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COOL KIDS T-Shirt Design Contest - Win $10,000!

COOl KIDS, COOL CASH T-Shirt Design Contest

Karmaloop.com and The Cool Kids have teamed up to deliver our biggest contest ever– the $10,000 COOL KIDS COOL CASH T-shirt Design Contest!

We’re looking to find the illest t-shirt design that exemplifies the style, creativity, originality, and straight up dopeness of the Cool Kids!

The Grand Prize winner will take home a never-heard-before $10,000!!! No that’s not a typo with an extra zero– we mean TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!!! $5,000 will be in cool hard cash and the other $5,000 will be in gift codes to use on Karmaloop.com, to fully lace yourself with a whole new wardrobe!

Do you know how many ill outfits you can piece together with $5 GRAND!? A LOT!  Not to mention with that $5,000 in cash you could start your own business, buy a car, cop 5,000 small fries off the dollar menu – whatever your heart desires!!! All you have to do is create an insanely good and original design and then rack up as many votes on the site as you can.

The top 10 vote getter's designs will be presented to Mikey Rocks and Chuck Inglish of The Cool Kids, and they will pick which design is the winner.  The winner will then take home the $10,000, have their design made into t-shirts AND their design will be instantly internet famous because it will be sold on Karmaloop.com!  Don’t hesitate for another second – get out there and get on the grind! Good luck!!!

All contestants must adhere strictly to the submission instructions or their design will be disqualified and removed from the site!

Submit your designs here.

Check Out Depthcore.com

If you are a fan of homemade digital art and music, check out depthCORE.com. DepthCORE brings together the abstract art feeling of deviantART and the creativity of member created music. And they often have collaboration pieces between artists to create completely new style art. Best of all, these are all free to download off the website for your own personal enjoyment.

Exclusive collabo alert!

Only on Karmaloop.com is the exclusive collaboration between Kam Tang of Big Active Creative Services and Downtown Records to produce a limited run of Kam's art made exclusively for the Grammy-winning Gnarls Barkley album Smiley,  & St. Elsewhere single. The colorful, twisted graphics are inspired by vintage psychedelia and printed on 100% black cotton T-shirts. Check out the Karmawares page for these and other styles that Gnarls Barkley is feeling right now including Manifest, Tank Theory and Freshjive.  While you're there, scoop the special promo code, our gift to you for being on top of your styling game.

Keeping the kicks crisp

Sneakerheads: rejoice. There's a sneaker customizer and collector out in Connecticut who has found a way to stop the inevitable doom of your Air Force Ones:  the toe crease. Mysteriously named "Chef" of gourmetkickz.com, this connoisseur has a patent pending on the geniusly simple DeCreaseR mechanism. Essentially, it's a bridge for the underside of the toebox that allows the sneakers to transfer their bend at certain anchor points. The front of the toe box then stays fresh and smooth, and from the Chef's ingenuity, the toes stay mostly out of contact with the device. Coming from a math and science background and stepping into the sneaker game as a hobby, the Chef utilized his mechanical abilities and created a prototype made from a protein powder canister. The instructions are actually still listed up for free as a sort of gift back to the sneaker community of which the Chef has extracted so much pleasure.

Judging from the demo pix on his sites, if the Chef's cooking is as crispy as his sneakers, he'll hopefully be making bacon with the product everyone's going to want as soon as it's out. In the meantime, check out http://thedecreaser.com for product news and sample packs.

The Graffiti Project: Sao Paolo Crew & a Scottish Castle!

Street art is living up to its ubiquitous name and taking it to new heights, namely, up 14m of the Kelburn Castle in Scotland. As if a graffed-up Scottish castle wasn't cool enough, the art itself is being headed up by the world-recognized  Brazilian Sao Paolo Crew of street-artists Os Gemeos, Nina Pandolfo and Nunca. The project begins May 12 and will unfold over 30 days where you can watch the process @ http://www.thegraffitiproject.net/home.

 

Turns out, a family actually lives in the castle, and the project head, David Boyle, is a direct descendant of the first Earl of Glasgow. Of the project, David's dad--Lord Glasgow--is pretty pumped, waiting with "excitement and trepidation" to see the result of this magnificent culture-bending, time-transcending art collaboration. Word, dude Sir.

SMAAck Benefit w/ Karmaloop @ the Otherside Cafe May 3rd!

  If there are two things this city isn't short on, it is musicians and hipsters. On May 3rd, the two will come together at the Otherside Cafe for a cause higher than a PBR fix. SMAA,  Student Musicians Against Aids, is a group of Berklee students who are raising awareness for the growing AIDs epidemic by using their talents and musical strength to raise money for the cause. This time, the show will include a fashion show including yours truly, Limited Apparel Boston and Bias Designs and will feature tons of local artistic talent and our friends at LAB spinning the decks. There are a limited number of $20 student tickets and others @ $25 available @ Karmaloop on Newbury, the Otherside Cafe or Limited Apparel and the money is going straight to Lifelovers, an AIDs education group in Ghana, and the ABC Orphanage, an AIDs shelter in Swaziland. It will also get you appetizers, two drinks, and the company of the compassionate, talented weirdoes you normally try to avoid.

For more info, check out: www.myspace.com/berkeesmaa.

"A Better Tomorrow" Contest Voting!

Play Imaginative, the design powerhouse and parent of the Trexi Toy, linked up with the Coca-Cola brand to host “A Better Tomorrow: Design Contest” a few months back. Press releases and announcements calling all designers to summit their work flooded the internet as well as several publications including PlayTimes, Play Imaginative’s own in-house monthly magazine focusing on concept toys and design. And alias the submissions are in and are open for viewing and accepting public votes. The winner receives the support of Coke and Play Imaginative in the production of their own toy.

Check out the submissions you will undeniably witness some great talent. Here is a little briefing on the design contest to help you vote accordingly. The designers got to choose from an array of different characters as their canvas such as Tokidoki, Colorblok, Cupco and Mad Barbarians. The concept was “happiness in a bottle” through self expression.

Voting instructions are simple and you also qualify to win prizes as a voter. Please visit the site for more info on voter prizes: http://www.trexi.com.sg/int/poll.php

Voting ends

February 26, 2007

so get on it!

Big Active!!!

What you know about Big Active? I will lay it out briefly and then fuel your fix. Big Active is a design firm out of the UK specifying in music, brand identity and creative managing. One of their most recent projects includes the cover for Beck’s new Inspiration album. For those of you who do not own the CD, the brilliance behind the design (besides the uber minimal yet vivid cover) lays in the inclusion of two sheets of magnificently adhesive art to adorn the cover DIY steez. Big Active commissioned over 25 talented artists to lend there skills in designing various trippy, geometric and inspirational stickers for this album, a true bonus for already establish fans as well as a fancy for the simply design oriented.

Check out their bank of esoteric photography, including the works of Rachel Thomas for Gold Frapp. Also revisit Basement Jazz’s 2001 Rooty album cover, bet you didn’t know Big Active was in the house.

Besides working on album covers, Big Active has established themselves as a clandestine force behind the brand id of several musical projects such as Michael Jackson’s Number Ones DVD ad campaign. And for the pure thrill of aesthetic pleasure visit their site and ferret through their projects, a journey of inspiration.

Lunar (Croatian Graffiti Artist),"Beastz and Bugz" @ Invisible NYC

LUNAR BEASTZ AND BUGZ

Invisible NYC is proud to host a solo-exhibit by Croatian artist, Lunar. His art is fueled by his own graffiti as well as the graffiti of others, such as CMP and Mode2. Lunar's graffiti work has been immortalized in publications such as Nicholas Ganz's "Street Art: Graffiti From Five Continents"

Lunar is responsible for co-founding Croatia's first graffiti crew, YCP, in 1992. He has since been commissioned by numerous city councilors across Croatia to add his unique, illustrative style of graffiti on community walls through out his country; and is one of the head creative forces who turned blank and barren walls specifically throughout his home of Zagreb, Croatia into renewed and vibrant, works of public art. One cannot go even a few blocks in Zagreb without coming across Lunar's art either on a small scale, as! in his 2-dimansional dogs placed in the grass of neighborhood parks, or his large wall murals on the sides buildings. Lunar has also created work for major advertising companies such as Coca-Cola, Nissan, and Sony Playstation. His work tends to be optimistic and technically flawless in execution.

For his first exhibit in the U.S., Lunar will recreate on large canvases his inquisitive and odd-shaped animal and bug inspired creatures that have become his signature icon throughout the streets of Zagreb. The "beastz" are rendered in an organic red, black and white. By direct contrast, the "bugz" are solely in black and white. The deliberate use of a limited color palette coupled with a lively, electrifying background allows the characters to boldly address the viewer and present their individual personalities. This simplicity provides for an uplifting and dynamic exhibit of happy ..beastz and bugz.. frolicking on and redefining what are usually blank, white gallery wal! ls. However, while the subject matter is light-hearted and al! most chi ld-like, the subtle details and unyielding execution, using only three colors (or non-colors), are testament to the larger social context of what's acceptable public art vs. graffiti (what some believe to be vandalism) in both Croatia and around the world.

The exhibit will run from November 16th - December 16th, Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 8:00 PM. The opening reception will be on Thursday, November 16th from 7:00-9:00 PM with special Deejay, Sergio Vega.

Invisible NYC 148 Orchard Street NYC 10002
212.228.1358
www.troydenningtattoo.com

Fall Art Season Begins in NYC

There's a fabulous article up at Crown Dozen right now about the fall season of the New York art scene going into full effect. A number of artists are featured with blurbs about each exhibitor. Chelesa is full of energy right now and within a radius of about ten blocks there are so many good shows it's hard to see them all. Crown Dozen gives love to one of my personal favorites, Barnaby Furnas, who was just featured in the most recent issue of Beautiful/Decay magazine. An exhibit called "Super Heroes" at the Jewish Museum also caught my attention. According to Crown Dozen, "Super Heroes" features original Jack Kirby drawing boards, Robert Crumb's sketchbooks, as well as Chris Ware originals, amongst a slew of other artists. If you're in the NYC area, be sure to stop by Chelsea and get a first hand look at what everyone is talking about.

The full article can be found here, at Crown Dozen.