Deadline: 30 May 2011
Open to: design students and professional designers, either as individuals or teams, born or resident in one of the 27 European Union Member States
Prizes: 1st prize: EUR 7 000; 2nd prize: EUR 4 000; 3rd prize: EUR 2 000
The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) is launching the second edition of a competition to design an innovative, sustainable and creative design product, including packaging, with a strong civil society message. The winning object will be distributed during 2012/13, European Year of Active Ageing and Intergenerational Solidarity.
Aiming at creating a strong statement communication tool as well as a functional, good design product, EESC Design Eleven keeps on supporting sustainable design practices. The second edition will be focusing on a quite important issues: Intergenerational solidarity in times of an ageing population. Design students and young designers are asked to be confronted with a quite increasing global change, by creating innovative and pertinent solutions, through a process of participative design (final users taking part in the design process) and/or co-design (cross-generation team-building – young and elder designers collaborations).
Eligibility
- The competition is open to design students and professional designers, either as individuals or teams, born or resident in one of the 27 European Union Member States.
- Jury members are excluded from the competition.
- Entrants must declare that they are the owners of their designs and that no rights of third parties will be infringed by their publication.
- All entries must be the original work of the designer and NOT IN PRODUCTION.
- The European Economic and Social Committee may decide to disqualify an entry if it has not been submitted in time, partly or as a whole; or if the entry breaks any of the rules under Legal and Ethical issues.
Technical Requirements
The final jury will admit prototypes only. The EESC therefore advises participants to only submit projects at a semi-final or final phase of prototyping.
- The design should be developed with respect to eco-friendly principles (durability, lifecycle assessment and recyclability, energy saving, non toxic materials,…);
- the project should include packaging;
- the object should be user-friendly and allow for frequent every-day use;
- the object should be easily transportable, portable or wearable: ergonomic, light and small sized (the total size – including packaging – should not exceed 30 x 30 x 30 cm);
- the object is to be manufactured in the EU, in accordance with sustainable production criteria (materials, processes, packaging);
- the production costs of object and packaging plus delivery to the EESC must respect the allocated budget: 200 – 300 units – 20.000 € VAT excl. a provisional cost estimate must be included in the entry proposal. This estimate needs to include the shipment costs from production place to EESC.
- Use of the EESC logo AND the wording: “EESC Design Eleven”:all the designs (article and packaging) must feature the EESC logo Logos downloadand the wording “EESC Design Eleven”. By signing the application form, entrants indicate their acceptance of the competition conditions.
Application
The registration for this competition is done in two steps:
1. Register yourself
2. Submit your product.
CLICK HERE to access the application form.
Entry Guidelines
- Entries must be designs suitable for low-cost production.
- Production costs may not exceed EUR 20 000 (not including tax) for 200 – 300 units, including packaging and delivery to Brussels.
- The use of highly fragile materials should be avoided.
- The limited series production process must be guaranteed by the winning designer and will be followed up in collaboration with the EESC Design Eleven board of advisors.
- Entrants grant the EESC, time and geographically unrestricted, to exercise all rights of copyright in all provided works (photos, texts and illustrations) free of any fee.
- The granted right of use applies to all types of usage in connection with EESC Design Eleven, including the publication in printed media (exhibition, catalogue, posters, etc.), on the internet, on data media (CD, CD-ROM, DVD, etc.) as well as any advertisement related thereto
- In the event of any action brought by a third party against the EESC in relation to the designs entered into by the entrants, the EESC shall bear no responsibility, and costs incurred shall be borne by the entrant. The entrant shall assist the EESC in the event of such action.
- Following a first screening, 20 – 25 designs will be selected as potential winning projects. Designers will be then requested to send the prototypes (including packaging) to EESC for the jury session. The period of time (30 days) from the screening outcome and the delivery deadline will allow selected participants to finalise their objects and packaging.
- After having registered and being approved, participants will be informed in due time when and how they will be able to upload their digital presentation at: www.design-competition.eesc.europa.eu
Contributions must contain:
- a description of the design concept & process of the product and its packaging (max. one A4 page);
- a technical fact sheet (function, max. size ≤ 30 x 30 cm, materials – the use of highly fragile materials should be avoided);
- the production process (using and explaining sustainable criteria) with estimated production costs (300 units – 20 000 euro VAT excluded);
- max. 5 HIGH RES pictures (300dpi, minimum width 30 cm) or 3D models* of the object from different angles (required format: JPEG, TIFF or PDF);
- a short CV (max 10 lines);
- a high resolution photo-portrait (300dpi, minimum width 30 cm)
- The entrant must provide the EESC with the requisite knowledge regarding materials, data, systems, and other information of or with respect to the designs, which may not be accessible or know to the general public and which are needed for the production of the final product.
- For administrative reasons please preferably submit all documentation in ENGLISH.
- 3D models contributions:In addition to 5 rendered views of their projects in JPEG, TIFF or PDF file-format (see above), the participants are allowed to send 3D versions of their contributions.
- All models need to be exported into a uniform 3D format (WRL or another compatible format for Cosmo Player version 2.1.1 (http://cic.nist.gov/vrml/cosmoplayer.html) The models must be entirely scaled or scalable in order to fit in a screen resolution of 1024*728 pixels.
- The models can also be submitted as animation in the following formats: flash (compatible to flash-player 10) or AVI (compression by means of codec DivX).
Information: Many software packages are able to create models for rapid prototyping. Some of the programs you may use are Maya, SolidWorks, 3D Studio, any AutoCAD software, SketchUp, Rhino, Blender.org and Lightwave.The pictures and texts will be used subsequently for the award’s communication campaign and the production of an exhibition and catalogue. The quality of texts and pictures will be therefore influential to eligible criteria.
Prizes
The winning designers (1st, 2nd and 3rd prize-winners) will be informed by the EESC in writing and invited to Brussels for the awards ceremony and the opening of an exhibition of selected entries.
Amounts allocated:
1st prize: EUR 7 000
2nd prize: EUR 4 000
3rd prize: EUR 2 000
