for his fabulously modern Industrial Designer House.
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Smith Micro Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMSI) Consumer Group today announced the immediate availability of Poser 7.04, the latest update to its popular 3D character and animation solution. Poser enables creative professionals, graphic artists and hobbyists to create art, video and animation optimized for models that depict the human figure in three-dimensional forms. The update offers performance and feature enhancements including improvements in rendering, the ability to better manage characters’ speech and walking characteristics, and enhanced artistic control in creating hair, faces, material and much more.

“This latest Poser service release stands as a firm commitment to Smith Micro’s confidence in the Poser product line and underscores the fact that we take end-user satisfaction and ongoing support very seriously,” said Steve Cooper, Product Marketing Manager, Graphics Solutions for Smith Micro Software. “Poser 7 already provides the easiest way to design human forms in 3D for users of any experience level. Moving forward we will continue to offer our customers timely and cutting-edge advancements in the latest 3D design technology including many additions to our comprehensive library of content which delivers fast, simple and nearly limitless possibilities in character and scene development.”
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Born in London in 2001, Lowlife set out to conquer an untouched market that brought the waistline to the forefront of fashion. In Conquering the belt market with their range of edgy designs, they have been embraced by an ever-expanding family of musicians,tattooists, skateboarders, BMXers, artists and designers. By absorbing these influences, flirting with pop culture and encouraging creative independence, Lowlife continues to expand and evolve. Lowlife is distributed in 19 countries and is sold in over 700 stores worldwide.

How often do you get to design a belt for one of the leading names in alternative fashion? Not very often, that’s when! Don’t Panic wanted to do something really different this time, so they had a word with Lowlife. Best known for their wide collection of eye-catching belts, they have offered up a blank canvas (well, belt) for a Don’t Panic reader’s design. This will then be put into production (subject to Lowlife’s discretion) to be seen and sold throughout the land, and the winner will also get a bunch of Lowlife gear. With bands including The Subways, In Flames, Gallows and Fucked Up all sporting Lowlife wear, your designs could end up on stages around the world!

Competition closes 28 August 2008. Visit the site for the full brief and design template.

PhotoShelter Inc., the leading online destination where more than 37,000 photographers sell stock photography and access powerful solutions for e-commerce and image storage, today announced an estimated quarter million stock images were captured during its Shoot! The Day event, held July 20, 2008, many of which will be available to be licensed beginning this week. It is believed to be among the largest single-day contributions to the stock photo supply in history. Shoot! The Day also established a new connection between the image-buying community and thousands of talented photographers worldwide, launching a collaborative conversation designed to revitalize the pipeline of fresh new images in specific areas of greatest buyer demand.

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This competition addresses the ubiquitous and sustainable city life of the future. Seoul is changing and developing quite rapidly and the citizens of Seoul are realizing the advantages of this change through constructing new subway lines, repairing road systems, implementing a new bus line system, designing new contemporary buildings, and creating more green parks around the city. Korea’s capital is making a tremendous effort to change its landscape from one that’s plain and practical to one that is environmentally -friendly and is a convenient place to live. The objectives of the competition include: identifying new design opportunities for the sustainable city life, addressing the design discourse and exploration for the living design, that breathes with nature’s five elements: air, water, light, wind, and earth, and seeking creative design solutions to be applied to future city design projects. Categories include: urban environment, visual communication, industrial design, and other designs. Contact EunSook Kwon, Director General, Seoul Design Olympiad 2008, “designseoul AT seoul.go.kr”.

Deadline: 31 July 2008.

Via: Metropolis

London deserves a bus fit for the 21st century, and Mayor Boris Johnson wants as many people as possible to submit their ideas. Whether you’re a professional designer who can submit a detailed plan or you are someone who uses buses every day and has one great idea that would make your journey better, they have a category for you. You don’t need any technical knowledge to enter the “Imagine” category and it is open to everyone. The “Design” category is intended for professional design companies and people with the technical skills to give us detailed design documents. The winning entries in this category may see their designs taken forward to major bus manufacturers.

There is a 1st prize of £25,000, and many smaller awards for great ideas. The competition will run until mid September, and Mayor Johnson will announce the winners by the end of October. Visit the site to learn more.

Reel Venus Film Festival is a three-day event, which was created and launched in 2003 to showcase an eclectic body of current alternative and mainstream and established women directors, video and multimedia artists from the U.S. and abroad. The work should push traditional boundaries in storytelling methods that inspire, entertain, excite, inform and provoke its audiences with challenging topics, themes and images.

Reel Venus Film Festival is now accepting submissions for its 5th annual showcase which will feature the best work by emerging and established women directors/photographers/multimedia producers.

Final submission deadline is 30 August 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

Shift has been trying to offer artists many platforms to showcase their works online. The Shift calendar competition held from 2003 successively, pushes the boundaries between online and off line using a “calendar” as its medium. Entries are invited from all over the world and selected works will be distributed throughout the world in the format of a physical calendar.

This year, selected works will be exhibited and sold at PRINT’EM web site for a year with support by PRINT’EM, a graphic print center operated by Mitsubishi Paper MIlls Limited.

The deadline for this competition is 10 September 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

All photographers, amateur and professional, are invited to submit their work for the 2009 International Garden Photographer of the Year.

Building on the success of 2008, International Garden Photographer of the Year offers photographers the opportunity to win in excess of £20,000 cash and equipment as well as international exposure in an exhibition at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Award is open to all photographers who are invited to submit works within seven categories: Wildlife in the Garden; Plant Portraits; Garden Views; People in the Garden; the Edible Garden; Trees and World Botanic Gardens. There is also an award for the Young Garden Photographer of the Year for budding photographers under 16 years old.

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Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and Blu-ray are changing the way you watch movies! Be part of the ultimate in high definition by creating your own poster, ad or video for Blu-ray. Sony encounrages you to design an original, exciting and passionate expression of why Blu-ray offers the best movie experience with its high definition, better-than-cable or satellite quality, better picture than DVD and pure hi-def audio. Come up with an incredible idea as well as the tagline, “Why Blu?” and you could win amaing Sony prizes including a Sony PlayStation 3 with built-in Blu-ray Disc Player and $250 cash or scholarship.

Deadline is 30 July 2008 at 11:30 pm PST. Visit the site to learn more.