It's that time of the year again and Telecom Eireann is announcing its fifth annual schools' Design a CallCard competition. Callcards, which began life in Ireland as recently as 1990, have quickly become collector's items in their own right.

The Telecom CallCard Collectors' Club boasts almost 17,000 members. They are likely to become highly expensive items in the years to come. The competition gives youngsters the opportunity to design what could arguably become the ultimate collectible of the future. The competition is open to youngsters in three categories.

Eight-year-olds and younger are invited to submit entries based on a theme of their choice. Children aged between nine and 13 years are required to base their designs on either sport, the arts, Ireland, inventions or the environment. Then 14 to 19-year-olds are expected to design Callcards based on the themes of Europe, the arts, sport or the information age.

Entrants are not expected to produce designs in the actual size of a Callcard, but "should adhere to the general proportions of a Callcard. The maximum size of a design should be 23 inches by 16 and a half inches (an A2 sheet of paper)."

The judges, says the NCAD's Professor Iseult McCarthy who is one of the adjudicators, are looking for creativity and orginality and a design to suit the purpose. "The competition enables youngsters to work as designers and, importantly, to focus on art for a specific purpose," she notes.

This year the winning school in each age category will get a high performance computer. "This means," explains a Telecom spokesperson, `that three schools will win a computer and software including CD-ROM for classroom use." The winning pupil in each age category will also get a mountain bike and a helmet, the class of the overall winner will get £500 towards a school or class educational tour, while the class teacher will get a holiday voucher worth £300.