To promote its social network Google+, the Internet giant Google is launching a new competition for up and coming photographers, inviting them to upload their visual works to the new platform. For the contest entitled Google Photography Prize the company has teamed up with Saatchi Gallery, London, which will provide the finalists and the winner with hilarious prizes, which are sure to help them boost their photography career.

PUMA has teamed up with African artists to create football kits for the brand’s 10 partnered African National football teams. Renowned artists from the Creative African Network (CAN), a platform supported by PUMA that connects and promotes artists from Africa, took a hand in creation of colorful kits collection inspired by the country’s heritage. The collection is now exhibited at the Design Museum, London. 

A bunch of positive and negative things can happen within just one hour, one can get yet more in a single day—to say nothing about seven billion people living on the planet now. Vimeo, WWF, UN, Water.org, American Red Cross, The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and around 60 humanitarian organizations are supporting the One Day on Earth project, which is launched to showcase the life of people across the globe in 24 hours. Everyone is invited to contribute their voice to the project by sending in footage about how they and people around them live on 11.11.11. The registration is now running on the OneDayOnEarth.org website.

As it turns out, 2011 is a year of milestone anniversaries for a number of global brands—Coca-Cola celebrated its 125th anniversary in May, Mercedes-Benz marked 125 years after the first automobile was invented, Starbucks turned 40 and Perrier-Jouët celebrated its 200th birthday with a glamorous edition. For Wrigley, the iconic chewing gum company, a subsidiary of Mars, this year is also very important—a century ago, on October 19, 1911 the genuinely American company, which was founded in Chicago in 1891, opened its office in London, selling its gum product in a chemists shop. Then, 100 years ago, its capital was just £2,000, and now it grew dramatically, since “more than 90% of the gum chewed by Britons is made by the company, says Mars Inc..

With the year 2012 coming soon (which may be the last one, according to Mayan predictions), brands get busy making divine calendars for it. Recently, Lavazza unveiled its 20th edition of its calendar, which turned to be a real splash of art and beauty. Another Italian brand Campari is keeping pace with the coffee brand and now launches the 13th calendar, announced in mid-summer. The new piece titled It’s the end of the world, baby! features Hollywood A-lister and supermodel Milla Jovovich, who inspires people to toast the life in any dramatic situations—in the long run, she also may save the world if the old prophecies turn out to be true.

illy has been blending art and coffee for decades, and one of the most striking results of such a mix is its illy Art Collection, which now includes a plethora of state-of-the art coffee cup sets and cans created by the greatest international artists of our time as well as by aspiring talents. The range, which includes over 70 series of coffee cups by Jeff Koons, Francsis Fod Coppola, Jan Fabre and Tobias Rehberger to name but a few, now welcomes the cups with blastful designs created by Neapolitan artist Francesco Clemente, who now lives in the USA, and a the second can of 2011, designed by Alioum Moussa, who is an eclectic and multidisciplinary artist from Cameroon.