7:15 AM - Iphone alarm goes off.  I hit snooze…

7:27 - First read through of email, in bed, on my phone.

7:43 - Made it downstairs to the gym in my building.  Ran 2.6 miles and wailed on my shoulders, bi’s and tris.

8:49 - Fresh and Clean.  1st chat with Carsten regarding daily tasks and goals.

9:16 - Answerd most pressing emails while having breakfast at my desk.

9:24 - Left for Independents Hall to work for the day

9:50 - Settled in at IndyHall and snagged my first cup of coffee.  Spoke to Alex Hillman and David Spears about DreamIT and cool Philly momentum in the startup world.

11:09 - Answered 2 phone calls from headhunters regarding placing their people in a new job opening at LTLprints.

12:40 PM - Finished the first draft of the 1 pager proposal I’m writing for a meeting tomorrow with a local design firm.

1:32 - Snagged another cup of coffee not wanting to take lunch until my proposal is finished.

2:29 - Answered an inbound request for a custom quote.

2:58 - Almost done with the proposal.

3:12 - Sent the proposal to Gloria Bell for proof reading. She rocks at a ton of stuff, by the way.

3:22 - Snagged a slice of Pizza for lunch (negating the hard work on the treadmill this morning).

3:48 - Phone conversation with Carsten regarding production, my final proposal, the design competition, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Philly Startup Leaders Meetup, and updates on pleased customer feedback.

4:12 - Stopped to thank Gloria for her help and chatted up a some cool new peeps at IndyHall.

4:20 - Read through my twitter stream

4:29 - Setup an e-voting script for the upcoming design competition. It’s going to rock.

4:43 -  Worked with Dallas Shaw to get her designs into the catalog and entered into the design competition.

5:11 - Was invited to dinner at National Mechanics with Gloira Bell some of her friends.

5:39 - Ceaser Salad (due to the late lunch).

6:35 - Left to attend Philly Startup Leaders.  We wanted to be there early as Gloria volunteered to help with sign in.  Did I mention she rocks?

7:15 - Philly Startup Leaders starts cranking and I meet a ton of interesting people.

9:07 - I left a little ealry as I was pretty tired and I wanted to walk home. It’s unusually warm in Philly tonight.

10:15 - Day recap with Carsten and discussing key events for tomorrow.

10:49 - Checked email

11:43 - Wrote blog post while watching a rerun of the witty show The West Wing.

12:14 AM - Contemplated if this post sums up how much I enjoy what I’m doing.

Goodnight all.

Tags: Carsten Petzold, Gloria Bell, IndyHall, IPhone, Online Communities, Philly, Philly Startup Leaders, Startup, West Wing

Today, I received an email from Lynsie at Showclix. Showclix is search engine for local live music events. Any band or artist planning to give a concert can submit the event to the site for FREE. Anyone looking for a venue to attend can search for cool stuff in his neighborhood. Showclix also provides ticketing services. In short Showclix is a great platform for artists to promote their invents. Get some more detailed information here.

Lynsie, her cofounder Josh and I go way back to spreadshirt - where much of the marketing success was due to Josh’s and Lynsie’s hard work.

Lynsie posted these pictures of her installing the Showclix logo print they ordered last week from LTL on the shlog. Lynsie’s comment in an email to me really encouraged me: “I actually put it up by myself… that’s how easy it was!. Thanks agian. The print looks great on the wall :)”

So there you go community. If Lynsie can install the print - anyone can do it

Tags: Carsten Petzold, Events, Logo, Lynsie Camuso, Music Events, Showclix, Ticketing Service

This is an update for the participants to our design competition.

We’re putting together the page that is going to show off who you are and introduce your rocking designs to the rest of the community.  Here is an example of the image we’d like to put on the design competition page.

Please download the template for this file.  Once you’re finished updating your info please email a PNG export to images [at] LTLprints.com.  Feel free to reach out if you have any quesitons.  We’re here to help. 

When we launched LTLprints.com we made it a priority to cultivate a community of designers - they will help bring core content to our catalog and customers.  One of the ways we are starting to do that is visiting highly passionate students at local Philadelphia art schools.  Earlier today we visited the Art Institute of Philadelphia (only 2 blocks away from our headquarters) and spoke to a number of impressive up and coming rock stars regarding the launch of the first ever LTLprints design competition.

We invited them to join our design competition and we would like to extend the same offer to you. Over the next four weeks we will take submissions to our online catalog - along the way stopping to smell the roses and meet you, the designers, through an interview on this blog.

Here is how it works;

• Create your free LTLprints account
• Use those creative genes to come up with any design that would make for a great wall print
  (art work, pictures, collages, shillouettes, etc…).
• Upload a .jpg of your artwork and let us know that you would like it to be entered for the competition.

How to compete:

• Send you Vector or Photoshop file to designcompetition [@] LTLprints.com
• We want to meet you.  Send us a short bio and any links to your other online work.
• Submissions must be received by Monday, February 23.

Who is the Jury?

• The community, silly.   In a few weeks we will open up a voting system for submitted designs and you (and your friends, mom & dad, your coworkers, whomever you want) can come rate thumbs up on designs, the one with the most thumbs up wins.  Pretty simple, right?  Get your facebook groups ready!

What is in it for you?

• The winner(s) gets his or her designs printed for free!
  1st place: Free 7ft large  (84”x52”)
  2nd: 5ft (60”x38”)
  3rd: 3ft (38”x24”)
• Get exposure - we will try to feature every competing designer on this blog and we will do our duty to introduce you to our customers.  We pinky swear.
• Bulk the resume!  We realize that not everyone competing is a student, but if you are, this is a great event to point to in those future interviews.
• Oh, and don’t forget that you get to set your own design price associated with your work.  The design price is what a customer will pay you when they buy your print.  This is a value set by you, but most of our designers are pricing their work between $1 and $10.
• The joy of helping a hard working startup get off the ground.  That’s worth something right?  Kama points or something… We’re sure of it!
• A free beer at a Philadelphia pub of your choosing. Mmm. Beer.

When?

• Submit your items latest by February 22, 11:59pm EST
• Voting will end on March 8th.
• Winners will be notified on this blog.

Questions?

• We are here to help.  Leave any unanswered questions in the comment box below.
• Or just contact us.

We’re super excited to get things rolling.  We hope you are too!

UPDATE:  Download this bio template and introduce yourself to the crowd.

Tags: Adobe Photoshop, Art Institute of Philadelphia, competition, Design, Designer, Facebook

**Download the Layered Photoshop File Here - 43 megs**

A few weeks ago LTLprints.com received a request for a very cool print - a wanted poster.  We quickly went to work scouring for a high resolution wanted poster template for the customers 50th birthday party, but after some searching we were disappointed coming up empty handed.   We thought it was better to create a super high-resolution version of the template in case anyone wants a huge print again in the future.  So we did.

LTLprints.com is an open company.  We try very hard to be transparent about who we are, what we’re doing and why we are focused on certain projects.  In addition to our transparency one of the goals is to give back to the community.  We feel that a sharing community will generate more than the hording that is common place.  Based on search traffic, we can easily tell you that we’re not the only ones looking for a high-resolution wanted poster template to start from.  So, without further adu, here for the worlds consumption - a high resolution wanted poster template.

We only ask for a few things in return.

1. If you use this file please please let us know by leaving a comment on this post.
2. If you’ve made improvements to the base template send it to images [at] LTLprints.com so we can update this file for the group.
3. Consider using LTLprints for your oversized removable wall graphic needs.
4. Be nice to each other.  *** most important ***

We also hope that when you have something that you’ve invested some time into that others would enjoy that you share it openly and willingly.  We think it’s the right thing to do, how about you?  Leave us a comment to let us know what you think.

**Download the Layered Photoshop File Here - 43 megs**

Sincerely,

Kendall Schoenrock & Carsten Petzold
Founders, LTLprints.com

Tags: Adobe Photoshop, Carsten, Carsten Petzold, Graphic Design, Image resolution, Kendall Schoenrock, Larger than Life, LTL, LTLprints, Petzold, Photoshop, Poster, Template, Wanted, Wanted poster, Wanted Poster Template

Last week LTLprints offered a free print to the community.  (We will try to do this about once a month to stay tuned.)  It is with great pleasure to announce the winner of the first free print giveaway.  As suggested by Gloria Bell via twitter, “@phltwestival could use a free sign for our fundraising event. http://philadelphia.twestival.com” and we gleefully agreed.

So what is a Twestival and what is the phltwestival?  From their press release,

On Thursday, 12 February 2009, for 24 hours, cities around the world will be hosting “Twestivals”, volunteer-run, fundraising meet-ups for people who know each other through the micro-blogging service twitter.com, to bring Twitter communities together in the spirit of fun and for a good cause.

They are raising money for a cause that I am personally interested in; charity: water, a not-for-profit bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Anything that supports the Millennium Development Goals gets a thumbs up from us!

The phltwestival will take place at the Get Happy Pub, 509-511 South 2nd Street and we hope to see you there.  Big kudos to Melissa Thiessen and Gloria Bell who are co-founders of the Philadelphia event.  LTLprints is proud to be apart of such a great event and we are pleased to provided our services to such an honorable example of communities uniting to server the greater good.

To find out more about Twestival and to see the full list of cities participating, go to the official event website at www.twestival.com or follow @twestival on Twitter.

As always, feedback is welcome.  What do you think about twestival and / or our decision to support this project?

Tags: Drinking water, Gloria Bell, Melissa Thiessen, Micro-blogging, Millennium Development Goals, Philadelphia, Twestival, twitter