What is it about martini glasses that people find so attractive? Is it the precarious nature of their original design, forcing you to step ever-so-gently and methodically as to not lose a single drop of alcohol goodness? Makes you wonder if the original martini glass silhouette was not purposefully awkward. If you are forced to treat something like it is a precious cargo, will you start to believe it actually is precious cargo? Therefore, psychologically elevating its value?

The Phoenix Contemporary Design Fair (PCDF) and kontakt magazine invite independent furniture designers to submit original furniture designs for a design competition. Conceived as a way to connect talented independent designers with furniture resellers and a design savvy public, finalists’ submissions will be displayed in a special section at PCDF and selected designers will be featured in kontakt magazine.

Electrolux has chosen eight finalists to compete for first place in Electrolux Design Lab 07, the fifth edition of this annual global competition. Hundreds of design students from around the world entered this year’s competition and were challenged to present their ideas on for eco-friendly and sustainable household appliances and solutions for 2020.

Source: Electrolux Design Lab

If you haven’t already started blowing your entry for this year’s Bombay Sapphire International Glass Award, then you’d better get a move on. The deadline for entries is 31st October and just in case you’ve forgotten what’s in store, click here to read about the competition.

Source: Bombay Sapphire

The Bombay Sapphire Foundation has announced the launch of the world’s biggest international glass award, the Bombay Sapphire Prize 2008.

For the first time in its six-year history, the winner of the 20,000 Prize will be announced during the 2008 Salone del Mobile in Milan.

Source: Bombay Sapphire

Now in its eighth year, Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum will celebrate outstanding achievement in design this fall with its annual National Design Awards. Today, Cooper-Hewitt director Paul Warick Thompson announced the winners and finalists of the 2007 National Design Awards, recognizing excellence across various disciplines, including architecture, communications, fashion, interior, landscape and product design.

Source: Coopwe-Hewitt

Ok designers listen up! After the successful completion of their first design competition, Muji is proud to announce the second in our series of Muji Award International Design Competitions. Theme for 2007 is RE, which stands for the reinvention of everyday life that is Muji’s greatest resource. So we ask designers submitting projects to focus on reality, in which people are both part of the environment and whose lives create the environment.

Design Competition: Muji

Chocolate Box - Inspired by the famous quote, Life is like a box of Chocolates, the aesthetic analogy is that contained within this beautiful box is a world of surprises and adventures which essentially is the nature of entertainment itself. Chocolate Box is an entertainment management system designed to offer intuitive ease of use. Each cube contained within the box can have content loaded on to them separately from the home computer via the internet.

Source: Microsoft Next PC Design

Attention designers all over the world! Re:Vision is a revolutionary competition to create the prototype for an innovative, sustainable urban community. At the heart of the process is a series of contests generating visionary ideas for what can and should be in the design of urban space. It’s about hope. Bold creativity. Empowering your community to think big about how our energy, building, services, stores, spaces, roads and routes can be better.

Register: ReVision