As part of its “Brightest Ideas” issue, Time Out Chicago’s Jake Malooley visits IDEO’s West Loop location to learn about how we collaborated on the future of pharmacy with Walgreens, State Farm’s Next Door learning lab and more. Read the full story here.

The Oregon Manifest Bicycle Challenge, a bicycle design competition which challenged the nation’s top bike builders, wrapped up this past weekend in Portland, Oregon. Reviews of IDEO’s bicycle, the Faraday, created with Rock Lobster cycles can be found on CNET and BikePortland.org, along with a journal of its build over the past eight months on Core77.

Read more about the Faraday here and cast your vote at OregonManifest.com/collaborations.

IDEO.org announced its initial projects and fellowship class. Read more about what IDEO.org will be working on and the team members on Design Observer, Core77, Public Interest Design, and MediaBistro’s Unbeige.

Tim Brown, Fred Dust, and David Kelley are part of Fast Company‘s annual Masters of Design issue. Check out these three links to see where they fit in the 2011 edition.

IDEO’s Brendan Boyle and Joe Wilcox talk about the importance of play, and how to build a culture that encourages prototyping and experimentation.

Tim is interviewed for the Fixes series, which asks CEOs, academics, and other creative thinkers for one idea that might help the economy. Tim talks about apprenticeship and the way it helps facilitate tacit learning. Hear the interview and read the transcript here.

Design for Change, a design based school competition which started with the Design for Giving contest in 2009, has won an INDEX award in the work category. Design for Change is the largest global movement designed to give children the opportunity to put their ideas into action.

IDEO also had several INDEX finalists including Lars Hinrichs’ HackFwd, OpenIDEO and AskNature.org. Read more about the 2011 awards here.

IDEO communications designer Elle Luna speaks at The Designer Fund’s Designer Fair about the humanity of brands. To read more about the talk, visit FastCompany.com.