Social Design Network announced today that John McArthur, new CEO of Millennium Promise, will serve on the final judging panel for the DESIGN 21 Millennium Promise Competition. The competition tasks designers to join the fight against extreme poverty by creating a web-based campaign to advocate for the eight Millennium Development Goals.

McArthur has been centrally involved with Millennium Promise since its inception in 2000 and has worked to promote Millennium Development Goals throughout rural Africa. He also served as the Policy Director at the Earth Institute at Columbia University and co-director of the Millennium Villages Project, a partnership between the Earth Institute, Millennium Promise, and the UN Development Program. Prior to this, he worked as the Deputy Director and Manager of the UN Millennium Project. There, he coordinated a global network of nearly 300 experts who served on 10 thematic Task Forces and was the lead editor of the Project’s final report to the Secretary-General, “Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals.” McArthur’s professional experiences and global expertise make him an ideal choice to evaluate submissions for DESIGN 21’s Millennium Promise Competition.

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It is coming to Boston’s Hynes Convention Center May 18-21. HOW is the annual creativity, business and technology conference for graphic designers. Expect more than 60 speakers, 60+ sessions and 10 three-hour workshops.

According to HOW magazine editor Bryn Mooth, “The HOW Conference is a wonderful opportunity for designers to develop their design careers, hone their business skills, get their creative juices flowing and network with thousands of fellow designers.”

Many industry experts and well-known designers will present at this year’s Conference, including Allan Haley of Monotype Imaging, design entrepreneur Charles S. Anderson, Adobe’s Russell Brown and Julieanne Kost, plus Robynne Raye and Michael Strassburger of Modern Dog Design Co. Many speakers plan to use Boston as inspiration for their presentations, notably House Industries’ Ken Barber who will use Boston’s rich typographic history as the backdrop for his workshop on creating type.

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The purpose of this competition is to create an online campaign design for Millennium Promise, a non-profit organization with the mission to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals – eight globally endorsed objectives that address the many aspects of extreme poverty – in Africa by 2015. Millennium Promise works with impoverished communities, national and local governments and partner organizations to implement high-impact programs aimed at transforming lives on the African continent and engaging donor nations, corporations and the general public in the effort.

This competition calls for the design of a new media campaign that promotes public awareness of the Millennium Development Goals (”MDGs,” provided at the competition site). The aim of the campaign is to prompt the general public to do what they can to support the cause and urge their leaders to stick to their commitment to the MDGs. The campaign needs to be web-based. It should be designed to reach as wide and global an audience as possible on the Internet, and as such anything of a “viral” nature is encouraged – but the campaign can only be represented using the Entry Provisions stated at the site and in the Entry Rules.

Early entry deadline is Tuesday June 17 2008 at 6:00pm UTC (Universal Coordinated Time).

Students, instructors and administrators: Submit your students’ latest design, advrtising and photography work to Graphis New Talent. Get the recognition you deserve, and share your work with peers and hiring industory professionals. Every student included earns a Graphis Gold Award, and standout instructors earn the Platinum Award.

Register online with this link, and click on the Call For Entry link on that page. Complete instructions, forms, art specifications, shipping and payment procedures may be obtained online at the entry Web site. All entrants and subscribers are eligible for a 40% discount on the annual. Deadline is 26 May 2008.

Photographs that focus on all things horses, from Appaloosas to Zebras, country roaming to carousel rotating, are welcome to this call for entry. Images of working horses, wild horses, dressage, tack, anything related to the life of our equine friends is welcome.

The Center for Fine Art Photography, located in Fort Collins, Colorado, invites photographers working in all mediums and styles to participate in its exhibitions. Traditional, contemporary, avant-garde, creative and experimental works, including new processes, mixed techniques are welcome.

The exhibition, which will be held at The Center for Fine Art Photography’s gallery from September 5 through September 27, 2008, is open to all domestic and international, professional and amateur photographers working with digital or traditional photography or combinations of both.

Deadline is 18 June 2008. Visit the site to learn more about hte judge, the exhibition, and the prize awards.

The Center for Fine Art Photography in cooperation with Beet Street* will host a show of photographs created by Peace Corps Volunteers during its long history. The 2008 Peace Corps Exhibition will take place in Fort Collins, Colorado during the International Peace Corps Reunion. Selected images will be exhibited in the Center’s gallery during the reunion, August 20 – August 30, 2008 and on the Center’s website for two additional years. There are also plans for a traveling exhibition.

• Eligibility: Pictures created by current and former Peace Corps Volunteers will be accepted.
• The photos must be of events and everyday life during a Peace Corps Volunteer’s tour.
• Juror: Dr. Anthony Bannon, Director of the George Eastman House in Rochester New York.
• No entry fee, as the show is underwritten by Beet Street, an independent cultural and economic development entity of the Ft. Collins Downtown Develop Authority and sponsor for the Peace Corps Reunion.

Deadline is 29 May 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

Photo above: Alema Rose, Aler IDP Camp, Uganda, 2006, by Heather McClintock.

Enter your work in the HOW International Design Awards and join the ranks of award-winning designers from around the world. One Best of Show winner will score a free trip to the 2009 HOW Design Conference (round-trip airfare, hotel and conference registration) and an award to be presented at the conference. All winners will see their work in HOW’s April 2009 International Design Annual, get $100 discount to the 2009 HOW Design Conference and receive a nifty certificate.

Categories range from annual reports to letterhead, and from miscellaneous promos to 3D objects such as gifts, wearables and more. Work must have been created between 1 January 2007 and 1 September 2008. Deadline is 1 September 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

This year represents HOW Magazine’s 10th Annual Interactive Design Awards. Enter your work in this competition to win a slot in HOW’s huge April 2008 Design Annual and to receive a $100 discount toward registration for the 2009 HOW Design Conference. One ‘Best of Show’ winner will be prominently featured in the April 2008 Design Annual and will be a guest at the 2009 HOW Conference - including round-trip airfare within the U.S., hotel and registration!

Categories range from business-to-business Web sites to “Miscellaneous.” Work must have been created between 1 January 2007 and 15 July 2008. Deadline is 15 July 2008, so get cracking! Visit the site to learn more.

The National Organization for Women Foundation is hosting a poster contest to celebrate the Love Your Body Campaign. The grand prize winning poster will be used as part of a national campaign to challenge the media’s use of violent, drug-addicted, starved, surgically-enhanced images of women and to fight against industries that profit from women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies. Entries are accepted from all countries.

Prizes vary for different categories. One category prize winner will be selected as the grand prize winner to be reproduced and distributed nationwide as the official 2009 Love Your Body Campaign poster and featured on the NOW Foundation web site. The grand prize winner will receive an additional cash prize of $600. Deadline is 1 December 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

The “Tolerance – A Global Challenge” project embodies a number of activities which are meant to contribute to a graduate improving of the society as a whole, giving special attention to the young population between the age of 18 and 28. Its goal is to bring the ideas together, giving the youth a chance to express their beliefs and thoughts through “Tolerance – A Global Challenge” by creating a ‘poster.’ It will have a direct effect on the society by opening new horizons and giving a strong motivation for the youth to work towards a better future. This project should promote the poster as a mean of expressing these ideas among the youth.

The competition is open to art and design students registered at an educational institution for art and design including disciplines such as fine arts, graphic design, communication design, visual communication, media design and other related disciplines. There’s no limit for nationality. Entry deadline is 15 May 2008. The poster should preferably be in English, German or French; however, poster texts in all other languages will be accepted. Prizes are award in Euro. Visit the site to learn more.