The Old School Hiphop special we organized in cooperation with Bassomedia is now officially over and we’ve got the winner selected. Many of you probably know the winner even without officially announcing it. It’s a design that has been praised a whole lot and it also happens to be my personal favourite. Yup, it’s “Bronx River Block Party.” A huge print and I’m not only talking about the actual size here. Full 8 colors and they’ve really been put into use!

100 of these shirts will be delivered straight to the Basso crew which means we’ll only have 400 to sell instead of the usual amount. Since we’re in a hurry to get the interview of Short published in the Basso magazine and we want to present the printed shirt with it you can expect the final product to hit the store pretty soon.

Since surprises are something we just love here at laFraise prepare yourselves for one. It will be announced on Friday. ;)

We’re currently working on a new special competition and I thought I’d let you know about in advance. “Duo Special” is going to be launched pretty soon and it’s inspired by designs on laFraise that have been made in cooperation by two or more of our designer members. It’s pretty funky to see totally different styles working hand in hand to form something quite unique. We also like the social part of all this; to win the competition the designers have to be in contact with each other.

So, if there’s a specific designer you’d like to work in cooperation with on this my suggestion is to contact him or her now. It would be great to see some “unlikely couples” teaming up for this.

An official entry about the competition is coming up when the rules, the schedule and other stuff like that have been decided.

In a way this is going to be an educational entry so if you’re not into those stop reading immediately.

I’ve blogged about a nasty habbit of mine for a few times now – smoking, that is. Around half a year ago I gave up smoking and it wasn’t really even that hard. The first 2 weeks of not smoking took some will power but after that it was pretty smooth sailing and after a while I didn’t really even miss my dear cigarettes much. I don’t really quite know what happened though because I’m smoking again. There’s no good reason for that. There never was a good reason to start smoking in the first place.

Most people start smoking when they’re in their teens. I’m one of those rare retards that started way later than that. I think I was 22 when I did that which means I’ve been smoking for roughly 7 years now. Yup, my lungs have been dealing with poisonous fumes for that long and it’s no wonder it’s starting to have an effect on me. I get sick really easily these days. If there’s a flu going around I’m pretty much destined to get it. I know it and still I keep on smoking.

When I’m going to a business meeting I have to think carefully about my smoking. With the current athmosphere towards smoking I’ll look like a dumbass (fair enough because that’s what I am) if I appear in a meeting smelling like a carcass. So, planning ahead is the way to go. “If I smoke a couple 30 minutes before a meeting I should be fine.” It’s totally silly. I know it and still keep on smoking.

Last week our photographer Lutz sent me a message on Skype and it was something along these lines: “I heard you’re back on the nicotine. Sorry to hear that.” That made me think about my smoking again and yesterday I checked out the warning labels on my cigarette packs. There was something missing. They simply didn’t either scare me enough or make me feel stupid enough so I decided to make some of my own.

Some of them are featured below

…and you can download the whole set as a PDF from here. Happy smoking.

Crop circles are still under a lot of debate; are they a proof of other intelligent lifeforms visiting our planet, something that a group of active pranksters keep on doing or…? Well, in case it's alien work this time they've encountered a lifeform on their way. On bulb's ”Crop Circles” a sheep got a special treatment. Don't quite know if the aliens that did that are the ”we come in peace”- or the ”prepare for annihilation”-type.

"Crop Circles" in our store

Valentine’s Day is just a couple of weeks away (I’m going to be spending it in Berlin and Guillaume already declared me a bastard for doing that to my girl. I honestly totally forgot – any ideas how to make that up are most welcomed) so it’s probably just about time to announce our Valentine’s Special winners. This year we’ve got a pretty fair stack of them and there should be something for everyone.

Feast your eyes on these!

"Notre Jardin" by Vince*

"Saint-Valentin" by Flowy

"L'amour sauvage" by Lulu

"Game Lover" by Jamboncoquillette

Last week we announced quite a few winners and that’s always a fun thing to do. Expect quite a few more this week. We’ve got a couple of surprises waiting for you. ;)

Making the Friday game this week got me thinking. We’ve had quite a few animal related games now. So, I didn’t want to make another one. We’ve had simple quizzes. So, doing one of those didn’t appeal to me. You’ve had to recognize people and places from small images. We’ll probably do one of those again in a while but today? Nah. Recognizing tunes from short audio clips? Well, fun but done.

Then the idea started to form in my idea. What if I combined some of the games we’ve had to a new one? Yup, that’s what I did and today’s game is…

Here’s a folder that contains 10 short audio clips. Your task is to recognize the movies. Some are pretty obvious, some are not but in the end it’s also possible to google these babies. It just takes a little more time and effort. You’ve got until 9pm (GMT) to complete the game but I don’t really think it’s going to take that long. The fastest user to recognize all 10 of them gets enough brouzoufs for a free t-shirt from our selection (shipping included).

PS. For some reason Winamp didn’t play all of these through without problems. Most of the softwares I tried did that though. So, in case you’re having problems use another audio player.

Hi guys,

I'm working on the friday game at the moment and having a bit of trouble with an audio file related to it. Some of the clips are currently playing at double speed and I need to fix that somehow. To give everyone an equal change to win the game it won't start as soon as I'm done with the file but in an hour. It shouldn't take very long to complete so you better be here when I publish it. ;)

World is a weird place – that is more and more clear to me every day. Yesterday I bumbed into a The Sun article about criminals using dwarves (or ”little people” - I suppose that more politically correct term) as their sidekicks for stealing items like wallets, laptops and cellphones from the luggage compartments of long-distance coaches. Yup, that's right. They're stuffing the little fellas into bags just like regular luggage and when the coach is on it's way to it's destination the bag open, a dwarf comes out and goes through other passengers belongings.

While this is obviously serious business (coach companies are already thinking about installing cameras to monitor the luggage compartments) it mostly strikes me as funny and odd. The things I do for a living seem bizarre every now and then but this is definitely way more bizarre than anything I've ever done in my life. Even if they've stolen thousands of pounds worth of property in a matter of a few months it still seems like peanuts to me. Surely there must be an easier way to make a living?

”Recycling and ecologic way of thinking? What's that crap?” This seems to be a pretty popular way of thinking these days. A lot of people don't really give a rat if the planet is still here for the generations that will be populating it when we're gone as long as they can drive in their flashy SUVs (have you noticed how much I love these? This is probably the fifth time that I mention them on the blog) to the nearest mall to buy loads of stuff they never needed in the first place. Wrapping our egos in a warm blanket of useless shit seems to be the way this generation deals with issues that should be solved otherwise.

This is what Ted Boundy makes a comment on with his newest printed design ”EGOlogique.” Unfortunately it's really mostly for the French audience but the text below the twisted recycling symbol makes a note about eating pandas and other stuff like that. The ”me-me-me-me-me-me and no one else”-attitude drives me crazy and I just might make a rant post about that.

So, what's that we're trying to say with the fake teeth on the model? Dunno. I suppose the message is "egocentrism is ugly."

"EGOlogique" in our store

It's quite natural that the prize we're handing out for the winners is a great motivational factor. In fact I can almost hear some of our designers doing the Jerry Maguire “show me the money”-scene with a little dance every once in a while and I'm happy to report that the winners of the Celio special competition (which was on the French site) got 20,000 euros in total. 8 winners, 8 beautiful designs to be printed and sold in Celio stores all over France, 2500 euros (which is around 3,600$, dear american reader) prize money / design and a bunch of happy faces. That's pretty fat if you ask me!

Celio and we here at laFraise are really content with the amount and the quality of submissions for the competition. Specials like this are a load of fun to organize; it's always a pleasure when we have a possibility to work in cooperation with a fantastic company like Celio and our designer members share these same warm feelings with us. So, definitely more of this is on it's way.

Here are the 8 Celio winners:

"Celio Beach" by LoveOz

"CELIOvintagebeach*" by SMD

"Urban Climbers" by Gargazell

"Celio Passenger" by Charaspower

"Celio Stadium" by Okbelzoreil

"80's Vintage Spirit" by Noise'ART

"Be naked or be Celio" by Sull1van

"Heavy Trend" by Kinautta