AGIdeas NewStar Award 2011 Opening Soon

The Invertible Cube, Paul Schatz Foundation & Kuboid

Its not often that design students are given the opportunity to participate in a design competition that actually delivers tangible, long term benefits to the winners. Each year, through their NewStar Award, AGIdeas has provided bigger and better opportunities for design students to get what are truly once in a lifetime experiences.

Previously the NewStar Award was only open for a short period of time close to the AGIdeas international Design Week and this of course made it hard for some students to get their entries prepared and submitted  (especially when they are busy checking out the AGIdeas website to see which great speakers will be turning up this year instead of working on design projects). Finally this has changed as AGIdeas have rearranged the NewStar program and submissions will be accepted from the 16th of September 2010 until the 15th of November 2010. Meaning you can submit projects from this year as oppose to ones from last year.

Above I have been touting once in a life time opportunities that can be won through NewStar and you are probably thinking – so what are these amazing once in a life time opportunities? If you are an enthusiastic and talented design student read on for details.

Basically there are two awards under the NewStar Award umbrella that you can get into the running for, The Collie Trust Award and the Fabrica Award.

If you were to win the Collie Trust Award you would win airfares, accommodation and two weeks work experience in one of the following leading studios: Pentagram, UK; Smart Design, USA; Guerrilla Games, The Netherlands; Ahn Sang Soo Korea; Browns, UK; Mister Walker, South Africa; IDEO, USA; Prologue, USA; SeymourPowell, UK; Les Editions Volumiques, France; and Gnomon School, USA.

If you win the Fabrica Award, (Fabrica is the Benneton Groups design studio in Italy) you would be awarded airfares, accommodation and a 2 week trial at Fabrica from which you might (if you are an awesome, and driven designer) be awarded a 12 month scholarship. Side Note: To be eligible for the Fabrica Award you must be under 25 years of age.

So as you can see these prizes are pretty sweet (each one is worth about $5000) and have the potential to truly kickstart the career of the winner.

Even if you don’t win (or if you do) your work will be showcased in the AGIdeas 2011 Book (distributed to over 6000 designers thus earning you eternal glory in published form) and go on display at an exhibition at the Melbourne Museum in 2011 (Plenty of exposure for you and your project, as many of Australia’s leading designers and many international designers will see it over the course of the exhibition and at the AGIdeas International Design Week 2011 Dinner).

As always with such competitions you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by entering (you have a better chance of winning a design competition than the lottery) so get those entries prepped asap so you are in the running. Design Droplets has previously interviewed NewStar winner Brianna Hammond, so check out her interview for another perspective. FYI AGIdeas NewStar is on Facebook so you can keep up to date at all times with the progress of the award.

(Please note: Design Droplets is a media partner of AGIdeas International Design Week & AGIdeas NewStar Award)

NewStar Image: The Invertible Cube by Paul Schatz.