"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."  —Pablo Picasso

Picasso was not the only one who sought a playful quality in his work—for designers, objects that successfully translate a playful spirit often establish an instant connection with users. Children discover the world around them through play—touching and manipulating their way to understanding. Once we get older though, our imaginative capacity is replaced by the call of rationality and function and our best platform for play is the computer screen. What if the objects around us were better able to capture the sense of discovery we knew as children? 

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Along with FilzFelt, Febric, Visual Magnetics and Brooklyn Glass, Core77 is proud to sponsor an initiative that is posing this very design brief: the 6th Annual WantedDesign Workshop. Each year, WantedDesign invites students from all over the globe to collaborate on efforts that promote their work and their schools, while fostering meaningful relationships as well as partnerships with manufacturers. Borrowing the theme of "playtime" from Jacques Tati's classic 1967 film of the same name, this year, the WantedDesign Design Schools Workshop asks students to explore the potentials of playfulness in design through material exploration. Students will be asked to combine thinking with making as they explore different materials—wood, ceramic, glass and textile—and work with specialized mentors in each material category to develop a viable product prototype.  

An international group of students from Centro (Mexico), Art Center College for Design, Pasadena, Aalto University (Finland), ENSCI Les Ateliers (France), Escuela de Comunicación Monica Herrera (El Salvador) and Pratt Institute will participate in the workshop this year. After a rapid-fire four days of ideation, development, prototyping and finalization at WantedDesign in Industry City, Brooklyn, the Workshop will culminate with a judging panel that  includes our very own Editor-at-Large Allan Chochinov, Chair, SVA MFA Products of Design, Caroline Baumann, Director of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and Susan Szenasy, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Metropolis Magazine. 

The general public will be able to follow the students' work between May 14th and May 17th during New York Design Week, as well as attend the final public presentation of the projects on May 17th at the Conversation Lounge at WantedDesign in Manhattan. We are so excited to see what they come up with! 

Mark your calendars and watch for more updates here and on the WantedDesign Twitter and Facebook.