UK, London, 1, April 2011: The Annual Design Awards have assembled some of the most prominent figures in the design industry for their prestigious judging panel.

Now open for 2011 entries, these awards celebrate the best in design and offer up to $20,000 worth of prizes.

Following the outstanding success of their debut in 2010, the Annual Design Awards are gearing up to a second year and are now open for 2011 entries. Also known as the ANNDAS, the awards are quickly making their mark in the industry, something their chairman, David Laird, attributes to their focus on discovering and celebrating talent:

“We don’t have hundreds of pointless categories or high entry fees; instead we honour creativity at its best. This has not only made the ANNDAS accessible to a much wider group, but it has also meant that winning really represents an achievement in the business.”

One aspect which Laird cites as being vital to the integrity of the awards has been the quality of its jury. This year, the panel is made up of some of the biggest names in the design world, including Larissa Meek, Jacob Cass, Lindon Leader of FEDEX design fame and Brian Cannon, who has designed album covers for superstars such as Oasis and The Verve.

In addition to the prestige of being selected by these prominent judges, there are up to $20,000 worth of prizes on offer such as design software, subscriptions to PhotoXpress, a Gomedias Vector bundle and a trophy designed by the team behind those of The Golden Globes. Laird also points out that participating in the ANNDAS can open many doors:

“We’re here to promote fantastic designers and that’s what we work to do for our winners. For example, both winners and nominees are featured in the Designers Directory, in our hardback book and in our e-publications, which reach over a million industry professionals.”

Entries for the ANNDAS Awards have now started pouring in, with the final deadline on 22nd July 2011. Categories include Best Digital Art, Best Product Packaging Design and the brand new People’s Choice Award, which is voted for by the public. About the Annual Design Awards: The Annual Design Awards (ANNDAS) were founded in 2009 and are sponsored by several companies including Quantum Print, Envato and Digital Art. Entry is open to everyone worldwide.

To find out more or to enter, visit http://www.annualdesignawards.com. Contact: For more information, please contact: E-Mail: info@annualdesignawards.com http://www.annualdesignawards.com

Design Competition to Create a Movie Poster

Tiffany Shlain (founder of the Webby Awards)  has come to Talenthouse to find an aspiring designer who would like the opportunity to work with her and create the official movie poster for her newest full feature film “Connected.”

Designers are asked to visit http://www.talenthouse.com, download the “Poster Logo + Photos to Use (ZIP)”  and use the material to create an original movie poster that best captures both the concepts and feeling conveyed in the movie.

The winning design will be used in the marketing campaigns for “Connected” and will be put into consideration for The Hollywood Reporters prestigious 2011 Key Art Award. The designer will also be offered an internship with Tiffany if they are local to the San Francisco Bay Area, or three hours of mentorship with Tiffany if they live outside the area.

For more details visit http://www.talenthouse.com

Student Design Competition

Works with Water Nutraceuticals is launching a nationwide design competition for students across the UK’s leading colleges and universities, as part of the company’s new initiative to support young talent.

The top prize on offer includes a 4 week work placement at the winner’s choice of Works with Water Nutraceuticals’ prestigious creative agency partners, Elmwood or BJL. This will provide invaluable experience and contacts, and will help the winner’s CV stand out in today’s fiercely competitive workplace.

What’s more, the winning design will be printed on an exclusive canvas bag which will be available with purchases of Works with Water’s acne treatment help: clear skin, and will receive its own PR campaign.

To enter, students are invited to submit a design under the concept of ‘help: your confidence’, to portray a positive notion of increasing confidence and self esteem in young people. This is in recognition of the effect that acne can have on people’s confidence, and how acne treatments like help: clear skin can help to build self esteem.

The judging panel will consist of representatives from Works with Water Nutraceuticals, Elmwood, BJL and YouthNet – a charity dedicated to supporting young people.

The competition starts on 18 October 2010 and ends on 6 December 2010 at 5pm. All entries need to be submitted to designcompetition@workswithwater.co.uk and will be displayed in a gallery on the Works with Water website. Full details, design brief and artwork specifications are online at http://www.workswithwater.co.uk/designcompetition.

Simply send me your best pieces of design work (along with an entry fee of just 1000 dollars per submission – cheques and paypal welcome).

What can I win?

One lucky winner will get exposure on this graphic design blog plus 500 dollars.

When will the winner be announced?

The winner will be announced in 2 month time after I have finished sunning myself in Barbados.

Disclaimer

The competition above in fact does not exist, my flip flops are still in the cupboard. However I just wanted to point out how frustrated I get when I get sent emails advertising design competitions with big entry fees.

Tell Me More

I received an email just the other day about a design competition and was about to do a quick mention of it on my blog, but when I checked out the details I noticed that the submission fee was about 100 dollars – that just really winds me up. Is it really a competition when you pay such fees to enter? To top that off the winner didn’t win much money. Ok, so they will get exposure and their work gets included in a book, no doubt a book that the company in question will sell.

I would understand a small fee maybe 10 or 20 dollars to cover admin and to stop people sending in complete rubbish, but come on, high submission fees are just a rip off and not in the spirit of a competition.

What do you think?

“We have graffiti artists Jimi Crayon, Pinky and MNKY on board, to provide inspiration, who have designed their own bottle and street art designs (you can check them out: on facebook). The initiative will be supported with a digital gallery – http://www.malibu-rum.com/byu where fans can either upload a photograph of their creation or create their designs directly onto the Malibu By U bottle, using a range of creative tools available.”

Artists and designers are invited to come up with their own bottle design. You can upload your design to http://www.malibu-rum.com/byu and winners will get a trip to one of these locations – Rio, Vegas or Barbados.

• A Graphic Designer who works for a company (perhaps you even own it)
• An Art Director
• A Web Designer
• A Freelance Graphic Designer
• A Graphic Design Student

Then why not share a day of your life on Graphic Design Blog
Email me at mail@graphicdesignblog.co.uk with the answers to the questions below (numbers 1 to 11) plus a photo of yourself if you have one, and I will post the most interesting ones on my blog each week with a link back to your blog or website.

The Competition (now over)
Send a link to a video (on YouTube) which you have created of you sharing/talking about a day in your life – also email me a link to your website so I can link to it. There will be a $100 prize (payable by paypal) for the best video (in my opinion). Please make sure you include in your video that you are taking part in the Day in the life of… competition” on http://www.graphicdesignblog.co.uk or put a link in your Youtube info back to this post. Entries in by May 31st 2010. The winner will be chosen after this date.

1. A day in the life of a __________________ (fill in what you do for a living – must be graphic design related)
2. Your Name:
3. Company Name/University Name etc:
4. Web Address:
5. City, Country
6. How you Start the Day – ie. Get up what time, travel
7. First jobs
8. The rest of your work day
9. Evening
10. What you love about your job /course
11. What you hate about your job /student life

I hope you want to take part and look forward to hearing a bit about what everyone does

Voteforart is a new site that is a bit like Threadless but for University and College Apparel. Anyone can enter the design competitions to create a t-shirt design targeted at specific colleges/universities. The winning t-shirt designer will get a cash prize and their design will printed on t-shirts and sold in the University Book Store. For example one of the current design competitions is shown below:

The University Of Maryland is looking for a cool, never-before-seen design for their basketball fans, and you’re gonna give it to them!  Whether you’re a fan or not, blow the Terps away with your creativity and originality for a chance to see your winning design in the “Maryland Book Exchange” and earn $500 cash. All artists no matter where they are from and what school they go to can submit designs into the contest.

I asked Jeremy Parker, president of VoteforArt a few Questions about his new business

How did you come up with the idea for the T-shirt Design Competitions?

I came up with the idea while at the university of Maryland bookstore. I didn’t see any designs that I liked.  I felt that if given the opportunity, artists from all over the world would create a lot more creative designs. I also felt this could be a way for unknown artists to break into an industry and get their work seen by thousands of people and make money in the process.

I thought that Universities and Colleges already had their own mascots and logos, how creative can artists and designers be?

Universities have there own marks and logos but our design contests allow artists to retouch logos (color, position) and create intricate designs around the already established school logos.

Do the Winning Artists and Designers also get a royalty on their designs in addition to the cash prize?

For specified contests, artists also earn a percentage of sales that take place through our online store (2% of online sales).

Find out more at http://www.voteforart.com

TV Production company RICOCHET are making a new 6 part series on traditional and contemporary crafts for a major broadcaster this summer. The series will feature episodes on six different types of craft; Greenwood, Thatching, Stonemasonry, Weaving, Stained Glass and Metal Work.
 
RICOCHET have enlisted some of the UK’s top Mastercraftsmen from a variety of disciplines who will each mentor 3 eager trainees on an intensive training course. If you’re interested and passionate about learning the traditional skills of the blacksmith, have a passion for wood or any of the other skills listed above then contact the Mastercrafts team at RICOCHET on 01273 224 800 or email mastercrafts@ricochet.co.uk

RICOCHET are the makers of factual and documentary programming for all the major broadcasters both in the UK and US. They have produced series such as “No Going Back”, “Supernanny” and “Born To Be Different”. More recent work includes the Bafta nominated ‘Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts’ for BBC3 and ‘The Real Swiss Family Robinson’ for BBC1.

The experts names have not yet been released but there’ll be someone from the world of business who’ll play the client, there’ll be an artist who’ll play the designer, an advertising or music promo director, etc… The experts will judge the teams work and give comments and critique based on the quality of the final product and the ways different mediums are used – each team will have a designer, a film maker, an animator and a sound designer on it.

The designers chosen to take part will be flown to NY and put up in accommodation. There’s also a top team prize of $400,000 US Dollars and a load of HP design gear to win.

or more info on the competition visit http://www.mtvengineroom.com

To enter the competition you have to create a piece of art or design which communicates the brand of Brahma, its curves (the bottle shape) and its Brazilian heritage. Submissions an be made online or by post, the overall winner will receive £5000 with 9 runner up prizes of £500. Winning designs could also appear on the packaging throughout the UK.

You an see examples of work previously created for Brahma on their gallery page but a few design examples are shown below. More details of the competition can be found at http://www.vistobrahma.com

Design a Snowboard for Moosejaw
As the title suggest this competition is to design a Snowboard the only criteria is that it must include a Moosejaw logo. Both a Moosejaw Logo and snowboard template can be downloaded from the site. The winner will receive an Arbor Snowboard, bindings and a Moosejaw hoodie. Most viral entry wins $100 Moosejaw gift card. More information at Brickfish.