Topics and Eligibility

Deadline: June 1, 2009

A candidate’s submissions may address any of the multiple types of design, including, but not limited to:

• Architectural
• Environmental
• Fashion
• Graphic
• Industrial
• Information
• Interactive
• Product and strategic

Preference will be given to writing that initiates new ideas (or challenges old ones), and may concern topics ranging from the personal to the polemical. These may include:

• Essays and reviews
• Works of journalism and profiles
• History and theory
• Fiction and nonfiction
• Poems
• Plays and screenplays
• Experimental works
• Proposals for projects in which writing about design plays a meaningful role

Eligibility
A writing award of $10,000 is open to writers, critics, scholars, historians, journalists and designers who are U.S. citizens (or full-time residents for at least three years). The writing award is given for a body of work, so candidates must submit three separate works of writing. Any or all of these works may have been previously published, either online or in print. At the time of submission, the writer must be under the age of 40.

An education award, in the amount of $1,000, is open to high school, undergraduate or graduate students who are U.S. citizens (or full-time residents for at least three years) whose use of writing, in the interest of making visual work or scholarship or cultural observation, demonstrates extraordinary originality and promise. The education award is for a single work of writing: students may be from any academic discipline, but the subject matter must be about design. At the time of submission, the writer must be under the age of 40, and have been a matriculated student within the past 12 months.

For answers to commonly asked questions regarding eligibility, please refer to the FAQs.