Happy Birthday DCDB!

Event Lowdown

It’s been almost one year since our first DCDB event! We’re celebrating this very big birthday with a GO GREEN RECYCLED OBJECTS contest. Participants will be turning recyclable items into usable items! For instance, if someone creates a frying a pan, it should be heat resistant! It’s not as easy as it sounds since there are only 3 hours of work time. You can plan your art at home and bring in materials of your choice. As always, there will be awesome art, cool prizes, good fun, and new people to meet!

Featured Judges

Our judges for this event are restauranteurs Ari and Darren Norris of the soon to be open izkaya restaurant, Kushi, in the Verizon Center neighborhood. The concept comes from chef Darren Norris who has spent 25 years as a chef, most recently as executive chef for Ridgewells Caterers, is teaming up with partner Yoshihisa Ota, a well-known Tokyo chef. Ota, who will replace himself at his restaurant Ginza Gakyu, will provide a direct connection to Tokyo’s fish market. Norris was inspired to open a Japanese restaurant partly because his wife and amazing designer Ari Kushimoto.

ps: if you would like to be a sponsor, please email us and we can brief you with some exciting offers, including a ‘open mic’ session during our event.

Register for the event

Sponsors and prizes for the contest generously provided by - MediaBarn Inc and Modern50

Media Sponsorship provided by Capitol Communicator and Tech Cocktail

Cya there!

-Alisa

Another Awesome DCDB Event!

Last Thursday, Jan 29, 09 was another very successful DCDesignBabes’ event! We held our usual mixer housing about 315 creatives from the area, coupled with an interesting sculpture competition created from mundane objects — Change the Way You See Things — a concept inspired by the Dutch Design Week and ofcourse our new President Obama!

Thank You to everyone who made it out to Josephine, the contestants, the judges, and our sponsors — Media Barn, Stellr, Tech Cocktail & Capitol Communicator! We saw some amazing sculptures in The Found Objects Competition that I personally would love to see more of in the DC area.

It was a very close competition and thankfully we had some great judges Josh Yospyn & Chris Bishop to help us with the decision making part.

Participants:

Amy Keys

Samantha & Jim

Kimberley & Doug

Tom Coffin

Jolyn

And the winners were:

1st Place - Giant Spork by Nancy & Team

2nd Place - Homeless Cups by Annie Riker

Honorary Mention - Giant Fortune Cookie by Jasmine Bulin

As always we are inspired by the talent we have in DC and we are more than thrilled to showcase it at our events.. Big thanks to you guys for encouraging us so much.

Check out the rest of the pictures from our event here!

http://www.flickr.com/groups/dcdesignbabes/pool/


Thanks again to everyone who made it out last Thursday!

-Alisa

DCDB 3 Judges - Change the Way You See Things Competition!

If you haven’t signed up for DCDB3 at
Josephine, sign up now! Tickets for this event are limited.

We’ve rounded up some of the area’s most unique artists and are pleased to announce the following judges for the ‘Change the Way You See Things’ contest at the next DCDB event on January 29th!

*Drum Roll*

Judge No. 1

Josh Yospyn, of Yospyn.com

Joshua Yospyn is a self-educated web designer and photographer. Josh graduated from the University of Dayton in 1999 with a business degree, but after graduation abandoned this career path to build websites instead. He currently works at OmniStudio, a web design studio in Dupont Circle, but is also featured in many DC area photography shows open to the public and not so public.

Josh has a wide range of photography styles. My favorite Yosphy photos are his Flying Tortoises and his Paper Crane images. His current obsession consists of shooting various forms of portraiture. Fascinated by what one cannot see, he captures faces and poses with something always crucial missing from the frame, whether it is something physical or an emotional connection between viewer and subject. Vibrant colors create impact, but as an empty messenger of what should really be there.

See more of Joshua’s work at his web site or check out his work on flickr!

Judge No. 2

Chris Bishop, Creative Director & Illustrator, PBS Kids

Chris Bishop is a painter, illustrator and creative director from Syracuse, NY. He has served as a cartoon editor, cartoonist, and has been painting the series “pretty girls and robots” since 2001. Chris started working as the first web designer for pbskids.org in 2000, he is now the mastermind of everything in PBS Kids Interactive. He has been featured in many shows in and around the DC area.

He also shares his talent by creating very cute merchandise on the following websites! Check it out! Threadless, etsy, superfly labs

For those of you that are interested in signing up for our found objects sculpture competition there are still a few spots. If you have not RSVP to attend, please do so. We always sell out!

DCDB Change The Way You See Things!! Don’t miss out!

-Alisa

Change '09

Inspired by the Dutch Design Week, our DCDB event is going to house a contest with a slight twist to create art using mundane everyday objects. Think simple, think small as you will have only 3 hours to complete it. You can plan your art at home and bring in materials of your choice. There will be a first and second prize. Register separately with us to enter the competition.

Now that there is gonna be visual treat and amazing people to talk to, who would wanna miss this event!

ps: if you would like to be a sponsor, please email us and we can brief you with some exciting offers, including a ‘open mic’ session during our event.

Register for the event

Gold Sponsor - MediaBarn Inc

Prizes for the contest generously provided by Stellr - http://stellr.com/

Media Sponsorship provided by Capitol Communicator

SOLD-OUT Event!

Yep, and we are very proud of it. We had 210 participants last night at FLY.

The Munny contest started at 6pm and thanks to all our participants who provided such a visual feast to everyone! And they are: Amy Keys, Annie Riker, Ashwini Umarji, Purva Gokhale, Michael Pichette, Jamie Kashetta, Lokesh Dhakar, Kunal Vijayakar, Nguyet Vuong and Justin. And thanks to our awesome judges Supon, Chris Bishop and Graham Jackson. Our sponsors RTCRM and Viget Labs made it possible to buy shiny prizes.

Annie Riker won the first place for her Munny Tree and Kunal Vijayakar bagged the second for his Munnia - The Supera.

Munnia photo credit: Nina Walia

Check out all the pictures here.

Thanks again to everyone who made it last night and we like always love ya!

Judges Announced

Firstly, Have you registered yet for the “Show me the Munny”?

We are now here to present you our three honorable judges who are all pioneers in what they do and have created a culture in DC with their art.

Supon, owner of Supon Creative

Supon doesn’t play by the book. Life, work, living space, or oeuvre, if it’s Supon’s, it’s an original.

He’s significantly influenced the graphic arts, leaving a rich legacy of style and creativity across two continents. Multiple businesses, a thousand awards, and nearly three dozen design books to his credit, Supon’s come a long way since he emigrated from Thailand as a teen in the 70s.

At the age of 24, he launched Supon Design Group, and success followed. Supon sold that studio in 1999. After took a few years off, he founded Supon Creative Enterprise in 2005, where he works with select clients of graphic design and produces his own line of home products. From wall art and tableware to throw pillows, candles and clocks, they all carry that unique character that’s come to be known as Supon.

Graham Jackson, one of the artists of X

“My life is happening right now, and so is yours….THIS IS IT - not tomorrow, not 5 minutes from now, not 2 years from now. If you can consistently make the best of the moment that you are in RIGHT NOW, then you are on your way to being truly happy… stop PLANNING what you hope to do one day, start DOING what you want to do today.”

Graham Jackson is a graphic designer with a diverse background in fine art: photography, printmaking, digital printmaking and drawing. Graham has also helped to push the underground dance music scene in the DC area for the past decade.

Chris Bishop, Creative Director & Illustrator, PBS Kids

A painter, illustrator and creative director, he hails from Syracuse, NY, lives now in DC. He has served as a cartoon editor, cartoonist, and has been painting the series “pretty girls and robots” since 2001. Started working as the first web designer for pbskids.org in 2000, he is now the mastermind of everything in PBS Kids Interactive. He has been featured in many shows in and around DC.

He also shares his talent by making some supaa cute merchandise. Check out:  threadless, etsy, superfly labs

There is no doubt you all should be as excited as I am. See you all there!

Kickass Iphone Wallpapers

On just a regular mundane design day, Alisa and I had an idea to create some iphone wallpapers with our swanky logo and provide it for all you lovely followers of ours. We also got some submissions from friends, Eric Gushee did the cute “HappyDog” and Rob Coburn impressed us with his “Wallpaper LX”.

You can find all of them here.

Or just copy paste the ones you like:

Wallpaper LX

Vintage

Blues

Punk

Sunset

HappyDog

Encode

DCDB

CherryBlossom

DCDB

Interstate

Phuket

Bubbles

If any of you are interested to make some and add it to our pool, contact us and we will provide you an eps of our logo.

Mini Munny September Sketch Party

For our next event, DCDB will be hosting a Mini Munny Marker Sketching contest at Fly Lounge.

Here are some tips and tricks on preparing for ideas for your munny.

Mini Munny Stats:

Size: 4-inch
Weight: 4 ounces
Base color: white
Material: soft vInyl
Accessories: surprise
Artist: You!

One marker is included in the kit. But please bring your own for a variety of colors. There will be a limited number sharpie markers supplied at the event as well.

You may also bring accessories that you want your munny to have or wear or any material that you might want to apply/attach to make your mini munny look different.

Rules:

* Be at the venue by 6pm.

* Create a mini munny in 3 hours using any materials or markers. No Paint.

* Name your character. More info on mini munny info can be found here

Prizes:

Our guest jurors would be choosing two best munnys and the prizes will be awesome. And its a surprise for now.

Here is an example of an awesome munny that Shawn at EVStudios (prize winner from first event) has done

Munny by Shawn

That’s all for now.

-DCDB

DCDB Launch Party

photo credit: Jason Garber

Our launch party last night was a great success. We had about 120 people drop in. There were a variety of creatives in the room: interior designers, architects, museum designer, fine artists, photographers, ofcourse visual designers and web professionals leading the pack!

Lokesh Dhakar was there! the inventor of Lightbox, a javascript plugin that has made all designers thank him for creating such a simple and beautiful solution for displaying their portfolio as slideshows.

It was nice to see so many local companies that had come to look for talent. Off the top of my head, livingsocial.com, also one of our sponsors, are looking for web designers. RTCRM are looking for UE Designers. TCG are also hiring right now. If anyone is interested, please follow up with us and we can provide you with direct contacts.

We had goody bags, that too very pretty white bags, with yummy French macarons and No. 12 Balsamic vinegar bottles, courtesy of Mr and Mrs Norris.

We had DCDB buttons, and a bunch of AIM schwag.

There was a raffle drawing at the end of the night and Kunal Vijayakar, a DC area Architect, won our DIY Munny, and he’s going to be entering our Munny Painting party in September.

We have talked to our friends at FOWD and have got a little promo code which will give you 15% discount in their upcoming FOWD Conference in November.

Promo Code - FOWD/DCDESIGNBABES

See pictures here

Thats it for our coverage on our launch party , now be in the loop for more info on the September event.