The Internet is one of the most effective promotional mediums available to you. Internet promotion can be cheap, it can be highly personal, and it enables you to reach thousands of people with minimal effort.
It’s also a good vehicle for exhibiting your talents. In fact, I regularly hire new freelance designers on the strength of their online portfolio - if they present their services persuasively on their websites, I don’t always insist on face-to-face meetings.
If you’ve got good material in your repertoire, you should have a good website to present it. And if you’ve got a good website, it makes sense that you make people aware of it.
There are two ways to exploit your website to its full potential. Either you make yourself accessible to website browsers by optimizing your website’s exposure on search engines and major sites, or you buy a data list of potential clients and present your website directly to people in an email campaign. Read the rest of this entry »
The Japanese Design Tshirts store graniph is arranging the international T-shirts design award vol.2 from the 1st of February until the 31st of March 2008. We are calling young artists, designers, illustrators and photographers to send us their ideas for T-shirt designs. Everyone is welcome to apply regardingless age, gender or artistic background. The winners will receive cash prizes, will be promoted through the graniph website and the international press and have their design printed on a graniph T!
Detailed informations and the application form are available at www.graniph.com/award.
The fashion contest is a little vague…MSN and Glam want contestants to design a dress. There are no boundaries from that point. Anything from a sundress to an evening gown is acceptable. Readers will vote on favorites, and the eight top finalists will then create their dress. The winner will be flown to New York, receive a $500 gift certificate from Lord & Taylor, and then have an opportunity to apprentice with the ADAM Adam Lippes design studio. Adam is one of the judges for the final round, so that’s another clue as to how to design your dress.
Registration for this contest ends 5 February 2008 at “about” 6pm PT. All entries must be received by the applicable deadline to receive votes during the Semi-Finalist Voting Period and win a prize. Visit the site to learn more.
If you’ve been following the Writer’s Guild Strike and if their cause appeals to you, then you might be interested in creating a film about any WGA contract issue that inspires you. The contest creators, United Hollywood, are interested in how you would end the strike. The theme is “FairDeal4Writers.” The winner will receive an authentic WGA strike poster with over 175 writer, actor, actress, and director signatures.
Videos can be no longer than four minutes, but they can be any genre. Visit the site to learn about all the stipulations and guidelines. Videos are due on 20 February.
If you think you can predict Apple’s “Next Big Thing,” as in an “i” product (iPhone, iPod, etc.), then you might want to enter the “Next Big Thing” contest. Mac|Life, Maxon, and the Academy of Art University are co sponsoring a contest to find the best fictional product prototypes (aka “fauxtotypes”) laced with Apple design DNA. They don’t care if your ideas are visionary or absurd. They want to see how you interpret the future of Apple product design.
According to the contest site, “The best submissions will appear in Mac|Life magazine and on Maclife.com. Our grand prize winner will receive a scholarship for the Academy of Art University, and a boxed copy of Maxon Cinema 4D. Four runners-up, plus our grand prize winner, will each receive $100 gift cards for Newegg.com.”
So, if you’re an industrial designer, a 2D artist, or a 3D illustrator (or all three), decide if you want to win any of these items before you jump into the contest. Remember - Apple isn’t involved in the contest at all. Hence, the “fauxtotypes” deal. Deadline is 31 January, 2008. Visit the site to learn more.
Congratulations to Allmightys’ one year anniversary! To celebrate, they’re launching an open t-shirt design ideas competition. They want your ideas about whatever you choose, so show them what you’re thinking so that you can influence them with your winning design.
Submission deadline is 11 February 2008 at 10 pm GMT. Voting begins the next day and ends on 3 March. Be sure to read the design guide and rules, linked from the contest page. 1 EUR from the sale of each “I am thinking” t-shirt sale will be donated to Cancer Research UK. If you win, your t-shirt goes up for sale and you earn commission. Visit the site to learn more.
The great design above was created by Joe Gonzalez.
Thanks to Amy at Geek Parenting for showing the way (along with her pet horse, Butterscotch). Pleo is an interactive toy that incorporates Open Source technology. That alone is something to roar about…
The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art [SMoCA] announces a major design competition and public exhibition, “Flip a Strip.” This innovative project will foster creative new visions for the renovation of the small-scale strip shopping plazas that line the streets of this metropolitan area-and virtually every suburban zone in the country. (Note: this is an idea-generating competition, not a design/build project.) “Flip a Strip” continues SMoCA’s commitment to creating a forum for public issues of both local and national importance and to generating ideas that better the quality of civic life.
The competition is a hybrid, both open and invitational, with a nominal registration fee of $60. Participants must be professional architects with at least five years professional experience. Participants can select one model site from among three sites that have been submitted by city planners from the municipalities of Scottsdale, Tempe and Phoenix, Arizona.Ringed by parking and adjacent to thriving neighborhoods, these strip malls have great potential for adaptive re-use and architectural upgrades. They are an undervalued and neglected building stock. This competition will look at options for making strip malls economically viable, aesthetically interesting and communally meaningful.
Specifications and detailed information will be available through the competition/registration web site. Submissions must be received by mail at SMoCA by 31 March 2008.
WebRing, Inc., a pioneer in Internet social networking, is pleased to announce the inaugural Iron WebMaster Competition. The Iron Webmaster competition is a Web site design contest modeled after the hit TV show “Iron Chef.” Like the TV show, contestants are given a theme that they must incorporate into their design. The competition consists of a 5-part website design challenge that takes place over the next 12 weeks. Prizes will be awarded throughout the competition at the end of each round, and a grand prize winner, the Iron WebMaster, will be crowned at the conclusion of all rounds. Winners will be chosen by a combination of popular votes received from site visitors and a select panel of judges.
“We’re very excited to be a part of this event,” says Tim Killeen, President of WebRing, Inc. “This should be fun for both competitors and visitors alike. We see this as a great opportunity for aspiring web designers to showcase their creativity and gain exposure while having a little fun at the same time.”
The Iron WebMaster competition ends at 11:59 p.m. (EST) on December 31, 2008, but SIGN UP NOW for the first round of the competition or you may lose out entirely. No purchase is necessary to win. Amateurs, professionals and aspiring Web designers alike are invited to compete for the title of Iron WebMaster. Visit the site to learn more.
Web Handling and Converting for printers teaches the must-know areas of web handling including tension control, nips, roller design, spreading and wrinkling. In addition to important converting related topics such as slitting and winding, the seminar also covers the physics of how web machinery operates. Though theory is included, emphasis is placed on practical problem solving techniques for the plant engineer. This popular and informative course has been attended by more than 1,600 students. Anyone working with web machinery can benefit from this unique course. This includes product/process designers, process engineers, QA, sales/service, maintenance and lead operators. The physics of web handling are applicable to any of the web industries including paper, film, metals, nonwovens and textiles. The course is vital to manufacturers and converters of web products and also to machine builders, component suppliers and material suppliers. For full details and to register, go to Seminars for Engineers.
Featured Topics:
Learn how to get a web through your machine at the highest throughput and with minimal trouble
Find out how wrinkles are formed and how they can be prevented
Find out how and why tension must be controlled throughout the machine
Find out how and why machines need to be aligned
Find out why rollers must be true
Find out how to avoid web breaks and damage
Learn options for slitting, edge guiding, calendering, winding & many other converting processes
by Shaun Crowley
The Japanese Design Tshirts store graniph is arranging the international T-shirts design award vol.2 from the 1st of February until the 31st of March 2008. We are calling young artists, designers, illustrators and photographers to send us their ideas for T-shirt designs. Everyone is welcome to apply regardingless age, gender or artistic background. The winners will receive cash prizes, will be promoted through the graniph website and the international press and have their design printed on a graniph T!
The fashion contest is a little vague…MSN and Glam want contestants to design a dress. There are no boundaries from that point. Anything from a sundress to an evening gown is acceptable. Readers will vote on favorites, and the eight top finalists will then create their dress. The winner will be flown to New York, receive a $500 gift certificate from Lord & Taylor, and then have an opportunity to apprentice with the ADAM Adam Lippes design studio. 
If you think you can predict Apple’s “Next Big Thing,” as in an “i” product (iPhone, iPod, etc.), then you might want to enter the “Next Big Thing” contest. Mac|Life, Maxon, and the Academy of Art University are co sponsoring a contest to find the best fictional product prototypes (aka “fauxtotypes”) laced with Apple design DNA. They don’t care if your ideas are visionary or absurd. They want to see how you interpret the future of Apple product design.
