Entries to the A' Design Award, the world's largest international design competition, are closing on the 28th of February. Organized as a way to showcase excellent designers in all disciplines and from all countries, the A' Awards are peer-reviewed and anonymously judged by an influential jury panel of experienced scholars, important press members, and experienced professionals. The awards offer prestige, publicity and international recognition to A’ Design Award Laureates through the coveted A’ Design Prize system.

The A’ Design Award is an international award whose aim is to provide designers, architects, and innovators from all design fields with a platform to showcase their work and products to a global audience. While there is no shortage of design awards out there, the A' Design Award stands out for its exceptional scale; with over 100 design categories, each year over 1,000 awards are given to designers from all over the world. The award's 2018 edition is now open for entries; designers can register their submissions here.

Based in Bologna, Italy, SOS—School of Sustainability—is an initiative by Mario Cucinella focused on training emerging professionals in the field of sustainability. The school is open to recent graduates and industry partners to develop innovative projects with a positive impact on society, the economy and the environment through a revolutionary model of integrated education, practice and research. It is a creative laboratory born in close collaboration with Mario Cucinella Architects (MCA), in which training is inspired by active projects and expertise in a professional practice setting.

Laptops and tablets are great tools for the designer on the move—but when it comes to maximizing your productivity, there's simply no alternative to a larger desktop screen. Smaller devices simply don't have enough space to efficiently display the many apps, images, multiple view frames and other documents that most designers juggle in their work, and while switching between different apps and programs might only take a few seconds, those seconds add up over the course of a long day. According to a study by the University of Utah, using a larger screen allowed people to complete tasks up to 52% faster, saving as much as 2.5 hours per day. These findings are also backed up by myriad anecdotal evidence: ask any architect and they will likely agree that a larger monitor helps them professionally.

EGGERs innovative, idea-sparking 9-Grid system and how it boosts Interior Designers’ creativity.

SCI-Arc, one of the few remaining schools whose undergraduate program culminates in a thesis project, asks students to locate their position within the discipline, theorize a problem around that position, create a project that tests their theory, and ultimately to present and defend that position to an audience of future peers and professionals. It’s a cathartic endeavor that is to some degree fraught with anxiety, as defining a position and speculating on the future of the discipline can be a rather daunting endeavor.

Ferry Marcellis, co-founder, and CEO of Act-3D, the parent company of Lumion, the fast emerging standard for rapid, hyper-realistic 3D videos, images, and 360-degree panoramas. Today Lumion’s under the radar growth throughout design firms of all sizes—from sole proprietorships to the world’s top 100—has revolutionized workflows and client presentations. Why the shift to Lumion? What differentiates it from other rendering tools? How does it transform the art of what’s possible for designers? Marcellis offers his views.

In the middle of Europe, Martin Seeliger has been building acoustic guitars for 30 years now. The success of the Lakewood factory proves that with good old craft, transported to the modern era, you can build a global brand. See how EGGER interprets craftsmanship with their handcrafted style in their forthcoming decorative collection.

The Times they are a-changing. It was true over 50 years ago when Bob Dylan wrote the song and it’s true now more than ever. Technology is the biggest engine driving change and the realm of Architecture is not exempt. The latest shift sees Architects employing new ways of integrating visualization into their 3D workflows to help their clients feel the space inside their future buildings. Fast, self-created animations, self-rendered images, and 360 panoramas can be viewed through VR headsets or uploaded to the internet to share instantly online. These are all possibilities with a visualization tool like Lumion, which the whole of the US architectural industry currently seems to be flocking towards en masse.

As industry withdrew, the creative types came and populated the empty factory floors of the big cities. Art, furniture design and work life benefitted from this international trend. EGGER, a supplier of wood-based materials, interprets this trend with its forthcoming decorative range.

Before Lumion rendering used to be really hard. Setting up and completing a render used to take days. With Lumion you can do it in hours. You can even make last minute changes before a meeting and update your renders in minutes. Anyone can sit down with Lumion and within 15 minutes learn how to create videos, images and 360 panoramas. As Scott Erdy, principal of Erdy Mc Henry puts it: "Lumion is really about the creativity of the architect being expressed in a way so other people can understand it."