“We have graffiti artists Jimi Crayon, Pinky and MNKY on board, to provide inspiration, who have designed their own bottle and street art designs (you can check them out: on facebook). The initiative will be supported with a digital gallery – http://www.malibu-rum.com/byu where fans can either upload a photograph of their creation or create their designs directly onto the Malibu By U bottle, using a range of creative tools available.”

Artists and designers are invited to come up with their own bottle design. You can upload your design to http://www.malibu-rum.com/byu and winners will get a trip to one of these locations – Rio, Vegas or Barbados.

• A Graphic Designer who works for a company (perhaps you even own it)
• An Art Director
• A Web Designer
• A Freelance Graphic Designer
• A Graphic Design Student

Then why not share a day of your life on Graphic Design Blog
Email me at mail@graphicdesignblog.co.uk with the answers to the questions below (numbers 1 to 11) plus a photo of yourself if you have one, and I will post the most interesting ones on my blog each week with a link back to your blog or website.

The Competition (now over)
Send a link to a video (on YouTube) which you have created of you sharing/talking about a day in your life – also email me a link to your website so I can link to it. There will be a $100 prize (payable by paypal) for the best video (in my opinion). Please make sure you include in your video that you are taking part in the Day in the life of… competition” on http://www.graphicdesignblog.co.uk or put a link in your Youtube info back to this post. Entries in by May 31st 2010. The winner will be chosen after this date.

1. A day in the life of a __________________ (fill in what you do for a living – must be graphic design related)
2. Your Name:
3. Company Name/University Name etc:
4. Web Address:
5. City, Country
6. How you Start the Day – ie. Get up what time, travel
7. First jobs
8. The rest of your work day
9. Evening
10. What you love about your job /course
11. What you hate about your job /student life

I hope you want to take part and look forward to hearing a bit about what everyone does

Voteforart is a new site that is a bit like Threadless but for University and College Apparel. Anyone can enter the design competitions to create a t-shirt design targeted at specific colleges/universities. The winning t-shirt designer will get a cash prize and their design will printed on t-shirts and sold in the University Book Store. For example one of the current design competitions is shown below:

The University Of Maryland is looking for a cool, never-before-seen design for their basketball fans, and you’re gonna give it to them!  Whether you’re a fan or not, blow the Terps away with your creativity and originality for a chance to see your winning design in the “Maryland Book Exchange” and earn $500 cash. All artists no matter where they are from and what school they go to can submit designs into the contest.

I asked Jeremy Parker, president of VoteforArt a few Questions about his new business

How did you come up with the idea for the T-shirt Design Competitions?

I came up with the idea while at the university of Maryland bookstore. I didn’t see any designs that I liked.  I felt that if given the opportunity, artists from all over the world would create a lot more creative designs. I also felt this could be a way for unknown artists to break into an industry and get their work seen by thousands of people and make money in the process.

I thought that Universities and Colleges already had their own mascots and logos, how creative can artists and designers be?

Universities have there own marks and logos but our design contests allow artists to retouch logos (color, position) and create intricate designs around the already established school logos.

Do the Winning Artists and Designers also get a royalty on their designs in addition to the cash prize?

For specified contests, artists also earn a percentage of sales that take place through our online store (2% of online sales).

Find out more at http://www.voteforart.com

TV Production company RICOCHET are making a new 6 part series on traditional and contemporary crafts for a major broadcaster this summer. The series will feature episodes on six different types of craft; Greenwood, Thatching, Stonemasonry, Weaving, Stained Glass and Metal Work.
 
RICOCHET have enlisted some of the UK’s top Mastercraftsmen from a variety of disciplines who will each mentor 3 eager trainees on an intensive training course. If you’re interested and passionate about learning the traditional skills of the blacksmith, have a passion for wood or any of the other skills listed above then contact the Mastercrafts team at RICOCHET on 01273 224 800 or email mastercrafts@ricochet.co.uk

RICOCHET are the makers of factual and documentary programming for all the major broadcasters both in the UK and US. They have produced series such as “No Going Back”, “Supernanny” and “Born To Be Different”. More recent work includes the Bafta nominated ‘Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts’ for BBC3 and ‘The Real Swiss Family Robinson’ for BBC1.

The experts names have not yet been released but there’ll be someone from the world of business who’ll play the client, there’ll be an artist who’ll play the designer, an advertising or music promo director, etc… The experts will judge the teams work and give comments and critique based on the quality of the final product and the ways different mediums are used – each team will have a designer, a film maker, an animator and a sound designer on it.

The designers chosen to take part will be flown to NY and put up in accommodation. There’s also a top team prize of $400,000 US Dollars and a load of HP design gear to win.

or more info on the competition visit http://www.mtvengineroom.com

To enter the competition you have to create a piece of art or design which communicates the brand of Brahma, its curves (the bottle shape) and its Brazilian heritage. Submissions an be made online or by post, the overall winner will receive £5000 with 9 runner up prizes of £500. Winning designs could also appear on the packaging throughout the UK.

You an see examples of work previously created for Brahma on their gallery page but a few design examples are shown below. More details of the competition can be found at http://www.vistobrahma.com

Design a Snowboard for Moosejaw
As the title suggest this competition is to design a Snowboard the only criteria is that it must include a Moosejaw logo. Both a Moosejaw Logo and snowboard template can be downloaded from the site. The winner will receive an Arbor Snowboard, bindings and a Moosejaw hoodie. Most viral entry wins $100 Moosejaw gift card. More information at Brickfish.

Brickfish Art Competition
Brickfish Show Us Your Art competition invites artist to submit an original piece of art for their virtual gallery. Art can be in the form of drawings, paintings and sculpture. The winner will receive $1000 scholarship or $1000 cash. Full details on the Brickfish site.

TOCA ME Design Competition
For the TOCA ME Design contest the theme is A view behind your nice face. The theme can be interpreted any way you like using photography, graphic design, illustration or typography. The Winner will receive Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection, Second prize Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium,
Third Prize Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium, all winners will also get two tickets to the TOCA ME design conference 08. See the TOCA ME site for more details.

A small selection of prizes up for grabs include:

• Logo design from David Airey.
• Blog review from Aaron Russell of miLienzo
• Custom WordPress theme design from Nate Whitehill of Nate Whitehill dot Com. .
• Website critique from Randa Clay of Randa Clay Design.
• Revolution Premium WordPress theme package (personal package) from Brian Gardner.
• One year’s hosting and blog setup from John Boardley of I Love Typography
• Logo Design designed by myself at Graphic Design Blog

To see the full list of prizes and how to enter see David Airey’s Blog