The parking landscape of the urban jungle can often be rather dull. Those who have the need to keep their speedy vehicles within reach at all times are forced to maneuver their esteemed automobile in between layers of drab cement akin to the area where someone might be held for committing twelve counts of computer fraud. Rather than allowing your mean machine to languish in a prison cell for three to five, the fine folks at designboom and Nissan want to see you do something about it. Namely, they want you to come up with a better home for those brave little engines that could. Their Think Outside the Parking Box International Design Competition asks you (the reader and designer extraordinaire that you are) to “reinvent conventional ideas of urban parking.” Yes, they’re looking for a few good ideas, whether it’s a super robot with giant arms that gently places your car down in the suburbs or a simple garage that converts your carbon monoxide emissions into flowers. It’s up to you, but you’ve only got until September 27th to enter. So get a move on.

Soft & Furry needs you. A logo competition created by designers for other designers, the winning logo will be the face of a new line of hand-made designer toys. You can put yourself in the running by submitting up to 3 hot new designs each week over the next eight weeks. Soft & Furry's panel will review all the submissions and, each Sunday, will post one winner for that week. In the end, the eight weekly winners will battle it out for the top spot. Besides general bragging rights, the winning designer will get a bunch of Soft & Furry swag and, as the site mysteriously teases, “who knows what else.” Most importantly, they'll get exposure as fans of design worldwide check out their work.

The site is up and patiently waiting to display everyone's submissions, with just a countdown clock giving a hint at when all those fresh new ideas will burst onto the screen. The first submission deadline is in just over a day, so it's time to put pen to paper, hand to mouse (or whatever your design process is), and get hustling. If you're going to watch this unfold from the sidelines and not submit, then keep your eyes peeled as the first weekly winner we be posted on Sunday, June 15th.

As we informed you in June, today is the last day to enter this year’s Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament. Submit your application now to gain entrance to one of Cut&Paste’s 11 regional tournaments and the chance to be crowned baddest motherf*cker on the planet…er, best designer. Here’s last year’s winner. Think you can do better?

What happens when you let artists organize? If Wooloo — an artist-run organization based in Berlin and devoted to creating opportunities for emerging artists — is any kid of precedent, you get a lot of the best kind of wackiness.

Wooloo has done lots of insanely great work, but the project that has us really interested is called, wouldn’t you know it?, Avant-Garde Dating. For this project, Wooloo is looking for artist-applicants among its online membership (which is free) to apply for a “partner.” The applicant has to “explain how this new relationship will explore the conventions of monogamous love, challenge the idea of artistic collaboration and/or explore one of the other numerous stereotypes of human pairing.” All applicants will receive a match, but only three couples will be flown to Berlin to be “exhibited.” Seriously. If chosen, Wooloo is going to put you and your avant-garde significant other in an exhibition space, have you live together for four days, and see what happens (with everyone else watching as well). Never mind that there’s an episode of the Twilight Zone something like this, what’s great is that the project takes the artistic spirit to places it doesn’t normally go. Not only will the individuals in the exhibition become objectified, so will their “relationship,” an arrangement that calls into question all sorts of assumptions we have about the human mating ritual. Wooloo is accepting applications until July 20, so get those word processors going!

There has never been so apt a cliché as “nature calls,” for no matter where you are in the world, what your mood is, how you’re dressed or what appointment you have to make, your body tends to have a mind of its on when it comes to excretory matters. This is why anyone who spends time traveling becomes something of a connoisseur of public restrooms. And connoisseurs know that all too often the only relief available in a pinch is the dreaded port-o-let (or its local equivalent), and that it only takes a couple of bad experiences to scar a person for life…but help is on the way.

From the Roman blog Eternally Cool comes news that Sebach, an Italian company that currently makes some pretty traditional looking porta-potties, has opened a competition to design their next generation toilet. The contest runs until August 4th, and the winner will earn 5,000 Euros — that’s $6,733.58! In the name of all of us who have ever been forced to stoop (or squat) to using a substandard port-o-let, I encourage all of our talented readers to submit. You may not get famous, but you could help a lot of people preserve a little bit of dignity.

–Dan Steckenberg

After a solid debut in NYC back in ‘05, Cut&Paste spread to new cities in ‘06, and is back again this year in a big way. Dedicated to strengthening creative networks and fostering emerging graphic designers, C&P hosts a series of live design tournaments worldwide. In major cities across the globe, C&P enlists up & coming design hotshots to submit entries for consideration in the local tournament. Eight contestants are then selected to square off in a series of head-to-head fifteen minute unscripted battles a bit like the design world’s version of Iron Chef. Even if you’re not a designer yourself, the experience is unique as the crowd can observe each design come together on massive screens projected above each contestant. C&P has stepped up the prizes for the tournaments and attendees can even join in the action by participating in an audience-only competition for designs done on-site on a Wacom Cintiq interactive pen display. For an example of a past contestant, check out the winner of the ‘06 tournament in Chicago. The deadline for submissions is July 17th, so if you’re a designer seeking lifelong glory, worldwide exposure, or maybe just out to win some new gear, get on the ball.

I have a sad obsession with DIY hacks and, if I had any motivation or attention-span to create my own instead of ripping off stuff I find in Readymade, I may very well have found myself in the Etsy field instead of new media. I had come home from a pre-birthday celebration last week with a beautiful bunch of roses, and in my semi-intoxicated state managed to strip the stems and vase them, but left the leaves and offcuts all over our kitchen counter before I passed out. When I woke up the next morning, my roommate told me she hadn’t cleaned it up because she thought it was another one of my little “projects.”

I didn’t think it was that out of control.

In any case, I just saw that Furni is having a contest through September, wherein they want you to purchase one of their clock kits and hack your own timepiece. The prize? A spot in their next collection, of course. Immediately I thought of ripping off my good friend Eric’s blender lamp, then realized that I’m an idiot because that’s a lamp, and not a clock. Whatever! Go ahead and score yourself a kit, get busy and after you’re done sending them photos of your entry, send them to me…because I’m all about stealing your ideas and passing them off as my own.

Related: Furni’s Artist Clock Auction

During college I had a brief love affair with a manual Nikon and a hopeful image of myself as the next Annie Lebowitz. Sadly, due to my inability to hold my arms still, an inherent aversion to darkrooms and irreconcilable differences with the light meter, the union was never consummated. But for those of you who managed the marriage of talent and skill and consider yourself a superstar shutterbug in the making, you may want to enter Surface Magazine's Avant Guardian competition. Now celebrating its tenth year, the competition touts itself as the premier promotional outlet for American photographers and is meant to bolster emerging artists up the career ladder to commercial photography success. To submit, visit the Surface site, where your goods will be Tim-Gunned by the mag's creative team and a panel of international industry judges. While the $50 entry fee may seem a little steep for starving artists, the rewards are certainly worth the investment. A handful of hotshots, whose work embodies the balance between art and marketability, will be chosen and given the chance to spec shoot using Surface's network of studios, stylists and fashion clients. These shots may or may not be used. Only the best work will be chosen and winners will either be published in the magazine's annual Avant Guardian issue or travel in a touring exhibition that visits arty urban locales New York, L.A. and Miami. Some pieces will be chosen for both. Since it is only open to up-and-comers, if you have been published prior to 2006 in magazines with a circulation of over 100,000, you’re ineligible to enter (and apparently, are no longer “emerging,” so congrats). If you are interested, get snappy! The deadline for entry is July 9 and you can submit up to 20 images.

–Mara Siegler

Latin American B-boys will be battling it out for the title as the best breakdancer in the land tomorrow in Sao Paulo at Red Bull’s BC One, which is throwing together 16 Brazilians and five others from Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile and Peru in what’s sure to be a raucous elimination final. Right before the show, the 16th Brazilian competitor will be chosen from an audition among 11 B-boys selected by top Brazilian crews. The winner of this batch moves on to the next step — world b-boy command — at the world B-boy finals in South Africa in September. The competition is mega-tough, with rules that include “sudden death,” which means you’re out of the competition if you lose any individual battle. The event’s being judged by a panel that includes the U.S.’s own B-girl Asia One (go girl!). OK, gotta run now, I need to get my back spin on lock.

On May 10th, the new and invigorating Quicksilver Innovation Contest will kick off, and I’m excited to see the outcome. The aim of the competition is to encourage outdoor athletes, designers, fans, and every possible intersection of those types of people to dig deep to imagine what outdoor sports and its products will be like and look like in the future. Those interested will have four months to dream up the most user-friendly, innovative, and striking concepts they can, and at the end all submissions will be judged by a panel of professionals in the fields of design, sports, and innovation (never thought I’d see Kelly Slater and Josh Rubin on the same judging panel– good stuff). The winner will get 5,000 Euros and have their submission showcased at the 2008 ISPO show in Munich. There are cash prizes for 2nd and 3rd places as well. If you’re interested in participating, there are more details on the website.

Part speed skiing, part sledneck, The Arctic Man is event I would describe as “uniquely Alaska.” I actually found out about it because a friend of a friend will be competing in this year’s event, which is taking place at mile 196 of the Richardson Highway, near Summit Lake, Alaska, from April 11-15. The format of the race is pure insanity– The skier begins at a summit elevation of 5,800 feet and drops 1,700 feet in less than two mile to the bottom of a narrow canyon where he meets up with his snowmobiling partner. The snowmobiler meets the skier, on the go, with a tow rope and pulls the skier 2 1/4 miles uphill at top speeds of up to 86 mph. The skier and the snowmobile then separate and the skier goes over the side of the second mountain and drops another 1200 feet to the finish line. Take it from someone who’s been towed behind a snow machine going close to that speed: it is rough on the body. But for a prize purse beginning at $25,000, and growing with each team entry fee of $900, the racers are more than willing to risk life and limb. I’m hoping that some video footage from this year’s event ends up on YouTube. This is something I think you just have to see to believe. For an account of one participant’s Arctic Man experience, read this– supposedly, it’s quite the party as well.

For all of you designer/snowboarder hybrids out there… Design Within Reach’s Denver Studio is playing host to the 2007 Design the Modern Board competition. The event is being sponsored by Ride Snowboards, who will also review the final submissions to determine if they want to use one or more of the deigns on one of their ‘in-line boards’ (whatever that is). The winner of the contest itself, however, will be determined by the attendees of the March 29th judging event at the Denver Studio. If you’re interested, you can find additional info and a list of prizes here. Keep in mind that you must email your intent to compete to denver@dwr.com no later than March 2nd (that’s this Friday). Proceeds go to the Snowboard Outreach Society, which helps at-risk youth get out on the slopes– a great cause, and a really fun way to fundraise if you ask me.

The results are in: Peugeot has announced the top 10 finalists of this year’s Design Competition. This is the 4th year of the contest, and the challenge this year was to design a car that would PLEASE (Pleasurable to drive, Lively, Efficient, Accessible, Simple, and Ecological). The P.L.E.A.S.E. guideline motivated some pretty awe-inspiring designs, like the N Joy, 910, and MiawoO (shown here). The judges will be choosing a single winner at the end of the month– the lucky designer will win a nice chunk of change, see their design in a new Xbox game, and watch Peugeot bring their hard work to quasi-fruition by building a full-scale model. You won’t be seeing any of these cars on the road, but at least this competition inspired some forward-thinking designs.

Via Autopia

Just a light reminder that our Momimomi Contest is still going on– we’ll be choosing a handful of winners, each will receive a 3 month subscriptions to the best t-shirts in the world program (seriously, these shirts are some of my favorties, and I see dozens every week). We’ve received some hilarious entries so far and I can’t wait to pick the winners and share them with all of you. Read the details and get to work!

In order to help spread warm holiday cheer this season, JoshSpear.com is hosting the first Momi TEeA PARTY Naughty Limerick Competition. Entrants are required to submit no more than one naughty limerick, the content of which loosely fits under the broad theme of “the holidays”. While it’s not requisite that limericks be “dirty”, the judging staff does wish to express their belief that when it comes to a really good limerick, naughty is always better than nice…

By way of a brief refresher course in the art of the limerick, the follow example is provided.

‘there once was a boy named danny
who had a secret crush on his nanny
under the mistletoe he stood
holding his wood
waiting for some yule tide fanny’

Rules, Prizes, Deadlines:

• Only ONE limerick may be submitted per entrant.

• ONE winner will be chosen each week (12/15, 12/22. & 12/29) – submissions must be in by 9pm est on the dates listed.

• The winning limerick’s author will receive a 3-month subscription to the Momi TEeA PARTY.

• ONE honorable mention will also be chosen each week and receive a momimomi tee of their choice (availability permitting).

• Email your entries to momi[at]joshspear.com