contests

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:

Having penned an armful of best-selling novels with covers conjured by Rodrigo Corral, writer Chuck Palahniuk is no stranger to good design. Doubleday has once again corralled Rodrigo for the cover of Palahniuk's newest novel, Pygmy, due out May 5, but the cult author is holding a competition to design a logo and sticker for the book. (Thanks to GalleyCat, our bookish brother blog, for the heads up.)

Your design brief, should you choose to accept it? Think "The Manchurian Candidate meets South Park." More specifically, the novel is about "a group of adolescent agents from an unspecified country not unlike North Korea who, disguised as foreign exchange students, enter the U.S. with the intent of infiltrating typical American families and eventually unleashing a terrorist act which they have called Operation Havoc." So dust off those sinister typefaces that wink at the Cold War, check out a couple of sample chapters, and get to work. The top three "subversive and slyly promotional" designs win cash and stickers that may well live in infamy. Need further inspiration? Click "continued" to watch the official Pymgy trailer.

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They came. They saw. They wrote design-themed haikus and won tickets to the "New Frontiers of Graphic Design" panel discussion and party tomorrow in New York City. They are Lisa Goldberg and writer Megan Robb, and here are their triumphant haikus:

Off white, egg shell, beige.
Can't you just call it un-white,
Muji color wheel?
-Lisa Goldberg

O Helvetica
Why so much celebrity?
Call serif rehab...
-Megan Robb

Not a lucky winner? There are still a few tickets left to purchase the old-fashioned way: by clicking here, and as an UnBeige reader, you can save $25 by entering the discount code TW25. Meanwhile, click "continued..." for three other exceptional design haikus by Andrew Ballantyne, Jenny Clash, and Darren Chan.

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Tickets are going fast for "New Frontiers of Graphic Design," Thursday's mediabistro.com-sponsored panel discussion in New York City, but there's still time for you (and a friend) to get in free. It's as easy as 17 memorable syllables. We've got two pairs of tickets to bestow upon the readers who send us the best design-themed haikus. (Haiku insta-lesson: Three phrases/lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively.) As you know, "design-themed" is a terribly elastic phrase, so be creative: an ode to a favorite typeface (or just the albatross that is Comic Sans), a laconic love note to Steven Heller, a minimalist magazine design critique, whatever strikes your fancy. E-mail your design haiku to unbeige@mediabistro.com (subject: Contest) before the sun comes up tomorrow, which our calendar refers to as "Tuesday." Those who have an aversion to contests and/or Japanese poetry can buy tickets the old-fashioned way: by clicking here, and as an UnBeige reader, you can save $25 by entering the discount code TW25.

Can't wait for the May issue of Metropolitan Home to see if your chic dwelling is the winner of the annual "Met Home of the Year" contest? No problem. Every day this week, the magazine will showcase a new outstanding reader home design (one of the five finalists and six honorable mention winners) on its website, culminating with the grand-prize-winning Met Home of the Year announcement next Monday, March 2. The winner will also be featured in the May issue.

"The online unveiling of the reader winners allows us the opportunity to showcase more photos and information about the residential designs than we can in the pages of Metropolitan Home," said editor-in-chief Donna Warner in a statement issued by the magazine. "These homes and spaces are wonderful, and we want to give them a platform that will allow each of them to have their moment in the spotlight." Among the winning entries? "A movie theater turned loft, an all-ages tree house, the savviest kitchen in Texas, and the ultimate PETA-friendly design solution." We just hope the latter doesn't involve chimpanzees, no matter how metropolitan.

Last year, the sunshiney sketch of California sixth grader Grace Moon triumphed over 16,000 other entries to win Google's annual contest to redesign the Web giant's homepage logo. Now the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is in on the Doodle 4 Google fun as a partner in the contest, which this year challenges K-12 students nationwide to doodle around the theme "What I Wish for the World." Representatives from Cooper-Hewitt will be on the judging panel, which will evaluate entries on criteria including artistic merit, creativity, and representation of the theme. The museum will also host a May 20 event announcing the contest winner and mount a special exhibition of the top four designs along with the 40 regional winners.

So what's in store for the winner, besides a one-day spotlight on the Google homepage and a swarm of media attention? Google will give the champion doodler a $15,000 college scholarship and a $25,000 technology grant for his or her school. This year's competition also includes a $10,000 award to recognize the school district with the greatest-quality participation. Get all the details and start feeding your children (or any children, for that matter) "ideas", because registration closes on March 17 and entries are due by March 31.

Previously on UnBeige: