Core77 is addressing many of the challenges of the design award paradigm, building upon the very things that can make it great – leveraging online scale, increasing transparency, and decreasing plane fuel in the process. From client work to self-initiated efforts, from entrepreneurial to pro-bono, there are new currencies in design whose value can be commercial, cultural, social, environmental, or discursive. The Core77 Design Awards welcomes projects in all of these spheres, and honors the time, effort, and quality of the endeavors, no matter their provenance.

Unleash your creativity, take inspiration from the well-known stencil artists and get inspired by the city of Berlin; the architecture, the zeitgeist, the music, the people, and bring that into a stencilled design. And we want you to reflect the spirit of HUGO in your piece.

This competition is a call for ideas to design a building block of an inclusive school environment that will uniquely enhance the quality of life for teens and adults with disabilities who participate in the Easter Seals VIP Academy. Your design should support the program goals of providing these young adults with the vocational/life skills they require to lead fully productive lives. Traditionally little or no thought has been given to the environments in which these crucial services are delivered.

Creative practitioners from across the UK are invited to submit a design, based around a proposed ‘smart banknote’ system, a potential replacement for existing paper notes. Your vision isn’t limited to a specific medium, but should be based around the technological specifications/limitations of the smart banknote system.

The EESC, in cooperation with the European Commission Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry, CUMULUS (International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media), EIDD (Design for All Europe) and a network of main European media partners, is launching EESC Design Eleven in all 27 EU Member States and abroad. The purpose is to create an innovative design product with packaging and carrying the EESC logo, which will be officially adopted by the EESC as a promotional item for its members to use during official visits and on other selected occasions. The winning design will be produced and distributed in a limited edition in 2012/13 as part of the EESC’s communication strategy.

Works carried out by students usually disappear into drawers after presentation to a relatively small college audience. There the work remains invisible. We want to change that. :output is the biggest international competition for students in design and architecture.

The 3rd International Holcim Awards competition offering a total of USD 2 million in prize money is open to: sustainable building and civil engineering works; landscape, urban design and infrastructure projects; and materials, products and construction technologies. The Awards are an initiative of the Swiss-based Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction.

As of today, the 5th edition of the design contest HI-MACS® is launched and will focus on the exciting theme of urban furniture. Retro public benches, futuristic flower boxes, telephone kiosks from a different planet… Everything is allowed.

Manufacturers and designers from around the world are invited to compete for the internationally recognised mark of quality, the red dot. The condition for taking part in the “red dot award: product design 2011” is that the products entered are made in series production and were not available on the market prior to 1 January 2009 or will be available on the market prior to 1 July 2011.

The IDSA IDEA awards have been called “the Oscar’s of design” …and for good reason! Started in 1980 by The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), the International Design Excellence Awards program (IDEA) fosters business and public understanding about the impact of design excellence on the quality of life and the economy. The IDEA program is considered the preeminent design competition in the United States.