DESIGN 21: Social Design Network announced the top three winners of the Power to the Pedal online design competition this week from 222 entries worldwide. The online social design network, which promotes better design for the greater good through its members and non-profit partners, challenged designers to create a new bicycle accessory or add-on for existing bicycles that would improve the cycling experience and promote the use of bicycles as a primary means of transportation. The competition was open for 12 weeks and attracted entries from 41 countries and over 200 designers. Designs were judged by a panel of DESIGN 21 judges based on overall effectiveness, creativity, practicality, aesthetics and how well it responds to environmental concerns. Members of DESIGN 21 were also invited to vote online for their favorite design for the Most Popular award.

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iSpring Solutions announces the release of version 3.2 of iSpring Free, a no-cost solution for converting PowerPoint presentations into Flash. A few clicks get the job done. The tool makes high quality conversions and helps to publish converted files on the Web right away.

The benefits of converting PowerPoint files to Flash are apparent. Flash makes files smaller in size and with better compatibility, so it’s far more convenient for delivering your projects to a target audience. However, PowerPoint itself doesn’t provide you with such a valuable conversion feature, so you need a separate tool for this purpose. The problem is that many specially developed tools, even those that cost a lot of money, may fail to satisfy you with conversion results. iSpring Solutions invites you to try iSpring Free, a proven PowerPoint to Flash converter that provides outstanding quality conversion at no charge.

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A heads up for those of you in the Los Angeles area - The Second Annual Animation Book Look, a unique author/artist signature book signing event, will be held on Saturday, May 17, 2008 in Sherman Oaks, CA. Co-hosted by Van Eaton Galleries and The Creative Talent Network, Animation Book Look is a gathering of authors and artists from the animation industry. MyToons.com and Animation Magazine are co-sponsoring the event.

Animation Book Look provides an opportunity for professionals from the publishing and animation industries to promote themselves and their art to fans, collectors, and art aficionados. This festival of book signings and art(ist) sightings is the only event of its kind in the country, featuring appearances by well-known visual and literary artists, as well as, “undiscovered” animation authors.

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DVDVideoSoft, an independent software vendor, announces the bulk update of its free video editing software. This site also provides a free video converter and multimedia software guides and tutorials. Unlike software and shareware catalogs collecting third-party products, DVDVideoSoft carefully designs, develops and releases all free software titles under its own name and makes them available to computer users without any hidden fees, subscriptions or registrations. The new versions features the batch mode, more supported input and output formats, 9 new optimized presets for Apple players: iPod, iPhone and iTouch and numerous interface and internal engine improvements.

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The Dragon Artist Project moves forward with a familiar name in artist Mike GIANT on the Calavera model. GIANT’s initial love for drawing sprouted off at a young age, eventually settling in New Mexico as a tattoo artist as he continually developed his art. A limited edition GIANT Calavera will come packaged with a set including box and booklet featuring Dragon Artist Project/GIANT projects. A suggested retail price of $125 has been set and will be released at Karmaloop on Thursday, 15 May.

Acclaimed type designer Nick Cooke (Olicana, Chevin, Precious) has completed his long-awaited Houschka Rounded typeface, a softer new companion to the original Houschka family launched in 1999. The new 6 weight family (Thin, Light, Medium, DemiBold, Bold, ExtraBold) retains the same humanist qualities of the original typeface, a design which is elegant, clean, effortlessly legible and yet full of character. Houschka has already branded the likes of Cadbury Schweppes and Tesco; Houschka Rounded’s smooth curves, range of weights, multi-lingual coverage and impressive repertoire of OpenType features will undoubtedly create a whole new buzz.

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The Winners of the 12th Annual Webby Awards have been announced. The Academy selected Winners from over 10,000 entries representing all 50 states and 60 countries worldwide. Winners receiving the prestigious title of the best of the Web have been selected in over 100 Website, Interactive Advertising, Mobile and Film & Video categories.

And, in the largest turnout ever, the people collectively spoke and selected a cross-section of outstanding winners who will be honored alongside Webby Award Winners at the Gala events in June.

We’ll not spoil the excitement for you - go to the Webby Awards to learn who won!

The Art Directors Club announced the top winners in the categories of Advertising and Design - including Interactive Media - for its 87th Annual Awards held 1 May 2008. The Art Directors Club is the first creative collective of its kind. Global membership spans the disciplines of design, advertising and visual communications.

Top Advertising Winners

Chief Creative Officer, Ogilvy Toronto and Advertising Jury Chair, Nancy Vonk, and Creative Director TAXI NYC and Interactive Jury Foreman Jason McCann together with the 17 members of the international Advertising Jury awarded 21 Gold Cubes, 34 Silver Cubes, 55 Distinctive Merit and 60 Merit certificates this year.

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Inhabitat is at it again - they’re showcasing the work produced by students from the University of Belgrade, made from industrial wood and shown at the Milan Furniture Fair. They want you to vote for your favorite design - whether you vote or not, go take a look at the student work. It’s amazingly creative and beautiful!

Smith Micro Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMSI) Consumer Group today announced the immediate availability of Poser® Pro. Building on the global success of Poser® 7, long used by digital artists and hobbyists to create 3D images and animations, Smith Micro developed Poser Pro with a feature set and functionality geared for professional content creators within studio and production environments. To save users time, resources and development costs, Poser Pro offers advanced features that include scene-hosting plug-ins for popular 3D environments, as well as a 64-bit render engine, COLLADA™ support and advanced network rendering.

Poser Pro delivers a powerful, yet easy-to-use 3D character design and animation tools that help artists integrate custom and pre-built characters into professional projects and production pipelines. Poser Pro lets artists fine tune light, shadow, color and detail on figures, and ships with distributable 3D characters that are specially designed to provide a starting point for scene development, thereby saving production time. For comprehensive content and creation, Poser Pro offers the sophisticated character functionality and features of many higher priced products on the market.

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