contests

Halloween has passed, which our local CVS emporium interprets as a signal to bust out the Santa hats and dreidel cookies, frosted in a most fetching shade of blue. We're getting into the holiday spirit with a contest. The prizes: fame and free iTunes downloads of the documentary we've been talking about since it was in pre-production: Gary Hustwit's Objectified (find it on iTunes here; we've posted the trailer after the jump). Entering is as easy as looking around your desk. Just complete this sentence:

The most interesting object on my desk at the moment is __________.

Then snap a photo (a .jpeg, if you please) of the object and send it along with your one-sentence description to unbeige@mediabistro.com with "Contest" in the subject line. You have until industrial designer Dieter Rams' half-birthday—that would be Friday, November 20—to objectify yourself. We'll announce the three winners shortly thereafter. Remember that we're equally enamored with the beautiful (a pristine cup of Blackfeet Indian Pencils) and the odd (that ceramic doughnut your friend brought you back from Japan), so think creatively. The UnBeige legal team reminds us that because we're working with the iTunes (US) store, we can only award downloads to U.S. residents. International readers are also welcome to enter—we'll find something prizeworthy (read: a design book) to give you, too. Good luck!

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The votes are in, and the winner of Nikon's annual Small World Photomicrography Competition is...Arabidopsis thaliana! You know, the thale cress anther? OK, it's the male sex organ of a small flowering plant, and enterprising Estonian Heiti Paves, a scientist at the Tallinn University of Technology who is probably of no relation to celebrity hairstylist Ken, managed to photograph a bunch of them under 20 times magnification (resulting in the photomicrograph pictured above). "As part of my work as a research scientist, I have been taking photographs through the microscope for almost 30 years to observe the processes in living cells," said Paves, whose winning image reminds us of a painfully inflamed devil strawberry. "I have spent a lot of time to capture nice pictures worthy of submission to the Nikon Small World Competition." Way to put that pricey confocal microscope to good use!

Always on the hunt for art historical allusions (however unintentional they may be), we particularly enjoyed the above top finishers. James Hayden of Philadelphia's Wistar Institute captured fourth place for his ultra-closeup of a swirly anglerfish ovary (above, at left)—or is it a pseudocolored overhead shot of Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty"? Meanwhile, New Zealander Lloyd Donaldson won eighth place for his Brice Marden-esque skeins of color (at right), which are in fact cotton fibers daubed with berberine sulphate and magnified a couple hundred times. Go and project your own frame of reference on all of the winners and honorable mentions here.

Our summer-long case of Frank Lloyd Wright fever comes to an end Sunday, with the closing of the Guggenheim's stellar "Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward" exhibition. So time's a wasting to enter the global design contest sponsored by Guggenheim and Google (a match-up that we like to call "Googlenheim"). As you may recall, the Design It: Shelter Competition invites amateur and professional designers to use Google Earth and Google SketchUp to create and submit designs for virtual 3-D shelters for a location of their choice anywhere on Earth (anywhere? anywhere!). Two prize winners (one chosen by a jury that includes architect Neil Denari and Pentagram's Lisa Strausfeld, the other by public voting on ten finalists selected by students at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture) will be announced on October 21, the 50th anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum's opening. More than 200 participants from more than 40 different countries have already submitted entries. You've got until Sunday.

The good people at GOOD have partnered with a web video outfit called Babelgum to save the world. Now comes the tricky part: figuring out how. That's where you come in! The two companies have launched a contest that seeks innovative answers to one simple question: If there weren't any pesky practical limitations, what world-changing device would you invent? [Pause for thinking.] Got your answer? Great, now tell it to a video camera, submit the video to GOOD before August 26, and wait patiently. One supercreative submission will be animated and featured on the GOOD and Babelgum websites, and the winner will get to program Babelgum's Our Earth channel ("where guerrilla meets gorilla") for the month of October. Here's a video fronted by a gun-wielding woodchuck to provide some inspiration:

The Detroit Institute of Arts holds a special place in our hearts (we're not just saying that because it rhymes), and while there's trouble in Motor City, the DIA is moving ahead. In the wake of widespread cost cutting that included laying off 20 percent of its staff, the museum has just appointed a new chief curator (Kenneth J. Myers, the former curator of American art and head of the American art department), recently reinstalled its permanent galleries, and opened a new education wing. Now the DIA is really getting down to business (and just plain getting down) with a funk karaoke contest.

This Saturday night, between screenings of Jeffrey Levy-Hinte's documentary Soul Power (the story of the three-day music festival that accompanied the "Rumble in the Jungle" back in 1974), the museum will host the Soul Power Funk-Karaoke Contest. "Contestants are asked to perform soul or funk songs for a chance to win a season pass for two to the Detroit Film Theatre's fall season," notes the website, which also promises a Soul Power poster giveaway. We call dibs on the whole of George Clinton's T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. album—either that or this (ahem) timeless masterpiece by DJ Kool...

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The United Kingdom division of Penguin Books recently challenged design students to "design a fresh and bold new look" for Donna Tartt's 1992 novel The Secret History. Their mission: to create a striking, imaginative cover design that would bring the cult classic to a new generation of readers. The esteemed panel of judges has picked a winner, our brother blog Galleycat reports, and it's Peter Adlington. The Stockport College student won for this abstract cover design (above), in which we detect a distinct Saul Bass vibe.

"It's beautiful, and the infinite regress doorway tells the story, gives you the mystery in the simplest possible terms, and that's what graphic design at its best can do," said novelist (and design enthusiast) Hari Kunzru, one of the judges. "Just a few shapes and you have the whole concept." Alas, Adlington's design won't be produced—as far as we know—but he does get £1,000 (around $1,600) and a six-week internship at Penguin's London design studio. The list of shortlisted designs is worth a look. We particularly like Ben Cain's typographical approach (above). Inspired by ancient Greek tablets, he aimed to capture "the potential to lose control. As the structure of the type gets closer to the spine it becomes increasingly unstable, attempting to communicate the descent from order to chaos."

Now that summer has officially arrived, it's time for a good old-fashioned snowboard design contest! Allan Chochinov, the fearless leader of Core77, tells us that his fine organization has teamed up with a Swiss outfit called Nidecker Snowboards to launch an international design competition inviting designers to create custom snowboard graphics (think surfboard graphics but much colder, and with boots involved). The top five designs will be applied to Nidecker snowboards and displayed at a couple of giant winter sports tradeshows (so many colorful parkas, so little time) in Denver and Munich. The grand prize winner will receive $2,500 in cold cash, and his or her design will be included in the 2010-11 Nidecker line. Four runners-up will each be produced in a limited edition run, and all top five finalists will receive a Nidecker snowboard produced with their design. Learn more about the competition and register here. You've got until July 12 to come up with something cool.

Today is Frank Lloyd Wright's birthday, and while we've been busy transforming a tower of fondant and Heath bars into an elaborate Fallingwater-themed cake, New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is celebrating the 142nd anniversary of Wright's birth with a global design contest. The Guggenheim has teamed with Google (a match-up that we can't help but refer to as "Googlenheim") for today's launch of the Design It: Shelter Competition, which invites amateur and professional designers to use Google Earth and Google SketchUp application to create and submit designs for virtual 3-D shelters for a location of their choice anywhere on Earth (anywhere? anywhere!). Submissions will be accepted through August 23. Two prize winners (one will be chosen by a jury that includes architect Neil Denari and Pentagram's Lisa Strausfeld, the other by public voting on ten finalists selected by students at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture) will be announced on October 21, the 50th anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum's opening. Our advice? Get inspired by visiting the Guggenheim's stellar "Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward" exhibition and then head to the museum's Sackler Center for a companion exhibition of shelters designed, built, and lived in over the past seven decades by students of Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture in Arizona and Wisconsin.

Michael Bierut, Steven Heller, Ellen Lupton, Clement Mok, and the rest of the esteemed judging panel have spoken, and Texas sixth grader Christin Engelberth's "A New Beginning" (pictured above) is the big winner in the annual Doodle 4 Google contest, which challenges kids from around the country to redesign the Google logo according to a designated theme (this year's: What I wish for the world). "My doodle expresses my wish that in the current crisis discoveries will be made," wrote Engleberth in her contest entry. "That in these discoveries solutions will be found to help the Earth prosper once more. That those solutions will help the world get back on its feet, and create a better place for everyone." Engleberth's winning doodle will adorn Google's U.S. homepage tomorrow (today, meanwhile, it sports a fun fossil theme to highlight the discovery of humanity's long lost lemur link), and she will receive a $15,000 college scholarship as well as a $25,000 technology grant for her San Antonio junior high school.

Between May 11 and 18, the public cast nearly 6 million online votes to select the National Finalist doodles: "Friendship Around the World" by five-year-old Miriam Elizabeth Lowery, "Stop to Smell the Flowers" by Blakely Linz, age 13, and "From the Ashes" by Emerald Lu, also 13, whose symbol-stuffed design includes a phoenix, lotus blossoms, wheat, a circling pair of koi fish, a clock, and a butterfly. All of the regional finalists' designs will go on view tomorrow at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where the "Doodle 4 Google: What I Wish for the World" exhibition will be up through July 5 in the museum's design education center.

Previously on UnBeige:

"What I Wish for the World" is the theme of this year's "Doodle 4 Google" contest, in which kids from around the country compete to have their Google logo redesign featured, for one glorious day, on the search giant's homepage. The judges selected 400 state finalists (100 in each of four grade-level groups) and then narrowed the field to 40 regional winners. Now it's up to you, the Google-going public, to vote for your favorites. The online voting is open through Monday, May 18.

Given the global wish theme, the doodles are heavy on world peace, endangered species (particularly polar bears), trees, and energy motifs (one 12-year-old West Virginian with the delightful name of Austin Gage Druid adorned the Google logo with colorful wind turbines). The entries from the students in grades 10-12 tend to be more abstract, including 17-year-old Antony Martinez's Google grafitti, created to represent his wish: "for public art to be more accepted." But we're suckers for simplicity and so are throwing our support behind 12-year-old Abigail Kois of Wolworth, New York, who put down her pencil and picked up some paperclips. "What I wish for the world is unity," wrote Kois in her entry (pictured above). "The theme is represented by connected paper clips in my doodle....Each clip is interconnected much the way people are."

Previously on UnBeige: