Our latest design challenge, Play-Doh Kicks, was not only one of the most fun, but also one of our biggest. We asked our readers to sculpt a rendition of their favorite kicks in play-doh as a mini tribute to shoe design (and our childhoods).

With over 100 pairs of play-doh shoes in the closing line-up, the challenge was an especially hard one to judge, as each entry has a lovely character all its own. Wth the help of Woody, editor and founder of Sneaker Freaker, and Kueng-Caputo, Swiss designers and copy experts, we've narrowed one hundred and twenty-one entries down to one grand prizewinner and two honorable mentions, based on that magic combination of fidelity, craftsmanship and interpretation.

With no further ado, we're thrilled to announce that Flipp82 from Germany has won the grand prize for his interpretation of the Adidas SL 72, combining two colorways in one hyper-detailed model, down to the logo on the tongue of the sneaker and the perforated yellow tread. The thin, light modeling work makes the shoe feel well-worn and loved, which is exactly how we imagine them in their owner's closet. Flipp82 will receive a $100 gift certificate to the new Core77 store, Hand Eye Supply, a copy of Copy by Kueng-Caputo, a lifetime subscription to Sneaker Freaker, and a publication spot in their December issue.

To celebrate the release of Austrian based print magazine Kursiv's 2010 yearbook based on the Die 7 Todsunden (The 7 Deadly Sins) the well established Das Mobel furniture store in Vienna commissioned seven designers to create their own interpretations of one of the seven cardinal sins.

Robert Ruf's contribution, pictured above, was based on the sin of Pride - a lamp that shines only on to itself!

Welcome to the first broadcast of Core77's Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club

5:30 to 6:30 pm PST (GMT+8)

Our first speaker Mark Tieszen has spent 7 years as a professional Telemark skier. Mark's transition from athlete to designer gives him a unique perspective on the relationship between the designer and user in the process of developing athletic equipment. As a professional skier and consultant, Mark worked extensively with Crispi, an Italian company on the forefront of Telemark Ski manufacturing and design. The talk will focus on his experience working on the NTN Telemark boot and binding and the struggles of innovating in a field that is entrenched in heritage and tradition.

Years ago I drove an ambulance, and on my very first call I'd done chest compressions on a guy who was unfortunately too far gone to be saved. Afterwards the seasoned EMTs told me that CPR is a real Hail Mary that works less than 10% of the time, despite what you see in the movies. It's a primitive way to try to pump blood to the brain, and they said that particularly on older patients, you could even accidentally crack their ribs while doing it.

Lars Imhof and Marc Binder, graduates from the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern in Switzerland, came up with the Reax concept as a more efficient, automated means of doing chest compressions.

"REAX" compresses the entire chest at regular intervals and forces the blood into the brain more efficiently and more evenly than with a manual cardiac massage. The flexible back panel can be installed quickly by a single person on the patient and adapts to the upper body. The paramedic is no longer carried out only deals with the heart massage but can take further action. Even during the transport to the operating room or in the CT continues the resuscitation.

The Reax took third prize in this year's James Dyson Award. (First and Second prize, Samuel Adeloju's Longreach Buoyancy Deployment System and Kimberley Hoffman's Sea Kettle, respectively, have been getting plenty of blog love and we wanted to throw some spotlights on Imhof and Binder too.)

One of our most-Tweeted posts was the recent "How to extrude light," which showed design consultancy Berg and Dentsu London's innovative use of an iPad and long-shutter photography to produce images in space.

Unsurprisingly, the technology is now available in app form for both the iPad and iPhone with Garry Sommerville's Holo-Paint--albeit currently for phrases only, so you'll not be able to draw the cool cityscape above. It allows you to select the depth, angle, color, font, and various other settings, and thus far it's ringing in at just 99 cents. (From some of the confused reviews, it's apparently not clear that you also need an SLR. You do, in order to shoot your iDevice actually extruding the word.)

Klaus Engelhorn, curator of Bulb Fiction, tries on POLKA's 'Perlenlicht' prototype for size.

In the Hernals neighborhood of Vienna, we visited the Bulb Fiction show at the KlausEngelhorn Depot. Selections from the collections of Klaus Engelhorn and Michael Turkiewicz lighting objects from the late 1960s to the early 1970s were exhibited amongst a range of newly commissioned and contemporary lighting designs by various designers from the present day.

A selection of Vienna-based designers were asked to create a light source loosely based on the question, 'What will happen to lamp designs when incandescent bulbs run out?,' suggesting the impending demise of the incandescent lamp and its transition to the energy saving variety.

The majority of the events and exhibitions on show here in Vienna during its design week are set in beautifully historic buildings that have been designed in the 19th or early 20th century by (in)famous architects such as Adolf Loos, Josef Hoffman, Otto Wagner or Gottfried Semper.

You Take a Seat, I Take a Picture by Helmut Palla is set in the breathtakingly huge exhibit space at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts Atelierhaus which used to be the Semperdepot, built by Gottfried Semper and Karl Hasenauer. From 1874 through 1877 it served as a backdrop for theatrical stages.

UX Hong Kong 2011 is a new event organized by Daniel Szuc and Josephine Wong of Apogee Hong Kong. Daniel describes the goals and context of the conference in our Q+A with him below. Registration and additional information available here..

Core77: Tell us about this new event.

Daniel Szuc: UX Hong Kong 2011 will be held at the Innocenter in Kowloon Tong (Hong Kong) on Friday 18 Feb 2011. The program has been deliberately designed to be intimate and give attendees plenty of opportunity to talk with other people and get one on one time with the invited speakers, including Steve Baty and Janna DeVyler on UX strategy; Steve Portigal on design research, Rachel Hinman on mobile design, and Gerry Gaffney on the UX Toolkit.

Usability, Interaction Design and UX have been steadily maturing in Asia over the last 10 plus years so a major impetus is to give people who are passionate about UX a place to meet and to help raise the profile about UX in the region. To date, its been really encouraging to see registrations and interest come in from Australia, the UK, mainland China, Singapore and Taiwan to name a few. On the day after the conference the fun continues as we all plan to go out and experience Hong Kong with the speakers including the harbour, a ferry ride, walking the streets, a dim sum and perhaps a visit to the Big Buddah on Lantau island (weather allowing) so we get out of the confines of the conference facility.

Todd Selby, of The Selby is in Your Place, has gotten around to shooting the studio of one of our favorite design teams: Confetti System, designers of pinatas, party garlands, and, yes, confetti. View a few of our favorite shots after the jump, try not to drool, and go see the full piece here.

With a completely over the top video (but hey, that's what it takes to make something go viral, no?), the European Commission has launched yesterday an ambitious initiative that aims to use public sector intervention to help the private sector flourish and make Europe more competitive in a global economy.

"The Innovation Union will focus Europe's efforts - and co-operation with third countries - on challenges like climate change, energy and food security, health and an ageing population. It will use public sector intervention to stimulate the private sector and to remove bottlenecks which stop ideas reaching the market. These include lack of finance, fragmented research systems and markets, under-use of public procurement for innovation and slow standard setting. The Innovation Union is a "flagship" in the Europe 2020 Strategy."

Also of interest to a design audience are some items in the launch press release (available in all EU languages):

• The Commission will set up in 2011 a European Design Leadership Board and a European Design Excellence Label.
• The Commission will launch in 2011 a major research programme on public sector and social innovation and pilot a European Public Sector Innovation Scoreboard. It will launch a European Social Innovation Pilot to provide expertise for social innovators and propose social innovation as a focus of European Social Fund programmes. It will consult social partners on spreading the innovation economy to all occupational levels.
• The Commission proposes that governments set aside dedicated budgets for public procurement of innovative products and services. This should create a procurement market worth at least €10 billion a year for innovations that improve public services. The Commission will offer guidance on joint procurements between contracting entities from different Member States.

Much more information can be found on the somewhat poorly designed Innovation Union website (and on their Facebook page and Twitter feed).

We are definitely looking forward to Robert Billing's Tales from the Future and the interactive demonstration of augmented reality.

The Pano Device is like a computer with nothing inside it. You plug your monitor, keyboard and mouse into the back, but it contains no CPU, no memory, and no software; all of that stuff resides on a Pano Manager server, which hosts the OS and virtualizes it to the Pano Device.

So what's inside the thing? Damned if I know, I think if you dropped it and it shattered there'd be little leprechaun bodies all over your floor. But the bottom line is this two-inch tall device is projected to cut business computing costs by 70%; "compared to a PC it consumes 3% of the energy, uses 4% of the material to make it, and is one hundred times smaller."

Designed by ID consultancy Whipsaw, the Pano Device has won a 2010 Green Good Design Award, which is conferred by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies. (Sadly, the Good Design website was not working properly at press time so no direct link is available.)

The discussion about sustainability has been in full swing for quite awhile. How do we move past talk and towards action? Join together with designers throughout the city to develop and begin exploring an action plan. Start responding to the questions raised around the responsibilities of designers in society. University of the Arts Industrial Design and Bresslergroup invite you to join the conversation during DesignPhiladelphia 2010.

The Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators, and business leaders working together to create positive environmental and social impact. This town hall meeting is your chance to join fellow Seattle designers who care deeply about these issues, and share in the discussion of how we can make designing in sustainable ways a reality in our region.

6:00 - 6:15 socialize and network; refreshments
6:15 - 7:15 presentations
7:15 - 7:45 roundtable discussion
7:45 - 8:00 in depth conversation

The University of the Arts
211 South Broad St
Terra Hall 5th floor - Industrial Design Department

Speakers:
Mathieu Turpault, Senior Designer at Bresslergroup
Monique Curry, Founder, Association for the Advancement and Integration of Design
Third speaker to be confirmed

Free and open to the public

Never mind apps, there really is a blog for everything. I just stumbled upon Bookshelf, a blog dedicated to interesting you-know-whats. Some of 'em you've seen before but many you haven't; and with archives stretching back several years, you'll have plenty of browsing ahead of you. I know it's not Friday yet, but treat yourself and steal some time when the boss-man ain't looking.

By the by, the Library concept above is from Coroflot's own Guy Eddington.

DANT DANT. I just experienced the design blogger's version of the opening scene from Law & Order: I was looking for something else and I stumbled upon a corpse. Matroshka is a design project from 2007 that looked promising and was generating interest and potential customers, then sadly died before seeing production. (Cause of death unknown.)

The concept is for a system of space-saving furniture that nests together--hence its name, Matroshka, a/k/a the Russian nesting dolls. At its most compressed the system takes up just four square meters but breaks out into permutations including a bed, desk, bookshelf, couch, coffee table, dinner table, wardrobe, clothing drawers, and seating for twelve!

I'm going to spend the next 30 minutes investigating, so I can find someone to prosecute for another 30 minutes.

Hit the jump for tons-o'-shots.

Mark Braun, a designer based in Berlin, collaborated with J&L Lobmeyr as part of the Vienna Design Week's Passionswege - an initiative to bring emerging designers to work directly with local Viennese manufactures or retailers and create on-the-spot experimental projects and interventions.

Braun spent a few months working with the glassmakers and engravers of Lobmeyr to explore the possibilities of creating a functional product that would also comment on its value. As he explains in the video he worked with the copper wheel engraving technique - a long traditional technique used to personalise glass object at Lobmeyr - to realise a series of water carafes that each have been decorated with the outlines of 21 Austrian lakes, rivers, and glaciers. The sum total of these substances together represent the ultimate symbol of the essential wealth of everyday life.

I will always remember my first introduction to the power of good product design. I was newly arrived at Apple, still learning the ways of business, when I was visited by a member of Apple's Industrial Design team. He showed me a foam mockup of a proposed product. "Wow," I said, "I want one! What is it?"

That experience brought home the power of design: I was excited and enthusiastic even before I knew what it was. This type of visceral "wow" response requires creative designers. It is subjective, personal. Uh oh, this is not what engineers like to hear. If you can't put a number to it, it's not important. As a result, there is a trend to eliminate designers. Who needs them when we can simply test our way to success? The excitement of powerful, captivating design is defined as irrelevant. Worse, the nature of design is in danger.

Don't believe me? Consider Google. In a well-publicized move, a senior designer at Google recently quit, stating that Google had no interest in or understanding of design. Google, it seems, relies primarily upon test results, not human skill or judgment. Want to know whether a design is effective? Try it out. Google can quickly submit samples to millions of people in well-controlled trials, pitting one design against another, selecting the winner based upon number of clicks, or sales, or whatever objective measure they wish. Which color of blue is best? Test. Item placement? Test. Web page layout? Test.

One example of the silver tableware sets originally sketched out in sugar

Studio Makkink & Bey were asked by Vienna Design Week to create new work for an exhibition on table culture entitled 'Baroque Splendour and Stainless Steel. Table Culture with a Past and a Future.'

They proposed tableware and products in answer to the Habsburg valuables found in the Imperial Silver Collection at the Liechtenstein Museum—a museum exhibiting masterpieces covering five centuries of European art from the collections of Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein. The show is staged in the special exhibition galleries of the museum until 15th November 2010.

In a Design Observer article entitled "Massimo Vignelli's Desk," design critic Alice Twemlow references both a Guardian photo series of writer's workspaces and Imaginary Forces' The Desk, a short film documenting the desks of creatives, Vignelli included. "With a designer's desk...the tools, sketches, reference images, Japanese packaging, type samples and printouts provide a more logical cognitive path from initial brief to the final design," writes Twemlow, who goes on to illuminate how Vignelli's desk philosophy tracks with both his work style and design style.

For more on this, check out the aforementioned short film The Desk:

"The Desk" from Benjamin Cox on Vimeo.

via kottke

Autodesk's Sustainability Workshop is a free online site with short videos to educate viewers on the environmental impacts of design. Right now they've got a section up for Intro to Whole Systems design, which encourages viewers to think through the entire lifecycle of a product, and the self-explanatory Intro to Lightweighting and Material Reduction.

While the project was built specifically for mechanical engineering undergraduate students, the team thinks it would also be interesting to industrial design students (who may not get this technical with their sustainability approaches), mechanical engineering and industrial design teachers (who are looking for a quick resources to supplement their already super full curriculum), other young students, and adult engineers and designers who are retooling and learning new tricks.

Says sustainable design strategist Jeremy Faludi, "[The videos] could be used for a design class, or a mechanical engineering class, or even a management class that wants to educate managers about the more technical aspects of sustainability. The combined Whole Systems & Life-Cycle thinking process could potentially be a very powerful tool for designers and business executives to innovate their products and services."

Check it out here.

If you are in the bay area today, then bring your skills down to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St, for Cut & Paste, SF edition! Compete live against other talented creatives in 3 areas, 2D, 3D, and Motion Graphics. An open bar starts at 7:00 (now your interested), and the competition kicks off at 8. Winners from this event get to compete at the Global Championship in New York City in February. Come join in the fun, cheer from the crowd, and meet a star studded cast of jurors including: Robert Mudock, CCO of Method, Stacy Nimmo, Creative Director of Gunshop, Brett Lovelady, founder of Astro, John Edson, President of Lunar, and of course myself, Michael DiTullo, Creative Director at frog design and contributor to Core77.

More info can be found here.

Bring it SF!