Fairphone Accessory Challenge Wants You to Design And 3D Print a Smartphone Accessory

It could be hard to accept this reality at first, but the most reliable and constant relationship you might have these days is with your smartphone. Fairphone wants you to think on that—and if you are a European citizen who happens to be an intermediate level 3D designer, enter their latest contest and take The Fairphone Accessory Challenge. Style your phone!

Inviting you to design an unusual case or accessory that can be 3-D printed on a low-resolution printer, the contest is sponsored by Waag Society, Fairphone and Schrijf-Schrijf, running from September 22 through November 15, with design entries due by October 17, 2014.

Three designers will win an all-expenses paid trip to a two-day workshop/masterclass, in Fablab Amsterdam to create their accessory or case with 3D print expert Joris van Tubergen and Fairphone designers. Finalists will learn how to design for production on a low-res 3D printer. Fairphone will select one winner after the masterclass, and will promote their design by publishing it as a download on their website, with the possibility of it later being sold through the Fairphone webshop.

You truly do need to have some experience to enter this contest, as you are expected to come up with an idea and execute it into a 3D-printed product. The steps for the contest are:

1. (Re) design a new project or redesign a previous entry from another contest.
2. Digitize the design to ready it for printing.
3. 3D print and assemble.
4. Submit design, photos, and instructions to the contest.
5. Share it with everyone!

Click here for all the info.

The sponsors want you to think outside of the phone case for your design. Think about all the tasks you perform with your phone, all the activities it attends with you. Where do you need to protect it, accessorize it, enhance it? Are you a nature photographer? A bedazzler type? A white-water rafter or skydiver? Artist? Teacher? Encasing your phone and developing accessories for it should be an inspired, creative process that expresses your individual needs. In writing, they tell you to write what you know. Here, design for who you know: you!

Fairphone is a social enterprise, designed to make the phone less of an odious industrial piece of metal created in a faraway sweatshop, and turn it into a positive, more “green” enterprise, integrating everyone along the way. They don’t want to see phones as being so disposable, want them made of non-conflict materials, and think manufacturing of them should be a way to offer jobs–with fair labor conditions. Fairphone puts strong emphasis on considering the issues in mining, design, manufacturing, and life cycle. Their company truly opens a much-needed conversation.

Do you have innovative smartphone accessory ideas? Are you considering taking part in this challenge?  Let us know in the Fairphone Accessory Challenge forum thread at 3DPB.com.