After 80 years selling rugs, innovation can be difficult, but Karastan is looking to make a statement with its new marketing campaign (cleverly themed "Make a Statement"), and so they challenged students at a handful of art and photography schools nationwide to get out their cameras and start snapping rugs—Karastan rugs, of course, in three specified settings: a residential/home environment, a public place, and an "American" setting. While the scare quotes around "American" seem an invitation to hijinks, the students were up to the task, and the Karastan Rug-ged America Photo Contest is now asking you to help choose the winners. Through July 15, visitors to the contest website can select favorites in each of the three categories. The winning schools (one in each category) will be awarded $3,500 in cash. And of course, all participating schools get a free rug. We've posted a few standout contest photos after the jump, including the Magritte-means-Tony Soprano "American" environment created by students at Maine Photographic Workshops.

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Bravo's Shear Genius, a Project Runway for hairstylists, is back for its second season. Heavy on the "cut"-related wordplay, the show puts vaguely menacing Danish hairstylist René Fris (who we could swear we once saw in a Mentos commercial) in the Tim Gunn role and is hosted by actress/Kmartist Jaclyn Smith. Shear Genius celebrated its season premiere on Tuesday with a pop-up salon in New York's Times Square and recruited students from the School of Visual Arts, under the guidance of SVA 3D Design Program chairperson Kevin O'Callaghan, to design the temporary salon as well as ten salon chairs that Bravo's "The Dish" blog describes as "pretty damn amazing."

Among the wacky hair chairs is the trio pictured above. Created by Sarah Nguyen, the "DJ" chair (at far right) is a stack of hair-themed record albums ready for playing on its giant turntable base while Kathleen Ugurlu's "Jock" (center) is for the hirsute baseball fan (we think the batting helmet is a nice touch). But we find ourselves unable to resist the garden gnome-accessorized "Backyard" chair designed by Kaori Sakai in a bold palette of green, red, and yellow. It comes with a grass-tufted seat backed by a garden gate, a hose, cooler, and a full grill setup, complete with ketchup, mustard, and corn on the cob. Check out all of the chairs and vote for your favorite here. The winner gets a $5,000 prize, which we're hoping is payable in cash rather than hair products.

Someone must has a good marketing department. According to the International Herald Tribune's Raising the Roof blog, big British design and architecture firms like Foster + Partners and Will Alsop will be submitting entries to the Architectural Jelly Design Competition, a contest "which seeks to raise awareness of the relationship between food and architecture." It, of course, is all the brainchild of a gelatin company, and will be a part of the upcoming, month-long London Festival of Architecture (June 20th to July 20th). While the joke might be that clearly there is no connection between architecture and food," we fail to really understand why marketing something that's basically Jell-O to architects and fans of architecture. Is it a market this gelatin company is really hoping to capture? Has someone discovered that this professional group is feeling desperate for a bounce, translucent snack? Or are we thinking too much about something that's just supposed to be all in good, silly fun? Whatever the case, we look forward to seeing Foster + Partners' entry and even more so to see how many millions some company in Dubai will pay for the rights to turn it into some sort of life-sized, lavish hotel.

Bombay Sapphire has announced the U.S. winner of its 2008 Designer Glass Competition: Mia Ferrera Wiesenthal of Brooklyn created "On the Rocks" (pictured above, at left), a stemless martini glass nestled in a crystal rock-like formation. The design also won the People's Prize Award, receiving the most votes from visitors to Bombay Sapphire's website. Perhaps we just view the world through Koons-colored glasses, but the first thing we thought of when seeing Wiesenthal's design was Jeff Koons's "Diamond (Blue)" (pictured above, at right), the massive sculpture that sold (to Kiev-based billionaire Victor Pinchuk, we hear) for a cool $11.8 million last fall at Christie's. We think the design's Koonsian flair will stand Wiesenthal in good stead as she heads to London this September to represent the U.S. in the global competition. Meanwhile, the national prize nets her $3,000 and an internship with designer Sami Hayek, the brother-in-law-to-be of another Koons fan, François-Henri Pinault.

Like we've said before in the billion posts we've up before on the presidential primaries: we don't like to get political or pick sides or anything, because that's really not our place around here on a design blog. But for every story we've read or posted about the brilliance of the Obama campaign, do you ever wonder why there's none of that about Clinton's camp? Well, judging from the just released Project T-Shirt on the candidate's site, that's why. It's a Threadless-esque t-shirt design competition and you get to vote on the last five, the winner of which will be printed and used in however many weeks this race continues to drag along. The thing is, each of the top five entries are just so painful to look at, each featuring at least two things that will make you cringe and/or turn your head violently away. So, like it or not, if this is the best-of-the-best, Obama still beats Clinton, hands down, in attracting the design talent. Ouch.

According to a national study, 92% of vacation photos consist of at least three pictures of sunsets. OK, we made that up, but it sounds about right, and so we suspect that Canon will be on the receiving end of oodles of sunset shots as the entries start to roll in for its third annual "Photography in the Parks" contest, which challenges legal U.S. residents over the age of 13 (perhaps there are separate such contests for children and/or illegal aliens?) to submit their shots taken in the vicinity of any park or monument in America. This year's theme is "inspirational nature images." Translation: sunsets!

The grand prize has an intimidating ring to it: "an unforgettable vacation for two in the American wilderness." If that sounds too much like the tagline of a bad Chevy Chase film, aim a little lower. The three runners-up get Canon photo gear. What's the catch? The contest is not open to "professional photographers," which the Canon legal team has defined as "one who has earned 51% or more of his or her annual income by taking, selling, or marketing photographs, whether as an employee or as a freelance photographer." So consult your tax returns to make sure you qualify, and then get to snapping some sunsets. You've got until September 30 to enter.

University of Kentucky, you've just been promised a multi-million dollar gift, what are you going to do next? Start our own international design competition! That's right, prosperous architect of retirement housing Clifford Curry and his wife H. Delight Stone (which we kind of wish were our name) have just bestowed upon Curry's alma mater a gift of "more than $5.5 million dollars," which we've taken the liberty of rounding up to $6 million in the headline of this post. The gift, which will be presented to the university over ten years, will establish the Curry Stone Design Prize and the Curry Stone Chair in Design at the University of Kentucky.

The Curry Stone Prize, to be presented annually, will award $100,000 to exceptional emerging designers "with extraordinary design projects or ideas that contribute positively to living circumstances for broad sections of global humanity." The prize will be presented for the first time at the 2008 IdeaFestival, which takes place this September in Louisville, Kentucky. "We want to give designers an opportunity to be recognized as leaders in innovation and provide financial resources to help the ideas get developed and implemented," said Curry in a statement issued by the university. According to UK College of Design dean Michael Speaks, the prize will recognize outstanding achievements in urban design, architecture, graphic, and product design.

Hop on the contest cycle! First up is a two-pronged international design competition for bike parking in New York City, sponsored by the city's Department of Transportation along with our friends at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The goal of the so-called "CityRacks" competition is to develop attractive, functional, and well-designed sidewalk bike racks (that's contest #1) and to improve bicycle parking inside commercial and residential buildings (designing an in-building parking facility is contest #2). The city will use the winning sidewalk rack as its new standard for bicycle parking (and award $5,000 to the winning designer) and Google plans to install the in-building facility in its Manhattan offices (the winner gets $10,000). And get this, among the contest jurors are the city's transportation commissioner, deputy mayor, and avid bicyclist David Byrne. Register here to receive full contest details.

Continuing with the cycle theme, the sustainability crusaders over at Tricycle are again encouraging you to repurpose sample materials (specifically, carpet samples) in their 2008 Ample Sample contest. The contest deadline is May 10, and if a glance through recent entries is any indication, we advise you to steer clear of cat scratching posts, as that category looks to have been exhausted. Of course, the real question for you multi-tasking UnBeige readers is: how cool of a bike rack can you make out of carpet samples?

"A chair is a very difficult object," said Mies van der Rohe. "A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous." (Well, that and those mischievous chipmunks!) A new contest sponsored by the Sustainable Furniture Council and World Market Center Las Vegas challenges you to create One Good Chair, a "simple object to aid the body in the act of sitting" that makes good (through material conservation), feels good (provides physical comfort), and looks good (can resonate emotionally with users). Entrants are encouraged to "Transcend basic green standards by transforming the very nature of the chair. Show us how inventive you can be. Push the envelope. Knock our socks off." The socks in question belong to an impressive line-up of green design experts, including William McDonough + Partners director Lance Hosey, Herman Miller's Bill Dowell, and Metropolis editor-in-chief Susan Szenasy, who will award the winner with lots of green: $4,500 intended to support the fabrication of a prototype chair. Full contest details are available here. You've got until May 16.

Submitted for your approval: A faltering department store, America's oldest, stages an impressive comeback fueled by CEO smarts and private equity cash. They retool everything from the store fleet to the shopping bags, swapping out gray plastic sacks for sturdy new white ones that feel like they're crafted out of watercolor paper. As for freshening up the identity, they get behind a marigold hue, dubbing it "'sunrise,' the extraordinary mixture of yellow and orange...adopted as [the store] reinvents itself for the 21st century." Then they rustle up a heritage element--the rose logo introduced in the 1940s and phased out in the '90s--and ready a rosy relaunch.

That store, of course, is Lord & Taylor, and on Tuesday, it will roll out the roses on store awnings, bags, signage, gift cards, and the like as part of the $10 million rebranding campaign led by David Lipman of branding and integrated advertising agency Lipman. But if the above sneak preview of the new new bags is any indication, a marigold-hued, rose-based identity design is tough to get right. Lord & Taylor seems to have recognized this, because the current scheme will last only until Memorial Day. After that, every spring will see a new rose campaign created by a different artist. The good news for you, dear reader? That artist could be you. (Read on for the contest details--an UnBeige exclusive!)

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