Ben Harper, Andy Summers, Linda Perry and Flea (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers) are confirmed to perform at the Silverlake Conservatory Of Music’s annual Halloweenabaloo concert at Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles on October 31, 2009. Why are we blogging about this? Because we received two tickets to this event and we decided that these two tickets should go to our readers. Yes! That’s right. Keep reading to find out how you can win a pair of tickets to see Ben Harper and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers! This is an intimate fundraiser with tons of big names in attendance. Not to mention the fact that you’ll get the chance to hear some awesome musicians jamming out (with an open bar at your disposal)!

About the Silverlake Conservatory of Music:

Reacting to the disappearance of music education in the curriculum of many public schools, Flea and Tree (Keith Barry) founded the non-profit conservatory to provide a place where young people in their community could learn and enjoy music. The school’s website states, “The mission of the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, a non-profit organization, is to facilitate basic music education. Our primary focus is on the youth of the community but all are welcome and encouraged to participate. The Conservatory offers private music lessons at a reasonable cost and grants scholarships to children in need, providing free lessons and instruments. The study of music enriches the life of the student as well as the community and society.” Nine years after opening, the school serves about 600 students (about a quarter who are on scholarship). Students enjoy access to private lessons, instruments, summer camps and group ensembles.

Every non-profit needs funding and the Halloweenabaloo is an annual fundraiser with all proceeds going to the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. We believe this is a cause that all people in the field of art, music and design need to get behind. If you live in the Southern California region or have friends or family that do, please help us spread the word to sell out these tickets!

UPDATE: Winner is Faryl of Fearless Blogger

How to Buy Ben Harper Halloweenablaoo Tickets

No online sale of tickets (Kinda weird, but seems secretive and awesome). Tickets are $150 each and you will be helping a great cause, enjoying an entire night of entertainment (6pm-1am) and as a bonus they have an open bar!

• Buy your tickets over the phone Monday-Friday: 11am to 9pm and Saturday-Sunday: 10am to 6pm by calling (323) 665-3363
• In person at 3920 Sunset Blvd., Silverlake, CA 90029

How to Win Ben Harper Halloweenabaloo Tickets

Here’s the fun stuff. Help us spread the word about the concert and get a chance at winning a pair of tickets. The more you promote, the better your chances. We’ll choose a winner this Friday, October 23rd and announce it via @youthedesigner twitter (that means you gotta follow me to find out if you won).

• ReTweet this blog post and you might win. Ask your friends to Retweet and they might win. Please use hash mark #halloweenabaloo to spread the word.
• Become a fan (and make your friends become a fan) of Silverlake Conservatory on FaceBook
• Leave a comment on this post and tell us how much you love Ben Harper, Flea or any of the other artists performing.
• Anything on Digg, StumbleUpon, Yelp or MySpace to help us spread the word and support the arts!

UPrinting.com has recently launched a pretty cool new promotion for bloggers called the Blog Sponsor Program. The program is basically geared towards helping blog owners promote their new blogs and business ventures and its also a great way to attract new visitors to your blog. Giveaways are big in the design community especially brushes, free vector art, textures and so on and now you can get free printing, which is extremely useful and valuable.

Blog Sponsorship Program

If you run a blog, than you are eligible to apply and It doesn’t matter what industry you are in. Once you apply your blog will be added to the promotion pool so whenever UPrinting.com has free stuff to giveaway you could be contacted to get free printing for yourself and for your readers.

They have tons of products to choose from, so its a pretty sweet deal if you are always printing stuff. I would have killed for this promotion when I first started my design business and needed new business cards and other promotional materials.

The giveaways are ongoing as well, which works great for designers who are always changing their brand identity and need stuff reprinted. So Be sure to Apply to the Blog Sponsorship Program today and take advantage of this extremely generous offer. If you don’t run a blog start one today so you don’t miss out!

Our friends from the AIGA wanted us to let you know about some great contests over at competitions.aiga.org. The deadline for submissions is soon, so be sure to enter before the party is over!

Enter the AIGA Annual Design Competitions

Submit any type of communication design work used in the marketplace during 2008—from posters to websites, annual reports to games, motion graphics to packaging, books to interactive kiosks—anything goes. If your work is selected, countless future designers and potential clients will have access to your creative legacy in the AIGA Design Archives. This is your chance to live forever!

Deadline: March 6, 2009
Late Deadline: March 27, 2009 (late entry fees apply)

http://competitions.aiga.org

The Design Gallery UCreative.com is hosting a sweet new T Shirt Contest Sponsored by Beautiful/Decay Apparel where designers will compete for a chance to get their design printed, $200 cash, $100 worth of free printing credits and more! Beautiful/Decay Apparel is known for letting artists express themselves via t shirt designs and the same goes for this contest.

There is no restriction on theme, they simply want you to create a t shirt design that represents you best as an artist. You get total creative freedom when it comes to the theme, so if you feel pent up from doing tons of corporate designs, than this is the perfect chance to let your creative energy run wild and win some cool prizes at the same time! If you are ready to enter the contest you can Start by Joining UCreative.com and then heading over to the T Shirt Contest Home Page to check out the rules. I look forward to seeing all the cool tee designs and I hope to see a lot of you enter!

Enter The Tee Contest Today!

If you are ready to submit your best t-shirt design Click Here to check out the rules.

Hey all just wanted to let you all know about my new e-Book Fuel for Design! Fuel for Design is a complete guide on How to Start A Clothing Line and is packed full of the latest T Shirt Business and marketing tips. I know countless designers and many of them specialize in t-shirt design, but what they do is spend most of their time selling their amazing designs off for cheap or praying they will win a t-shirt design contest!

The best thing to do would be to take your incredible t-shirt designs and form your own clothing line! My e-book was created just for this reason, to help designers make the most of their talent. So if you love t-shirts and you love design you should check out this e-book which will teach you everything you need to know about starting your own t-shirt business.

Start Your T Shirt Business Today!

Colorburned is an awesome site that offers High-Quality Texture Packs in their online store and they were kind enough to give us over 300 textures to give away to one lucky winner. Colorburned is a great resource site for graphic designers who need to quickly build up an arsenal of great design elements to use in their projects. Thanks to everyone who participated in this giveaway and be sure to Subscribe and stay tuned for more!

Colorburned Texture Pack Giveaway Winner

Tadd Mencer

Clouds – hands down – are the ones I would use the most. I try and have as many cloud textures as possible. They’re so versatile you can do just about anything with them. Space nebula, explosions, grungy back grounds … with the right tweaking they’re perfect for anything. I’m working on a large graphic project and man .. these packs would DEFINITELY come in handy. Here’s some fingers crossed!!

Sample Textures

For a limited time Colorburned will also let you buy all 300 textures for 50% off their normal price. This means you’ll receive all 300 textures for just over $35. So if you don’t win you can still get a hell of a deal!

We Are not Freelancers’ is hosting a fun little competition where you have to take an image provided by them and use it in a creative way. The contest is sponsored by UPrinting.com and there are some cool prizes being awarded.

To enter the contest all you have to do is Head on Over to the Contest Page so you can read the rules and download the source file which will be used by you in a creative way. Prizes will be awarded to the most creative or bravest applicants, but of course please don’t do anything illegal. =)

• 1st prize gets 500 Free business cards (courtesy of U Printing) and a Free We Are not Freelancers T-shirt.
• 2nd & 3rd Place each receive 250 Free B-Cards and a T-shirt.
• We are also going to award a Free T-Shirt to a random entrant.

Enter the Contest

To enter the contest please Go Here and have a look at the official rules.

UPrinting.com is currently seeking a full-time senior level user experience and web designer to join their creative team in their West Los Angeles office!

UPrinting.com is a trusted leader in online printing, offering one of the most robust yet simple and easy-to-use online printing experiences. Online printing can be very complex process and we recognize that simple user-centric design and a strong focus on usability are critical to our success.

Read the Full Job Listing Here

UCreative.com is a new Design Gallery I helped launch that lets designers submit, rate and view designs. Our goal with this site was to create a massive design gallery that designers could go to for inspiration. It also servers as great platform for designers to showcase their best work, allowing potential clients to find designers for jobs and gigs!

Before the official launch of UCreative.com we are going to have a week of beta testing to work out bugs and improve the overall functionality of the site. During this week of testing we would be grateful if you would register and start submitting your designs.

Win a 1,000 Free Business Cards!

By joining the site and submitting your best designs you will automatically be entered for our 1,000 Free Business Cards Beta Giveaway, sponsored by UPrinting.com. One lucky member will be chosen at random to receive this great prize at the end of our Beta testing!

Start Submitting Your Designs Today

To enter the Beta Giveaway Register Here and start submitting. Submissions are moderated and most submissions will be accepted within 24-48 hours. If you run into any issues email us and we will contact you back right away!

Beta Test Dates

Beta Test: 8/6/2008 – 8/13/2008 ( You have one week to enter and submit designs! )

Suggestions, Bugs and Comments

Please contact us using the email below with any suggestions, bugs or other comments and we will fix them as soon as possible:

gino@youthedesigner.com

The world is buzzing about the upcoming President elections in the U.S. and TemplateMonster has decided to hold its own elections, well to see which template will win of course! All you have to do is vote for the design that you consider to be better for America-the-beautiful. Then after the elections are over TemplateMonster will count the votes and the ones who voted for the design that eventually becomes the winner will be entered into the lottery. The voting is active from June 26th until July 9th 2008 so hurry and get your votes in!

Lottery Prizes

• One Gift Certificate that will give you any template from their database for free.
• Two Discount Coupons for 80%.
• Three 50% Discount Coupons.
• 6 lottery winners in total

In addition to the lottery winners, everyone who votes in the TemplateMonster 2008 Elections will also get a FREE Patriotic Iconset! All you have to do is enter your name, email and submit your vote!

Hey all its finally time to announce the winner of the Markup4u.com comment contest! Markup4u.com can take your designs and convert them into a custom sliced WordPress theme or table-less xhtml/css template. The markup they provide is cross-browser compatible, SEO optimized and W3C valid!

Contest Winner – MCraig

I’m a graphic designer in need of a portfolio site. Markup is not currently one of my skills. I would love to be able to showcase my work online.

Thanks to everyone for participating and keep an eye out for great new contests!

You (the designer) no longer need to worry about front-end coding and browser compatibility issues! leave it up to markup4u.com to take your designs and convert them into a custom sliced WordPress theme or table-less xhtml/css template. The markup they provide is cross-browser compatible, SEO optimized and W3C valid!

Example of Site Coded by Markup4u.com

Win a $175 to Credit Markup4u.com!

Markup4u was kind enough to offer a $175 credit that can be used for a slicing job, equivalent to one page slicing. This is perfect if you have a one page portfolio site you need to bring to life! To win this $175 credit prize, simply leave a comment below telling us what type of site you would use this for. I will announce a winner Thursday, July 3rd!

The winners of Round 2 of the UPrinting.com International Poster design competition will be announced Friday! The entires were amazing and I want to thank everyone who participated including our sponsors for putting up such amazing prizes!

So check back Friday for a list of the winners and also keep an eye out for round 3 of our great competition which will deal with typography. Since we still have one more round you also still have a chance to win a spot in our finalist round where our 3 first place winners will go head to head for a chance to win a feature in PRINT Magazine!

So keep reading the blog and check out the contest home page for the latest info!

Custom printing has always been associated with hefty printing costs, slow turnarounds and pre-press nightmares, but with advances in printing technologies this is finally no longer true! Custom printing sizes have many benefits, including more creative freedom, more personalization and it can be great for marketing campaigns looking to achieve a better (ROI) return on investment. Consumers are so used to standard sizes and like we’ve mentioned in previous posts, these new custom sizes can be very refreshing!

Affordable Custom Size Printing with UPrinting.com

UPrinting.com is an online printing company that has recently launched an initiative to be the first online printer to offer custom printing sizes for most of its product line including business cards, brochures, flyers, postcards and even posters thanks to its innovative printing infrastructure. You can even price a project on their site in just seconds, even while you’re on the phone with a client, instead of waiting days for a print shop to send you a quote. The best part as mentioned above, is the fact that ordering custom size projects is extremely affordable and can be done with the same fast turnaround offered on standard sizes.

They really go out of their way when it comes to file help and pre-press. As designers, we don’t always know all the technical details that go into pre-press file preparation and even if we do, juggling multiple client projects is a good way to miss little details. Having their pre-press team on your side and even willing to fix the errors and send you electronic proofs, before you even give them a credit card, is truly valuable.

Its nice to know we wont be stuck in a world of standard sizes forever!

MTV and HP are teaming up for a a cool new series that will air on MTV worldwide. This new show will pit creative minds from around the world against each other in a battle of digital art skills that will include graphic design, animation, mixing sounds, filmmaking and more.

The Winning Team Will Take Home $400,000 USD In Cash and HP Products!

Ready to prove you’ve got what it takes? You can start by putting together samples of your best work. They want to see your best graphics, short films, web pages, songs, mixes or anything else cool you have created. Entries will be accepted until June 30, 2008. You must be available from July 18, 2008 through August 16, 2008 to be flown to New York City to compete in the contest!

Inquiries can be sent to engineroom@mtvu.com

Applicants can upload their work to MTVEngineroom.com. You must apply as an individual.