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.