Man the christmas shopping comes back every year doesn’t it. It’s hard to budget for everything around this time of year but …  hold on … you’re a creative kind of guy right? Why don’t you just design up a lovely christmas card and get it sent round to a thousand people this christmas, and whats more pocket a nice little christmas wad while you’re at it. Just think how happy Granny will be when she gets her Xbox with Modern Warfare 3 and an extra controller! *yoink*.

Runners up also receive Stack annual subscriptions – which we raved about here. Well worth picking up a pencil for.

Check out the competition here.

Quick! Brag about how great your festival season was/how edgy the first band you went to see was (mine was Wheatus, deal with it) on the Dr. Martens website and win gig tickets to the slightly wimpy British Sea Power, the more shouty Rolo Tomassi or the er… welsh… The Blackout. Sounds good eh. Then tweet all about it with #firstandforever as your hashtag to carry on bragging.

GO HERE TO ENTER BOYO.

A few days ago ShellsuitZombie (along with Paris-based Triangle Mag and italian blog FrizziFrizzi) was invited out by Vice Magazine to a beautiful city on the outskirts of Venice, Bassano, to visit the HQ of 55DSL, a streetwear company founded by the son of Renzo Rosso, the guy at the head of Diesel.

Andrea Rosso, unwilling to accept a job in his fathers company, chose to take his own path producing a line of clothing inspired by surf skate and snow and with emphasis on collaboration with exciting artists, designers and photographers. The company is now 16 years old and has stores in 22 countries around the world. Not bad eh.

Upon arrival we were immediately treated to traditional italian food (meatballs and lasagne ftw) before getting our hands on the SS2012 55DSL collection. A collection of their collaborations including Will Bryant and Gavin Watson continue the long line of artists and creatives 55DSL have worked with and supported during their time – not only a refreshing change to the nameless tees of rival brands but also a nod to the keen eye of Andrea, who (along with his design team) select each artist personally. After pocketing some clobber we had a chat about the brand before heading off to Bassano to stand on the bridge and sip a delicious local drink called Mezze mezze*.

After that we had a long and delicious dinner before a grappa to send us to bed. My hotel-mate, a lovely blogger from Triangle Mag in Paris, then stayed up until 4am writing articles for her ‘day job’. Not me, it had been a long day.

Check out our flickr photos here.

*definitely could have got that wrong.

Over the past year They’ve pimped people’s profile pics, created customised royal plates and even commandeered an ice cream van to deliver to people’s doorsteps. Now, to celebrate the end of year 1, Poke have helped Orange bring back a popular item from their feed, Secret Portraits.

People describe themselves in one comment – they can either use the #SecretPortrait hashtag, or they can submit their description via the Facebook page – A bunch of illustrators then bring these descriptions to life.

Check out past illustrations here, then get tweeting yeah?

Bit of an odd one this… but it’s great and the soundtrack is done entirely by our friends and favourite folksy band EVER, Keston Cobblers Club. The last episode has just come out on ‘the tube’ – worth checking them all out for some B-road Britain style antics.

Whoever said we weren’t rock and roll eh.

Finally (a week later than planned) we can announce what’s coming up at ShellsuitZombie’s stand for D&AD New Blood 2011. And what a lineup we have for you…

Friday 1st July: Digital Masterclass with Collective London

At 4pm come and find us in T3 to take part in our digital workshop with top 5 digital agency Collective London. Working on a real brief from one of their current clients, Innocent, you will be able to quiz both the creative director of Collective as well as bods from Innocent and sup on a delicious free smoothie while you bash out your ideas. The best of these will be rewarded with features on the innocent channels and a ‘career surgery’ with Collective, in which you will get a free meal and a bit of quality time with some of the best in the business working out how best to get you to that next step and giving you the contacts to do so. This is a seriously incredible prize and should not be missed.

Saturday 2nd July: Zine Workshop with Alex Zamora of @Feverzine

At 12pm The king of zines, Alex Zamora, is leading us in a workshop in which you will be able to concept, produce, print and bind a limited run of your very own zine. We’ve even got our hands on a photocopier for all your edgy montage needs. The best zines will feature on both ShellsuitZombie and Feverzine and you will get a bonus portfolio piece for that extra edge. Bring stuff along to put in it or just create on the day, it’s up to you. Ultimate self-expression!

Sunday 3rd July: SSZ Magazine issue 2 launch and SPECIAL CHALLENGE (with free beers)

On sunday afternoon (4ish) we will be informally celebrating the launch of the second issue of our magazine with a little party. Come and join us for music, a free ice-cold beer and to take part in our party games including musical chairs, sleeping lions and a secret challenge which could win you a shitload of prizes.

Monday 4th July: Advertising workshop with Brave

Fresh from last years incredible Cadbury’s brief, ad agency Brave are coming along to set another challenge for any budding creative teams and designers out there. Get your heads in gear, if it’s anything like last year you’ll be thinking seriously big.

Not only that…

But throughout we will be running our face-offs, pitching universities against each other to discover who really is the most creative. Last year it was Bolton and we have last years winning team amongst the judges for this years contest. Win the kudos your university deserves (as well as a healthy heap of prizes and a bit of publicity too). REPREZENT.

Drawing Wall

Finally we will also be running a drawing wall with 2010 New Blood exhibitors and illustration collective Hidden Dingbat. They will be documenting the goings on and inviting guests to contribute to our huge mural. Expect line, colour and a lot of pens…

Check out a short and shit video of what we got up to last year. Expect more of the same…

That’s all folks. See you there!

The Shakey Monkey Space app. Wow, we (and probably a lot of other people) have been saying for ages that someone should somehow take the piss out of this kind of work, and blow me down, the guys at Cog Design have only gone and done it.

This app lets you create a piece of work worthy of many a fffound page (and unfortunately many portfolios) with a wiggle of your hand, purely by shuffling together an assortment of animals, lines, space and sky images, shapes and underlined obliques. In fact there are so many that, with over 1 million combinations your work will probably be more original than the object of its derision. What makes it even better is that you can then export your masterpiece inside its very own mystery ‘poster-poser’ shot. So fashionable.

We asked creator John Burton about the app (and when I say ‘asked about the app’ we of course meant ‘invited to have a rant’). He said this:

‘We created the app because we were bored with people producing the same kind of trendy, monkey-floating-in-space, style-over-substance imagery. It all seemed so formulaic. We took a satirical approach from the start, poking as much fun at ourselves and tackling as many design clichés as we could – the animals and random geometric shapes floating in space, strikethrough and underlined block capitals in italics, the faceless-phantom presenter of all posters holding up your end result. The result is a bit of fun we want everyone to get
involved in.’

Well we’ve had a lot of fun with it (and it’s free). Download it and nip this vein of unoriginality right in the bud.

For this year’s red nose day Colchester graduate illustration duo Phil and Lauren (AKA The Hidden Dingbat collective) decided to help the cause by pictorally transcribing the entire televised evening onto one huge mural. That’s 7 hours of drawing all at once. The plan was to not only raise money during and after the event through their sponsorship page but also to flog the finished piece (complete with as many celeb signatures as possible) with all proceeds also going to the Comic Relief cause. It’s a lovely idea that has produced an even nicer bit of work (see above for a couple of close-ups) – but they now desperately need to get in touch with Olly Murs for the first signature. So where are you Olly? eh?

You can sponsor their red nose day campaign here.

Just listen. Press the buttons and stuff, it’s all there (or see the full tape player here).

Our Liverpool VS night was a huge success, resulting in (amongst other things) rude sketches, wall sitting, bloody noses, free t-shirts, posters, magazines and books, a lot of beer, even more chat and many new acquaintances both young and old(er). We hope to go back to Liverpool in the near future, but for now our sights are well set on London’s equivalent next Tuesday. So far the grads are up 76 points to 53, so industry had better buck their ideas up.

To check out more Liverpool photos head to our flickr page.

Yes, that’s blood. At our Liverpool VS event, Stockport student Ashley attached 35 clothes pegs to his face in order to win a copy of Vice magazine’s new book (reviewed below). We didn’t suggest he put them up his nose, and even a basic knowledge of challenges of this kind would have allowed him to attach them to folds of skin, but Ashley was having none of it.

We were very happy to thrust one of our two GIVEAWAY COPIES of this brilliant book into his bloody mitt, however we have one further unsoiled copy to give away at our London event. So without further ado, here’s the challenge. If a man, woman or child (not child, it’s over 18s) can match or better this total at our London VS on the 7th of December he or she will win the other copy. Blood optional, humiliation essential.

To see some of what we got up to click here…

It does exactly what it says on the tin. Pretty inspiring stuff.

It was made in 2004 and it’s in French, so it’s infinitely cooler than W+Ks Cravendale rip-off. A film about a horse, a Cowboy and an Indian being delivered ‘Le Relax’, a new chair, it’s being revisited as part of Future Shorts’ ONE festival which is kicking off in early November and involves events  in 50 cities across the world celebrating brave and innovative short film.

Here’s another Future Short, one of my favourites – the video for The Temper Trap’s ‘Love Lost’.

Well, Vimeo announced their winning shorts from their 2010 Video Awards (judged by an extraordinary array of cinematic names including David Lynch, Roman Coppola and… erm… M.I.A) and the winner was Last Minutes with ODEN. I’m not afraid to admit (having a similar hound myself, 16 and going strong) that I was fairly close to big slushy man-tears while watching, even if the dude is a mega-hipster.

Others commended included ‘Between Bears’ a favourite of mine and worthy winner of best animation (see below). See all winners here.