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The countdown is on for the final of Electrolux's Design Lab 2008. This year's jury will be: fuseproject founder Yves Béhar, Axis FormLAB Design Director Jiao Mo, Senior Design Manager for Nokia Younghee Jung, and Sr VP of Global Design at Electrolux, Henrik Otto. I'm certainly looking forward to see their presentations! All finalists are ready with their prototypes, and the excitement is rising, as october 9 approaches. You can see pictures of the prototypes on flickr, watch the video presentations on YouTube, or visit their blog for the latest news about design lab 08.

Although the scan-toast is quite similar to Sasha Tseng's toast messenger concept, it incorporates some new ideas and it's creator, Sung Bae Chang, developed a mechanism with a network of toasting "modules" (hot wires that rotate within a 30 degree radius) that burn the image or text you have selected onto the delicious slice of your choice.

A while ago, Raul sent me a link to "the best global design of 2008". I think that "the best" sounds a bit pretentious, and "global" may be a bit misleading, since most of the winners are still american, and I said "still", because IDSA has been trying to "globalize" their awards lately. Some years ago, they focused on american designers and american companies because their audience was moslty local. In fact, I believe it was closed to any international entries until just recently. But nowadays they are expanding and trying to get international entries just like other design awards, in order to get international credibility. It's a similar credibility issue just like the oscars or grammys or even the C. Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field Of Excellence, the selection may not be biased, but the public's perception that judging is inclined towards "giving the award to the economically successful and not necessarily the best candidate" is quite strong.

Another interesting award is the da Vinci Awards: "The annual da Vinci Awards® recognize the most innovative adaptive and assistive technologies that enable equal access and opportunity for all people, regardless of ability. These innovations play an important role in helping people overcome physical limitations." I just love how this year's award went to a small, simple but yet forgotten need. This is the "universal design" award... maybe it could be our goal to get one of those awards someday.

ciao

PS: what about today's post title??? Well, the singer/writer of that song was kidnapped today but somehow managed to escape. He was lucky not to be stomped by a runaway elephant when he was escaping.