Larger Than Life prints was  contacted by Ronald McDonald House Charities in Tampa Bay, Florida.  They were planning their annual Spring gala, the Storybook Ball, and were looking for something new and different to include in their decor.   They had discovered our “Wanted poster” template and decided it was a perfect vehicle to help spread their message.  When they sent us the details for the posters, we have to admit to getting misty eyes.  Printing a poster for a little boy who “wants” a new heart is a little heartbreaking.  But every cloud does have a silver lining!  We were being given an opportunity to be a part of a magical night that raises money to help sick children and their families.

“Ronald McDonald House Charities® of Tampa Bay provides comfort and care to children and their families by supporting local Ronald McDonald Houses®, its cornerstone program, and by making grants to other local not-for-profit organizations that help children in need. The Ronald McDonald House® of Tampa Bay provides a home-away-from-home for families of pediatric patients in area hospitals.”   The Storybook Ball is one of their major fundraisers and we had been asked to provide posters that would help with those fundraising efforts.

Alison Barrick of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Tampa Bay had this to say about Larger Than Life prints, the Wanted posters and the Storybook Ball

“The Wanted Posters that LTL Prints provided for our Storybook Ball, Lasso the Moon, were a huge hit in our silent auction room. Our event decorator was extremely impressed with the quality and look, and all of the guests raved about how perfect they were for our event. We plan to keep them for years to come! Thank you LTL Prints for providing us with such an outstanding product at an unbelievable price.”

It always feels good to have satisfied customers but knowing that we     contributed to this very worthwhile charity having a successful              fundraising event is an awe inspiring experience.  It does feel so good to help DO good!

(This post brought to you by Gloria Bell on behalf of Larger Than Life prints.  Questions can be directed to gloria@ltlprints.com)

Tags: "Ronald McDonald House", charity, Customers, Larger than Life, Larger Than Life Prints, LTL, LTLprints, LTLprints.com

As a part of the vibrant, ever growing, every changing Philly start-up community, Larger Than Life Prints is thrilled to be a sponsor of the Independents Hall / Mashable Mixer on May 1st!  We will be a part of some historic celebrating as Mashable brings their famous “Mashable Mixer” to Philadelphia for the first time and IndyHall celebrates the opening of their bigger and better new offices at 20 North 3rd Street.  

Here is a sneak peek of the sponsor wall.

So come on out and join us and the other sponsors as we help Mashable and IndyHall celebrate!

To make it easy, we are providing you the When, Where, How directly from IndyHall.

When, where, how?

Date: Friday, May 1st, 2009

Time: 8:00 pm Till Close (that’s 2:00 am for the out-of towners, or the non-party-goers)

Location: Cavanaugh’s River Deck, 417 N Columbus Blvd, Philadelphia, PA 19123 (map)

Tickets: Open Admission, 21+ Only Please, but please register yourself on one of our Socialize Pages, so we know you’re coming

Socialize: Facebook , Meetup , Upcoming

Tags: Events, sponsorships

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

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

Welcome to the community Kev Holt!

A couple of weeks ago by chance I ran into a very nice guy named Kevin von Holt. At first we chatted about Germany – since Kev’s last name reveals his German (and aristocratic) ancestry. Well, my old prejudice of German aristocrats being very stiff and boring had to be thrown over board right away. Kevin is actually a great creative mind being everything else but stiff. When the music fever grabs him he writes his own songs. Over the years Kev wrote texts and music for more than hundred songs. But just writing songs is certainly not enough. Kev actually brings his own songs to life with his band ‘The Hotspots’. I went to the North Star the other day and saw them performing live. Kevin rocked the house being the lead singer, Scott on the drums gave an awesome performance and Launi playing base was rock solid. (Awesome job guys!). Get a sound bite here and check the band’s profile. I told Kev that many of his photos rocking the house would make for awesome cutouts and Larger Than Life Prints.

So we started talking about LTLprints some more and as it turns out Kev’s second creative passion is painting. We figured out a way to digitize his hand painted wall structures and abstract paintings. Now you can get exclusive art from Kev as a self-adhesive re-print from LTLprints. At $75 a very affordable option for exclusive wall decoration! Thanks Kev for being part of the LTLprints community - and again Welcome! The whole team is looking forward to put more of your awesome art into our catalog!

Here is one example of Kev’s great Art: Click here to see all of his items in the catalog

Tags: Art, Carsten Petzold, Decor, Kev, Kevin, Kevin von Holt, LTLprints, Music, North Star, Philadelphia, Pictures, The Hotspots, Wall Art

Yesterday, I accomplished something that I wasn’t sure I’d ever do.  And to be honest, I’m not so sure I want to do it again.  I completed the Philadelphia Marathon with thousands of others, and boy, am I ever sore.

I decided to do the marathon without really training for it.  I haven’t missed a day of running in 6 and 1/2 years, so I figured I wouldn’t be too bad.  I went for one or two longer runs (16 miles, 18 miles) and then just ran my normal mileage before the race.  I went to bed at a decent hour on Saturday night, and crossed my fingers at the start line.  I must admit, I was impressed with the support of Philadelphia.  As we ran down Columbus Avenue, and up to Drexel University, the fan support was pretty positive.  Lots of people were standing on the sidewalk high-fiving us as we went by, and cheering loudly from their steps.  I saw a young woman somewhere in Center City holding a sign that said, “I love your stamina - Call me at 215 - 555 - 5555″ (unfortunately I didn’t write it down guys:)  My favorite comment, however, came around mile 8 as we trudged up a hill somewhere in Fairmount Park.  A race official, who was standing on the side near one of the mile markers cheering us on, yelled this;

“Smile people.  You signed up for this!”

Every single person who was within earshot laughed.  It was the comic relief we needed to get up the rest of the hill, and he was right.  Thousands of us had signed up to run 26.2 miles and put our bodies through the torture of a run like that.  We might as well enjoy it, right?

Around mile 16, I started to question my decision to run the marathon.  My legs were numb, I couldn’t feel my feet, and when I went to say thank you to a woman who handed me a cup of water as I jogged by, I realized my face was too numb and I couldn’t even get the words out.  What made it worse was the cup was full of ice - the weather was so miserably cold that the water was freezing before they could get it to the runners.  The ground near the water stations was a slick sheet of ice from knocked over cups and spilled water.  As I trekked through Manayunk (which I must say was the most populated and supportive of all the areas, especially right in front of Kildaires) and back down Kelly Drive, I started to REALLY question why I had done the race.  I ran with people of all ages, shapes, and sizes, and I was impressed with their stamina and perserverence.  I finished the race in pain and not being able to feel any part of my body due to the cold, but I am glad I did it.

The rest of the day I treated myself to lots of pizza, pasta, and ice cream.  I think that made the race worth it in itself:) I’m walking around like I’m 4X my age, in lots of pain and everything aches, and I wonder how long this will last.   Yet today,  I signed up for the Philly Olympic Triathalon next June.  What am I thinking?

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For Philadelphia sports fans, there aren’t many times when you’ll hear the above statement, but for right now, Philly is on cloud nine:) What a month it has been for this city! Philadelphia has cheered the Phils along to a World Series championship, the Eagles have won three straight, and our country has elected the FIRST african american president. October/November have been busy!

Wanted to share a few quick videos with you that have been passed along via email this week. First, a group of extremely talented students who express the importance of voting (if i ever have kids I’m sending them here!), and the second is a phenomenal catch by Ryan Howard during the Phillies parade (check out the video footage of that parade on our blog!

Possibly the coolest part of this month though has been the launch of www.LTLprints.com. It’s both exciting and a relief! It’s great to see the launch and all of the team’s long hours paying off - but it just means that things will get busier! I can’t wait to see our 6-color large format printing churning orders like crazy. Exciting!

Quite a picture above, eh? That awesome picture can be credited to the talented Mr. Matthew Gutberlet, a very close friend of mine and someone who is ridiculously good at everything he does - even photography! Matt grabbed that shot at the Phillies parade last Friday.

Before I sign off, just a reminder that the CMA Awards (COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS) are this Tuesday night. Everyone should definitely sit down to watch my boyfriend, the talented Kenny Chesney, in all his glory. I’d trade the World Series for him:)

Tags: Carsten Petzold, CMA Awards, Election, Kenny Chesney, LTLprints, LTLprints.com, Philadelphia Eagles, Philadelphia Phillies, Phillies Parade, Ryan Howard, Trisha Noel

Hello World!

As you will have seen coming to www.LTLprints.com - we just released our new site. You can imagine that Kendall, Trisha and I are REALLY happy that after months of work we finally see our baby flourish. In particular we are happy because the innovative cutout tool (a tool to remove backgrounds)

At moments like this it is time to celebrate and to extend special thanks to our hard working developers. So big thanks to Najam, Jose, Scott, Eric and Diego in getting this baby put together.

We put a Beta next to our logo to indicate that though the site is mainly functional you might experience some little bugs here and there. Also, some of the functionality we want to provide hasn’t been released yet - mainly the catalog, so please stay tuned and check back.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: We’d like to hear from you. What do you think about the application? Is it intuitive to use? What functionality would you like to see on LTLprints to make your life easier? What is missing, what needs changed? In order to engange with you and get your honest feedback we created the LTLprints’ Feedback Forum. Very conveniently you’ll see the ‘Feedback’ button floating on the right when surfing on www.LTLprints.com. Just click it and you can submit a new idea or vote an existing idea up.

Tags: Beta, Carsten Petzold, Feedback, Forum, Integrated development environment, Kendall Schoenrock, LTLprints, Release, Software release life cycle

Saturday night was the much awaited Halloween Party at my place, and I must say it was a success. We had loads of people coming through dressed as draculas, tv characters, political candidates, mimes, and much more. The costumes were clever and creative and the drinks were plentiful. My roommates and I had spent a long time decorating, so cobwebs and orange lights draped over bookshelves and hanging spiders (which scared me all night long) dropped from the ceiling. Of course we also had LTLprints of jack-o-lanterns, candy corn, and bats over all the walls and they were quite a hit. People pulled them off the wall all night, played with the material, and would restick them without trouble. I loved watching the look of amazement as people realized how durable and easy to use the material was. They were definitely the hit decoration of the party!

Prior to the party, I came up with an idea for a practical joke. My roommates (Dan and Dave) and I are always joking and kidding around. So, I decided to utilize LTLprints to help out with a little joke. At the final Harry Potter book release awhile back, Dan, Dave, and a few other friends decided to dress up as the Harry Potter characters and head to Borders to purchase their copies. Many pictures were taken that night, but have since been hidden for no one else to see. It took almost 5 months of begging for them to overcome their embarrassment and show me the pictures of that night. Being the nice roomate I am:), I decided to have “larger than life” prints made of Dan and Dave’s Harry Potter debut. I brought the pictures in and Kendall (President of LTLprints) worked his photoshop magic to produce detailed cutouts. I couldn’t wait.

Around 11:30 p.m. in the midst of the party, we unveiled the photos. We put them everywhere in the house - the kitchen, the living room, the hallways, all plastered with the image of Dan with a lightning bolt on his forehead and Dave in his Severus Snape outfit. When the guys came up the stairs and saw the prints, their reaction was PRICELESS. Dave immediately tackled me to the couch and Dan’s jaw dropped. Luckily, they thought the joke was hysterical and we laughed about it all night. I must admit I thought there was a chance I’d get kicked out of the house. Phew!

One of the girls at the party actually saw the LTLprints and mentioned it would be a great idea for parties, to have the LTLprints created for the guest of honor. That way, if people wanted to sign it, write messages, etc, they could easily do so and the print would transport home with no trouble. Yet another solid idea for LTLprints!

So, if you need a good practical joke or a good laugh - LTLprints is here for you:)

This past weekend I had the opportunity to participate in a great event - the 2008 Parkway Run/Walk for children’s cancer research. Despite the light rain that drizzled down the entire morning, over 1200 people still filled the Parkway with their running shoes and rain attire, and even more did the 2K walk. I participate in a lot of charity 5Ks, triathalons, and road races, but this was the first time I had run in this specific race. A big thank you and a job well done goes out to the race planners and the Four Seasons for the volunteers and delicious breakfast following the race. It’s great to see Philadelphia come together for such a great cause!

After the race on Sunday I ran into some old colleagues and co-workers of mine who I haven’t seen since I joined LTLprints.com. We huddled under umbrellas and canopies to catch up and chat between bites of scrambled eggs and bananas (thanks again, Four Seasons!) As I described what I was doing, one of the gentleman I was talking to asked a question that I get a lot when I am talking about wall graphics and our product;

“What do you use them for? Who buys them?”

This might be my favorite question to answer. The possibilities of this product are endless. I turned to my colleague and started my speel. If you’re a parent or an aunt or uncle, it’s a great idea to take a picture of your child doing their favorite activity (playing sports, an instrument, drawing, or just smiling at the camera) and have a print made for their bedroom (great gift idea!.) You can edit the picture to add other people in, such as a celebrity, athlete, or a relative that lives far away. If you’re a creative person, you can submit a design or graphic as a great solution for decorating; it’s removable and reusable without leaving any mark or residue on the wall. Plus, it adds a personal touch that you can’t get in a home store. Businesses can use LTLprints for company publicity too -they travel so easily and are a great answer for trade shows or expos. When you need to bring a poster or billboard of some kind but don’t want to deal with the hassle of tearing or ripping the paper in transit, take LTLprints instead!

I found myself going on and on at the race, talking about some of the prints we did for other companies at IgnitePhilly and IndyHall. Before I knew it I was chatting to a group of about 5 or 6 people who had crowded around me to catch what I was talking about. I answered questions about the service, described how durable the material is (it can even go through the washer!) and laughed about some new ideas people were shouting out (the Kelly Kalpalski - Saved By the Bell cut-out idea came up quite a few times.)

As a friend of mine and I walked home after the race, he was teasing me for being a walking, talking advertisement for LTLprints. I defended myself by saying that as the director of PR, it IS my job after all:) But it’s also easy to talk about, because LTLprints is a great product that really is going to change the way people decorate. What other product allows people to add a personal touch to anything they put on their walls? I invite anyone to leave a comment with a creative idea of how to utilize LTLprints.com - it’s fun to see what people come up with!

Tags: 2008 Parkway Run/Walk, 5K, Cancer Research, Carsten Petzold, Gift Ideas, Ignite Philly, IndyHall, Kendall Schoenrock, Larger than Life, LTL, LTLprints, LTLprints.com, LTLprints.net, Philadelphia, Trisha Noel