In recognition and celebration of the many artistic mediums employed by Gordon Parks to critical acclaim, the Delaware Art Museum is partnering with the Christina Cultural Arts Center to launch the “Eye/I Witness Gordon Parks Art Competition.” The competition’s categories are Photography, Poetry, and Film.

Submissions should reflect the significant themes found in the works of Gordon Parks. “Eye/I Witness” is open to all interested participants, and no entry fee is required. Selected works will be recognized at an evening celebration at the Delaware Art Museum on Friday, November 7.

Submission period is September 1 through September 26, 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

It is not always the subject, but the Negative Space around the subject that makes a photograph truly stunning. This exhibition will highlight the compositional element that makes up the space not commonly seen.

This exhibition is open to all domestic and international, professional and amateur, photographers working with digital or traditional photography or combinations of both. The Center for Fine Art Photography invites photographers working in all mediums, styles and schools of thought to participate in its exhibitions. Traditional, contemporary, avant-garde, creative and experimental and mixed techniques are welcome.

Deadline is October 14, 2008. Visit the Center for Fine Art Photography to learn more.

New for 2009 is the ScreenBurn at SXSW Game Design Competition which provides a venue for emerging designers to pitch their concept to a jury of established professionals. Participants in this event are challenged to excite the imagination with a description of the game they want to build.

These proposals are entirely conceptual - but tight organization is a must as these entries cannot exceed 200 words in length. Semi-finalists for the ScreenBurn at SXSW Game Design Competition will be announced in mid January.

These semi-finalists will then construct a three-minute slideshow presentation that graphically illustrates their concept. Finalists will be chosen to present at the event after the jury reviews these slideshow presentations.

There is no fee to enter the Game Design Competition, however, each person may only submit two proposals. The entry process runs through Friday, December 5. Visit the site to learn more.

This is an open call to students around the world: Use your creative talent and strategic design skills to address the global water crisis. The Aspen Design Challenge is an annual call to students worldwide, inviting them to address an international problem that is not only crucial in today’s world, but critical to our survival and the world that we will one day inhabit.

The Challenge is a partnership between AIGA, the professional association for design, in the United States, and INDEX:, a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to changing global mindsets by exploring and showing how design can improve life for people. This year’s challenge, “Designing Water’s Future,” is a collaboration between Circle of Blue - the international network of leading journalists, scientists and communications designers that reports and presents the information necessary to respond to the global freshwater crisis - and COLLINS:, a communication design and innovation firm based in New York City.

An online entry system will be available October 1, and December 15, 2008 is the deadline for entries. The guidelines are too extensive and too eloquent to cut, so I suggest you go to the site to learn more.

Nature is beauty, majestic and inspiring. The Art of Nature will illustrate all aspects of nature in it’s many tableaus: landscape, seascape, wildlife, floral, water, environment and weather.

This exhibition is open to all domestic and international, professional and amateur, photographers working with digital or traditional photography or combinations of both. The Center for Fine Art Photography invites photographers working in all mediums, styles and schools of thought to participate in its exhibitions. Traditional, contemporary, avant-garde, creative and experimental and mixed techniques are welcome.

Deadline is September 16, 2008. Visit the Center for Fine Art Photography to learn more.

At last, a class for enthusiastic learners who are ready to dive into the world of Adobe Photoshop. Working on individual Mac computers, you’ll spend a fast-paced weekend exploring the fundamentals of this powerful image editing application. In this class, you will learn how to:

• Fix images by removing what’s not wanted and adding what wasn’t there before
• Apply quick and easy techniques to brighten, sharpen, and improve the color of your images
• Combine images in creative ways, replacing backgrounds and warping and reshaping image elements
• Enhance your images with silhouettes, vignettes, and drop shadows
• Understand color modes, file formats, and resolution

Ready to learn? This class, taught by Mara Sachs, will be held Saturday, September 6 & Sunday, September 7, 10 am-4 pm in Midtown West, NY. Visit the site to learn more and to register.

Golden Drum is open to agencies, advertisers, clients, design or production houses, TV houses, media or other parties involved in creation or production of marketing communication. There are twelve groups and even more subcategories involved in this competition, including Web, film and video and more. Remember that this is a competition for ads - therefore, the Festival reserves the right to request a full media schedule from each entrant company to verify the authenticity of the ad(s) in the event that entry is shortlisted or a winner.

The entry application is complicated, including special entries for “New Europe” competitors. The deadline, however, is very clear - 4 September 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

Online magazine SHIFT presents DOTMOV Festival 2008, a digital film festival aiming to discover talented creators and provide them with an opportunity to show their works. Works submitted from all over the world will be screened throughout the world venues from November 2008 (Date will be different depending on the venue). Last year’s total submission was 297 works from 34 countries. This year’s tour will be Sapporo, Sendai, Shizuoka, Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Fukuoka and Sao Paulo.

They will accept all work including prize-winning works or works submitted to other contests in Japan as well as in other countries. Submissions are accepted regardless of nationality and open to both professionals and amateurs. If some contests forbid sending your work to other contests, please respect their requirements. Animation, images, sounds, music, text and illustrations in your work should be original. However if the author give a permission to submit, it doesn’t have to be your original. Works submitted for the past edition of DOTMOV festival cannot be accepted.

Deadline is 20 September 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

The American Institute of Architects established the Thomas Jefferson Awards for Public Architecture to recognize achievements in the following three categories:

• Private-sector architects who have established a portfolio of accomplishment in the design of architecturally distinguished public facilities
• Public-sector architects who manage or produce quality design within their agencies
• Public officials or other individuals who by their role of advocacy have furthered the public’s awareness and/or appreciation of design excellence.

Each category carries specific details about entry. Submission Deadline: October 10, 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

Anima, the international animation festival, will take place February 20-29, 2009 at Flagey, Brussels in Belgium. Anima, Brussels Cartoon and Animated Film Festival, seeks to promote cartoons and animated films from all over the world. It also seeks to foster a dialogue between professionals, filmmakers and the public, and to raise awareness of quality animation among film and television distributors. The Festival is organizing an international competition as well as a national competition for films produced in Belgium; both competition are open to all animated films and make no distinction between formats or techniques, regardless of its geographic origin. Official categories: Short-film, Student film, Music videos and Commercials, Feature-film, Feature-film for children, Belgian shorts. There is no registration fee.

Deadline is 15 October 2008. Visit the site to learn more.