By Gustavo Piqueira,  the Founder and Creative Director of Casa Rex

I was deeply surprised at the end of last year when I heard the news that one of the blandest packages I have ever designed, had been chosen to go on exhibition at a Design Biennial here in Brazil. After all, if the creator didn’t consider it very beautiful, you can imagine what others would think. Had the exhibition’s curators created the “worst designs of 2010” category and I was about to get ready for public humiliation?

In the unique ‘One Tonne Life’ project, launched January 19, the Lindells family of four will try to live within the limits of one tonne of carbon dioxide emissions per person per year. The project has been initiated by A-hus, Vattenfall and Volvo Cars, with ICA and Siemens being the project’s specialist industry partners. The family lives in a climate-smart wooden house, use an electric car and turn to advanced energy solutions, which are already available or will become available in the very near future.

For the second year in a rowFolgers® is teaming up with Grammy® nominated songwriter and former American Idol® judge, Kara DioGuardi for the 2011 Folgers Jingle Contest. Folgers invites Americans to put their spin on the iconic ‘The Best Part of Wakin’ Up™’ jingle for a chance to win $25,000, a mentoring session with Kara and the chance to appear in a future Folgers Coffee commercial. Last year’s grand prize winner, The Ethan Thompson Band from Missoula, MT, was chosen from among nearly a thousand entries submitted online for the inaugural contest.

On Wednesday Google announced the fourth annual round of its ‘Doodle 4 Google’ project. This is a drawing contest which provides K-12 students with the opportunity to win a $15,000 scholarship and a $25,000 technology grant for their school. The task for the students is to create their own version of Google page that corresponds the theme of competition using a plethora of drawing tools.

Umbro, Manchester-based branch of Nike specializing in football wear, recently revealed more details on its collaboration with critically acclaimed designer Aitor Throup that led to creation of some iconic sportswear pieces for Archive Research Project (A.R.P.). In course of the project, Umbro’s creative team along with Aitor delved into 87-year-old archive of the brand in search of inspiration to create new clothes.

Sony goes on impressing public with bold and creative initiatives, focused on the same theme ‘Make.Believe,’ which also serves as the brand’s slogan. The brand teamed up with the Paris-based agency RAPP to develop a new project, which was designed to highlight the possibilities of the compact digital Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX5V camera. The creative team launched a project entitled ‘Panoramic Story’ to feature bright and stunning stills in a new engaging way.