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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft will show its latest tools and platforms for creating and delivering rich interactive content for the Web at the annual CRE8 conference in Orlando in a special keynote session on 1 May, where hundreds of Web and interactive designers will be gathered. Microsoft will be showing its Silverlight platform, which delivers interactive content across various computer platforms, including Mac, PC, and mobile devices, making it a compelling technology for CRE8 Conference attendees. Brian Goldfarb, a group product manager from Microsoft will also be showcasing Expression Studio software tools, which allow Web design professionals to create next generation Web sites, interactive content, and video for delivery to different devices, platforms, and browsers using Silverlight and .NET.

Following the keynote, Microsoft is delivering a hands-on training session for CRE8 conference attendees. The sessions will provide a guided tour of the Expression Studio software tools for creating Web sites, interactive content, and streaming video delivered using Microsoft Silverlight.

Read the rest of this entry »

Enter your great web designs in STEP’s Best of Web Design Competition sponsored by Jupiterimages Unlimited and get the recognition you deserve. Winners will be interviewed and prominently featured in the Best of Web Annual [September|October 2008 issue]. Enter your entire Web site, Web advertising or motion graphics in the business, consumer, self-promotion or nonprofit and public service categories. Deadline extended to 15 April 2008. Visit the site to learn more.

This year, One Show provides industry ringside seats for Mexican wrestler themed extravaganza.

On May 9, the One Show Interactive awards, the industry’s most prestigious awards competition, will become more interactive than ever as they honor the year’s best digital media and web design. In celebration of the fascinating world of Luchadores, the striking and mysterious masked wrestlers of Mexico, they will install a regulation-sized wrestling ring right in the middle of New York City’s Nokia Theatre.

“Bloody fights, killer instincts, masochistic contenders dressed in outrageous outfits— isn’t this a typical day at the office for the industry’s interactive leaders?” laughs Kevin Swanepoel, President of The One Club. “Seriously, this year’s theme is a literal interpretation of the battles creatives wage everyday—against themselves, the industry, the zeitgeist, you name it. You can’t get any more interactive than putting a small agency in the ring with a big industry and letting them duke it out. We’ve been doing just that with One Show Interactive for eleven years now, and let me tell you, the results can be very surprising.”

Read the rest of this entry »

CUT&PASTE Presents

The Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) “See What’s Possible” Challenge

Adobe and Cut&Paste challenge designers to “See What’s Possible” by entering a visually pioneering 15-second or less animation or motion graphic video. Grand Prize – $20,000, Adobe CS3 Master Collection, and inclusion in Adobe Photoshop marketing materials

February 5, 2008: Cut&Paste(R), the producers of the international live design tournament, announces the first Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) “See What’s Possible” Challenge, to be administered on http://swp.cutandpaste.com.  Cut&Paste teamed up with Adobe Systems
Incorporated to put the call out to its joint community of graphic designers, animators, and motion graphics wizards worldwide to create a promotional animation or motion graphics work that best illustrates the theme of “See What’s Possible.” The twist: this isn’t just a
competition, but for the winner, an opportunity for their winning work to be used in Adobe’s marketing campaign of Photoshop in addition to the Grand Prize of $20,000 (USD) and Adobe Creative Suite 3(R) Master Collection.

“As the Cut&Paste community and designers across the globe appreciate, Adobe Photoshop is the professional industry standard in digital imaging software, so we’re thrilled to team with Adobe to provide more exposure to aspiring and experienced designers and animators alike,”
says John Fiorelli, executive director of Cut&Paste. “But this challenge isn’t just about winning – all submissions will be publicly showcased on CutandPaste.com where contestants can share their skills with not only fellow designers, but fans, recruiters, and potential clients.”

To judge the competition, Cut&Paste has assembled an all-star team of judges including Alexei Tylevich (Logan), Jonathan Notaro (Brand New School), Nando Costa (Nervo) José Gomez (Shilo), Adina Sales (Blacklist) and Victor Newman (Freestyle Collective). Judges will be looking for work that breaks new ground and has a “wow” factor.  Submissions should not exceed 15 seconds in duration, should incorporate and close with the Photoshop “See What’s Possible” brand logo and tagline, and should use Adobe Flash(R) or After Effects(R) in its creation (see Rules at http://swp.cutandpaste.com for more details).  “It’s always inspiring for us to see how our users push the creative boundaries of what’s possible with Photoshop,” said Kevin Connor, senior director of product management for Professional Digital Imaging at Adobe. “By teaming up with Cut&Paste, we are excited to offer graphic designers, animators, motion graphics designers, web pros, and photographers a unique opportunity to display their work for the entire community.”  Five submissions will be chosen by the judges as Finalists, and Adobe will award one of those five finalists the Grand Prize of $20,000 (USD) and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection. In addition to the Grand Prize, the winning submission will be featured in Adobe’s marketing campaign of Photoshop. All finalists receive Adobe Creative
Suite 3 Master Collection. The Challenge also offers a People’s Choice Prize: All eligible submissions will be available for voting on the Cut&Paste Web site. Anyone may view the submissions and any registered users may add comments to any work or vote for their favorite submissions for the People’s Choice Prize, which is Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection. Supporting the promotion of the challenge to its subscribers are media sponsors, Stash DVD Magazine and the motion graphics blog, Motionographer.

How It Works :

Grand Prize Selection
Cut&Paste will screen all eligible entries to a final 30 selections that will then be provided to judges for evaluation. The top 5 scoring finalists will then go to Adobe who will choose the Grand Prize Winner.

People’s Choice Prize
Commenting and voting on all submissions are open to all registered users Popular online vote by registered users will determine winner.

Prizes

· Grand Prize - $20,000 (USD) and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection (retailed at $2,499) and inclusion in Adobe marketing including:

o Featured on adobe.com

o Available as a screensaver for community download

o Showcased at Adobe(R) tradeshows, seminars and demos

o Intro to Keynote speeches, etc

o HTML email, banners

Five Finalists – Adobe(R) Creative Suite 3 Master Collection(R)
People’s Choice Prize – Adobe(R) Creative Suite 3 Master Collection(R)

Timing
Contestants may submit entries on http://swp.cutandpaste.com beginning
February 15, 2008, and ending on March 15, 2008
People’s Choice Prize voting open from February 15, 2008 to March 31, 2008
Prizes announced at Photoshop World – April 4, 2008

How to Enter
Contestants post submissions to a video-sharing Web site such as YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo, or Revver.
Starting February 15, entrants may register with the Cut&Paste Web site and complete a Web application form at http://swp.cutandpaste.com

Creating Icons is No Longer A Baffling Ordeal With New Perfect Toolbar Icons

Aha-Soft today announces the immediate availability of Perfect Toolbar Icons, a set of stock icons to trim the interface of any desktop or web application.

No doubt any e-company wants to add some color to the means of its representation: programs, websites or even documents in order to make them distinctive and eye-catching. The simplest way to do so is to decorate the front-end of a product - in this case we start with icons. Creating professional and stylish icons is no easy task and requires talent, skills in design and days and sometimes even weeks of work. Fortunately, with the set of newest icons from Aha-Soft, creating a nice interface for desktop and web applications will no longer be a headache.

Perfect Toolbar Icons delivers the newest eye-catching and most distinctive icons that provide designers with the cost-effective “specimens” for their work, relieving them of the burdensome task of creating icons. All the icons are available for viewing and downloading and can be purchased either individually or in sets. It is possible to order custom icons of your individual design. The icons are available in the following sizes: 16*16, 20*20, 24*24, 32*32, 48*48 and formats: PNG, BMP, GIF and ICO. They also come in two variants: for websites and the old Windows versions and in 32-bit True Color format for Windows XP and Vista.

Aha-Soft offers a flexible purchasing policy. When purchased individually, each icon costs $4 (USD). You are welcome to contact Aha-Soft with the names of the icons you would like to purchase, and the order will be processed immediately. Moreover, a collection of icons with only some of the available sizes can be ordered. In this case you will get a discount off the usual price. Minimum purchase is 2 icons. More information on the icon set can be found at http://perfecticon.com/stock-icons/perfect-toolbar-icons.htm.

About Aha-Soft
Founded in 2000, Aha-Soft is an Information Technology company specializing in professional icon and cursor design and management software. Aha-Soft is the author of such popular tools as AhaView, Any to Icon, Icon to Any, ArtCursors, ArtIcons, ArtIcons Pro, IconLover, IconUtils and IconXP. If you would like to get a comment, request a reviewer copy, have a businesses proposal, want to become an authorized reseller or have any other inquiry, please visit the company’s web site at www.aha-soft.com.

The premier design and interactive media competition for higher education students from around the world. The Adobe Design Achievement Awards celebrates student achievement reflecting the powerful convergence of technology and the creative and interactive arts.

The competition honors the most talented and promising interactive, motion and video, and traditional media created by students.

Prizes awarded include a trip to the Adobe Design Achievement Awards in New York City, over $60K US in cash and Adobe software prizes.

12 categories in 3 Media Areas

Interactive Media Categories
Browser-Based Design
Non-Browser-Based Design
Designer/Developer Collaboration
Mobile Design
Installation Design
Motion and Video Categories
Animation
Live Action
Motion Graphics
Traditional Media Categories
Illustration
Packaging
Photography
Print Communications

For more info, please visit the site.

The Nielsen Norman Group is conducting a design competition to identify the world’s ten best application user experiences. The top ten winners will be announced in September 2008.
Did you design a vertical-market application that’s great for, say, dentists, but you’re tired of never having anybody but dentists see your work? Or did you design a mission-critical enterprise app that’s making your company big bucks, but nobody outside the firm ever heard of it? It’s time for the people who design great practical applications to share the limelight. Enter your work for the award. Winners will get substantial publicity and recognition from being honored in the Application Design Annual.

Eligible designs: Applications are defined as providing features, commands, and functionality, especially to the extent that they allow users to access or manipulate complex or mission-critical data. (Thus, we exclude pure-information websites and intranets where the only user commands are to navigate. We also don’t consider games for this award.)

For more info, please visit the site.

Welcome back to the Webware 100!

It worked before, so we’re doing it again: Today Webware is launching its second Webware 100 Awards, honoring the people’s choice for the best Web 2.0 apps and services.

In our 2007 awards, more than half a million votes were cast to determine the most the popular Web apps. This time, with more apps available and even people using Web 2.0 apps, the contest should be even more intense.

There are 10 categories for awards in the Webware 100. Each category will have 10 winners in it. We’ve freshened the category lineup for this year:

Audio: Music, podcasts, audiobooks.
Browsing: Browsers, start pages, RSS readers, widgets, runtime engines.
Commerce and events: Retail, auctions, travel, real estate, concerts, conferences.
Communications: E-mail, chat, voice.
Productivity: App suites, to-do lists, groupware.
Publishing and photography: Blogging, content management, photo sites.
Search and Reference: Search engines, encyclopedias, mapping.
Social: Social networking, family sites, recommendations, online worlds, contests.
Utility and Security: Infrastructure providers, storage, online protection.
Video: Video storage, playback, streaming, editing, and animation.

Nominations are open

Today we are opening up the awards with the nomination phase. If there’s a site that you want people to vote on, nominate it now using this form on www.webware.com/100. Nominations will close on January 25, 2008.

Call For Entries
By: American Design Awards

SAN DIEGO, California, January 10, 2008 - The American Design Awards is inviting graphic and web designers from around the world to participate in its 2008 Winter Semi-Annual Design Contest. The Winter and Summer Semi-Annual Design Contests which are now in their sixth year, are the flagship of the American Design Awards which attract an average of five thousand participants annually.

Deadline to submit entries for the 2008 Winter Semi-Annual Design Contest is February 15, 2008. Applications must be submitted online through the American Design Awards website.

The top three entries in each of the twenty-two design categories will be considered for the Award of Design Excellence – this award is presented to designers or design firms who display outstanding design and creative abilities, while maintaining high ethical standards.

The American Design Awards mission is to provide a fair and ethical platform for all graphic and web designers of varying experience levels and disciplines to compete on, while providing a worldwide audience to showcase to.

With the ever-changing landscape of the design industry, the American Design Awards is also expanding its code of ethics by which designers are graded and judged. “Ethical standards have always been valued and exercised in our competitions; this is by far the most important qualification of any designer entering the awards program” said Kevin Javid, Vice President of the American Design Awards.

“Our organization’s mission and the purpose of our events are to strengthen and emphasize ethical practices in our participants, benefiting both the designer as well as the design industry as a whole.”

For more information regarding the entry process, including the various design categories, entry fees, and timelines, please click here.