The 20th annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair will be held 17-20 May this year at New York’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. North America’s singular showcase for contemporary design, this Fair draws the most intrepid seekers of design truth and design trends to an extraordinary exhibition of the most inspired models of design on the forefront as well as thought-provoking programs and a schedule of supplementary exhibits and features.

View and draw inspiration from displays of furniture, seating, carpet and flooring, lighting, outdoor furniture, materials, images, accessories, textiles and kitchen and bath. For more information, visit the ICFF site.

For the fourth consecutive year, the James Dyson Foundation is hosting its highly regarded student design competition. Eye for Why is a tremendous opportunity for students at any of the NASAD-accredited degree programs or individual student members of IDSA to demonstrate new and alternative design solutions that simply work better.

This year, Dyson is introducing an exciting new way to share your entry and allow you to interact and connect with your peers. After all, you are now part of the design community, and community is an essential part of the design world. So think of the Eye for Why entry portal, powered by introNetworks, as the next evolution in social networking. Once you’ve created your profile, you can upload your design to share with the community or limit access to those in your network. You can also post videos, blog about your Eye for Why experience, and connect with other design students to share ideas and network.

Entries are due on 9 February 2008, and the contest is open to students at any of the National Association of Schools of Art & Design-accredited degree programs or individual student members of IDSA. Visit the site to learn more.

Via: Dexigner

If you think you can predict Apple’s “Next Big Thing,” as in an “i” product (iPhone, iPod, etc.), then you might want to enter the “Next Big Thing” contest. Mac|Life, Maxon, and the Academy of Art University are co sponsoring a contest to find the best fictional product prototypes (aka “fauxtotypes”) laced with Apple design DNA. They don’t care if your ideas are visionary or absurd. They want to see how you interpret the future of Apple product design.

According to the contest site, “The best submissions will appear in Mac|Life magazine and on Maclife.com. Our grand prize winner will receive a scholarship for the Academy of Art University, and a boxed copy of Maxon Cinema 4D. Four runners-up, plus our grand prize winner, will each receive $100 gift cards for Newegg.com.”

So, if you’re an industrial designer, a 2D artist, or a 3D illustrator (or all three), decide if you want to win any of these items before you jump into the contest. Remember - Apple isn’t involved in the contest at all. Hence, the “fauxtotypes” deal. Deadline is 31 January, 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

Via: Core77

Thanks to Amy at Geek Parenting for showing the way (along with her pet horse, Butterscotch). Pleo is an interactive toy that incorporates Open Source technology. That alone is something to roar about…

Amazon: Pleo

When American designers work with Italian materials great things happen. This competition, now in its 15th year, celebrates exceptional examples of contemporary American design featuring fabulous Italian ceramic tiles.

In order to select from a large pool of outstanding installations, an international jury looks at the overall design of the space as well as how the tiles meet their functional and technical requirements.

Deadline for this competition is 31 January 2008. Visit the site to learn more about elegible projects, rules, awards, and more.

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and the Portland Cement Association (PCA) have announced their “Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World” student design competition.

This is the third year for the competition. The concrete industry is looking for opportunities to boost the perception of concrete as a green material, since the mining, processing and transportation of concrete is responsible for 8% of all carbon dioxide produced by human activity. Like plastics, concrete is a versatile and widely used material, but there are a number of undesirable consequences of the production of the material that have architects, engineers, and other designers looking for alternatives and for better ways of producing the material.

Registration deadline is 8 February 2008 and the deadline for submissions is 14 May 2008. Prizes include US$10,000 to be divided among the top winners in each category and a copy of PCA’s suite of concrete design software with an array of structural engineering resources, awarded to each winning school. Visit the site to learn more.

Works carried out by students usually disappear into drawers after presentation to a relatively small college audience. There the work remains invisible. :output, the biggest international competition for students in design and architecture, wants to change that. The works selected by the jury will be published in the yearbook :output. The Deadline for submission will is 15 February 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

Anyone who is currently studying communication design, product design, architecture, interaction design or film at a university or a college is eligible to participate. Students who have graduated within the last 12 months may also submit final degree works. Any work, which has been produced as a student project, is eligible for submission. The work may not be older than one year. The project does not have to be published. Work related to any area of design and architecture, such as: graphic design / architecture / product design / typography / photography/ illustration / typeface design / multimedia, moving image and television graphics / experience design is eligible for submission.

Latest date for submissions is 15 February 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

Inhabitat and Core77 invite designers to explore the concept of “Greener Gadgets.” Designs should seek to minimize the environmental impact of consumer electronic devices at any stage in the product lifecycle. Areas of sustainability to consider include:

1. Energy
2. Materials / Lifecycle / Recycling
3. Social & educational development

Participants are encouraged to consider their designs as part of the entire product ecosystem, and should think as holistically as possible. Designers may choose to focus their entries on a particular area of human enterprise (learning, playing, communicating, etc.), or a particular context (work, home, school, etc.), a particular material, or a specific device. Entries may also seek to create new paradigms for products and services.

Deadline closes at 11:59 pm EST on 27 January 2008. Visit the Greener Gadgets site for details!

Entries are currently being accepted for I.D. magazine’s 2008 Student Design Review. They are searching for the best work from design schools around the world in industrial, graphic, interactive and “miscellaneous” design. One Best of Show winner will get US $1,000 in cold, hard cash. Plus, all winning projects may be posted on the I.D. website (www.id-mag.com) with links to winners’ online portfolios, and will be featured in the I.D. September/October 2008 issue.

The 2008 Student Design Review is open to any student enrolled in a collegiate-level design program (undergraduate or graduate), anywhere in the world. All projects entered must be the result of a classroom/academic assignment, and must have been designed/completed during the 2006-2007 academic year. Deadline is 1 February 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

The Pacific International Space Center for Explorations Systems (PISCES) announces its second annual Student Design Competition and invites team from universities to participate.

The PISCES design program provides an opportunity to engage students in a rich and meaningful educational experience, derived from working on design problems of current interest, on important technical and programmatic issues that are central to the settlement of space. NASA and JAXA now have serious plans for the future of humans in space, including the continued construction of the International Space Station and human and robotic lunar exploration. Students now in university design programs will be the professionals who will implement the decisions.

A total of up to six awards will be offered this year. Each award will consist of travel funds to bring two students and a faculty advisor to the PISCES annual conference to be held on the Big Island of Hawaii, 10-11 November 2008. At this conference, the university studies will be presented to the PISCES team and the student teams will be able to observe and participate in further planning of the PISCES program.

Any U. S. university may field one or more teams that are interested in the topics of lunar surface facilities,technology development such as ISRU, surface operations, and commercial activities, can participate. A brief indication of interest is requested from university teams by 31 January 2008. Visit the site to learn more about the project, the team expectations, and further deadlines up to the November conference.