Come Join us on Photo MOODLE!

To celebrate the awesomeness of emotional design, we invite you to join our newest project : Photo Moodle! (Moody Doodle). Here's bit by bit on how you can join us!

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6 World Famous Design Awards

What is the best recognotion of your work? Of course people's attention! But it brings much more pleasure (and joy too! :p) to be given one of the most famous and prestigeous awards in the world of design and to be recognized by the professional network. So, welcome to the hall of awesomeness and let's have a look, what awards may wait you in future... Have fun!

1. International Design Awards (IDA)

Found in 2007 the IDA every year honors architects, interior, fashion, product and graphic designers and design fans from around the world. The ceremony celebrates the best of design theory and practice. 

There are 5 fields of nomination: 

• architecture
• interior design
• products
• fashion
• graphic design 

In each of the field both one professional designer/agency and one student (promising designer) is selected each year.

Got awarded: 

Entry Title: "The Royal Wedding"
Name: Jonas Lundin, Sven R Ohlson, Jonas Moberg, Cia Axelsson, Sweden
Company: Love for Art & Business
Category: Multimedia, Professional

Entry Title: "LEO BURNETT"
Name: Colin Seah, Kevin Leong, Roberto Rivera, Lolleth Alejandro, Sacharissa Kurniawan, Singapore
Company: Ministry of Design
Category: Interior Design, Professional

2. European Design Awards (ED-Awards)

The annual awards presented to European designers for outstanding work in the communication design field.  The ED-Awards are judged by representatives from 11 European design magazines. The awards are presented at the end of the 3 day European Design Conference.

There are 40 award categories, in 10 groups (see more on the website). There are also 2 general awards, selected from the finalists within the categories. The jury then chooses one of 40 category winners as the winner of the ED Grand Prize. Finally, each agency collects points for its submissions, and the agency with the most points is awarded the ED Agency of the Year award.

Got awarded:  

3. Red Dot Design Awards (RDD)

The Red Dot Design Award is an international product design prize organized by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen, Germany. It's one of the oldest competitions in the world - since 1955! Winning products are presented in the Red Dot Design Museum in Essen. The Red Dot Design Award has more than 11,000 submissions from 61 countries.

Prize categories include:

• Public space
• Habitat
• Mobility
• Energy
• Green
• Bathroom
• Domestic Aid
• Interrior Accesories
• Illumination
• Home Furniture
• Productivity
• Workplace
• Protection
• Life Science
• Third Age
• Interaction & Communication
• Mobile Lifestyle
• Entertainment
• Fashion
• Education
• Recreation

From each category, best product design, best agence and best design concept are selected.

Got awarded: 

The carp in this rug and coffee table set seem to magically come to life when one walks around them. Magic Carp-pet is designed by John Leung

With elastic sheathes that envelop the feet, Topless Shoes have been designed to bring ease to the action of putting on one’s shoes. Design by Zhao Xiaoliang, Han Like, Liu Peng, Meng Qingbao, Ren Mingjun, Yang Xiao, Chen Xuan, Lin Lin from Zhejiang University.

Wi-fi light combines a WiFi access device and a light, and can be hung centrally in the home to promote strong and stable WiFi connections. Designed by Tao Yangsi, Yang Fan, Tian Xuesong

HR Burton Gloves designed by William Mazuel incorporate a built-in MP3 player and a two-way radio with intuitive controls. They allow the wearer to listen to music and communicate with friends in extreme conditions and during extreme activities, such as snowboarding or a ski rescue mission.

4. Dutch Design Awards (DDA)

The awards are handed out during the annual Dutch Design Week in the Dutch city of Eindhoven. Dutch Design Awards have been handed out since 2003. The awards include following categories:

• Communication
• best design digital media
• best motion design
• best graphic design
• Product
• best industrial product
• best consumer product
• Spatial design
• best private interior
• best public exterior
• best product public space
• Autonomous - the new one, established just this year. The design and development of the product may be commissioned but the product should always be imbued with the designer's personal themes.
• The golden eye - ‘overall' prize will be awarded to the most successful designer or design bureau of the year.
• Public award - Since 2011 the public can choose their favorite out of all entries.
• Mini young designer award - young, talented designers and graduates
• Best client award - aims to focus the attention on an excellent relationship between a designer and a commissioning client.
• BNO PIET zwart prize - is given to a designer who may be considered ‘beyond category' and who has made a ‘most significant' contribution to the design profession. 

5. International Design Excellence Award (IDEA) 

 

IDEA is an award co-sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). The program was established in 1980. The name was changed from Industrial Design Excellence Awards to International Design Excellence Awards in 2007.

The creterias for judgement in 22 categories are the following:

• Innovation: design, experience, manufacturing
• Benefit to User: performance, comfort, safety, usability, user interface, ergonomics and etc.
• Responsibility: Benefit to society, environment, culture and economy 
• Benefit to the client: profitability, increased sales, brand reputation, employee morale
• Visual appeal and appropriate aesthetics
• Design Research: usability, emotional factors, unmet needs) testing rigor and reliability
• Design Strategy Category: strategic value and implementation

Got awarded: 

The Bespoke Fairing is a mass customized set of parts that restores symmetry and natural contours to an amputee’s body. The process starts with a 3D scan of the surviving leg. With input from the amputee, the parts are customized with various color, material and finish options. Once applied to existing prosthetic limbs, the Bespoke Fairings communicate the users’ sense of style and taste, allowing them to connect with the artificial limb in a personal and emotional way.

The Inspiron Duo is a convertible, premium Netbook PC that transforms into a Tablet PC, or maybe it’s a Tablet that transforms into a standard Netbook... 

The 787 Dreamliner features an expansive inner architecture as well as dynamic LED lighting that replicates day-to-night light patterns. It has been one of the most successful commercial airplane launches in the history of aviation with more than 800 orders valued at $164 billion.

  

6. iF Design Award

iF Design Award was introduced in 1954 and is held annually by the iF International Forum Design. Every year the iF attracts more than 2,000 product entries from around 37 nations, which are judged by renowned experts, with the best of them receiving an iF seal of outstanding design quality. The best of the best are awarded with an iF gold award, known as the "Design Oscar". 

Nominations are represented in three areas, namely product, communication and packaging by 12 following categories:

• Consumer Electronics/Telecommunications
• Computers
• Office/Business
• Lighting
• Household/Residential
• Leisure/Lifestyle
• Industry/Buildings
• Medicine/Health+Care
• Public Design/Interior Design
• Transportation
• Advanced studies
• Packaging

Got awarded (full on-line exhebition):

Waterproof Fstina watch packaging.

HCBCzwei Verwaltung UG & Co ordered a concept for the three-floor cafe/bar/club in Hamburg represented in minimalistic style murging Eastern and Western tendencies.

Would you dare to apply for any of those awards?

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How I became a street artist

There are several things that you should try in your life and if you are fond of art and design, graffiti-painting is defenately one of them. Now we can claim with a full responsibility, that this is a laborious, difficult but very exciting experience. Have a look how we have spent our Saturday, transforming the wall of a gymnastics center in Tilburg into a matrerpiece of street art.

The graffiti-creation was announced as a part of volunteer activity of NLDOET taking place on March 17th all over the Netherlands. Some were planting trees, some creating fancy road signs some (like us) were giving new life to old buildings (so unlike most of graffiti paintings this one was legal). The organisators of the event invited Jord Jansen a Dutch illustrator, artist, musician and graffiti painter to lead the project and to teach several volunteers the basics of street art.

Dutch "early birds" gathers 9.30 at the spot. A little bit familliar with Dutch culture I expected to start the work right away at 9.31. The first  nice unexpected turn for me, as a lazy russian, was a cup of freshly made coffee in a company of future artists offered by the hosts. Few people were still late (they of course were internationals), so I was the only one non-dutch in a "gezellig" company trying to understand first advice and instructions given by Jord. After few cups of coffee we got a small excursion over the sport center, met a group of children sitting in splits, having their training. Apparently they entered the building with grey old walls in the morning and now they were looking at us, the strangers in old durty clothes as at homeless or beggars having no idea that in few hours their school will change it's appearence.

Well, finally it's time to start... I should say of course that the graffiti you ussualy see in the slums are made at night by one or two people so the experience we got is apparently not the same, but still facinating! Sunny Saturday morning, music playing outside, 15 people shaking the canns with paint (you should shake them at least 2 minutes before painting to make the paint inside homogenious and liquid). There are metal bolls in the cannes which help to shake the paint and the more you shake the louder is the sound they make. There were three boxes of painting sprays. There are two of them:

There is the first advice for you: if you are going to paint graffiti you might need some gloves othervise you hands will look at least like that or more likely even worse. Took me half an hour to remove the paint with acetone.

The future graffiti consept was designed few days before. It was decided that there will be a graffiti writing - the name of the sport center "Kunst&Kracht" which means "Art&Power" and figures of gymnasts on both sides of the writing. The figures were designed beforehand. On the night before painting, Jord with few helpers took the beamer outside, projected the pictures of gymnasts on the wall and copied them with a black marker on the wall.

The font of the writing was designs beforehand as well, however only the frame and the coloures were decided. As for the detailes we were improvisign and creating during the process as real artists as you will see later. Jord started making thin lines of the figures with a spray paint leting us to fiil in the figures. Later we'll realise how hard is it to keep the lines thin and neat.

 That's what came out in the end:

We'll remove those strange "FDG" in the very end by making a flag with our names.

There was also made some graffiti before us, so we decided to to fit into the composition and to murge our figures with the exsisting painting by continuing the waves . That's what we got:

After the figures were ready we moved to the writing. There was no marker frame to follow, so jord just started paint the lines from nowhere looking at the printed letters from time to time.

When the aproximate frame with a white paint was ready it was time to make the lines with actual colours.

The whole palette from bloody red to banana yellow was chosen for the writing.

Every next letter was one tone lighter than the previouse one in word Kunts, "&" was the lightest yellow and the Kracht was again from yellow to bloody red every next character one tone darker.

After that we started making the fancy background for the writing which looked alike paisley pattern.

It first seemed that this will ruin our perfect writing, but in the end of course it made it much more impressive! 

The third layer of paisleywas painted already without the frame. We were improvising like real artists. Being scared to ruin everything at first, just few minutes later we were freely creating new and new curves making it arty. That's what we got at that stage. 

Some cracks effect with red paint inside the letters:

Finally it is time delineate the letters with black paint...

and with light green outside also... and some shadow inside as well :) So three time contour, signature and final picture.

To celebrate our awesome team-work we had lunch outdoors, discussing future paintings on nearby fence and made the final touch: the flag with the creators names.
Cheking the names with the list not to foget anyone:

Date and our blog name and it's finished! 

The whole crew:

Tired but happy we can go home being proud of our powerful art.

Special thanks to Jord Jansen and to Sasha, one of the authors of the blog and resistant photographer.

PS: the day after when I found my right arm aching becouse of several hours of constant painting, I realised how hard is that kind of art :)


PPS: you are more than welcome to share you own experience or just your mood in the comments. 
And if you have any questions left, feel free to ask! We'll be happy to tell more about our experience and process details.

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