The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Design-Off: Top 3 Live Design Competitions

Geeks may be the new rock stars, but designers are the new jocks. Live, real-time design competitions are springing up as gauntlets of creative prowess. Here are the top 3 live design-offs, where seasoned designers and rising stars alike get to hash it out for honor and glory.

ART CLASH

Every year, 10 artist duos from all around Europe get invited to Zurich’s Art Clash — a live art battle, where teams compete against each other in 3 rigorous rounds of painting and drawing on different objects, from a cardboard box to the back door of a car.

The competition is a super-condensed version of the creative life, reduced to the bare bones of a design career: deadlines and ego.

In June, Austria’s Permanent Unit, took home the 2009 title.

See more of the work, impressive in its own right but even more so in light of the adrenaline-inducing time constraints.

LAYER TENNIS

We love Coudal and their numerous incarnations. One of them is the cleverly conceived Layer Tennis — a series of live design events, held over a “season” of Fridays, where players from all over the world face off with with video, animation, sound, photos, typography and more.

The format is part competition, part collaboration — two players swap a file back and forth in real-time, adding to and embellishing the work. Each artist gets fifteen minutes to complete a “volley,” after which the artwork gets posted to the website. A third participant, a writer, provides play-by-play commentary on the action during each ten-volley match. In the end, the 9,000+ Season Ticket Holders — that’s how seriously they take the tennis metaphor — vote on the winner.

Chattanooga-based designer and developer Shaun Inman took the Second Season title in July.

Sign up for next season’s tickets — it’s free — and join in this glorious work/leisure intersection for creatives. Once you do, you’ll have the opportunity to nominate yourself or a friend to actually compete — they’re now accepting nominations for next season.

CUT&PASTE

We’ve featured Cut&Paste before, so we won’t overelaborate. Suffice it to say the global digital design tournament has only been getting more intense over the years, drawing high-profile designers and animators from all over the world, backed by an army of heavyweight sponsors.

The competition includes three divisions — 2D Design, 3D Design and Motion Design. Each round is a grueling 8-hour face-off, where four competitors go head-to-head, frame by frame, to render their way to victory.

After a series of qualifying events in 16 cities worldwide, this year’s global championship will be held on October 16 in New York, where the 48 finalists will battle it out for the grand title. The event will be broadcast via live webcast, so stay tuned.


Published August 11, 2009

https://www.themarginalian.org/2009/08/11/live-design-competitions/

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