Dear Internet Friends,

It is with great pleasure that we are here to announce the winners of the first ever Larger Than Life prints design competition.  Before we jump into it, everyone at LTLprints wants to sincerely thank each and every one of the designers for their submissions.  We are humbled by your creativity and vision.  Thank you!

During the past few weeks we got thousands of visitors and over 2,000 votes.  The leader changed multiple times and resources like multiple facebook fan pages were useful in helping some artists gain more exposure.  As internet junkies we love to see facebook pages (shameless plug - have you joined ours yet?)

Third place goes to Paul Hamilton with his ‘Lambo’ design. Paul wins a 3ft  (38”x24”) custom print.

Second place goes to Brett Mogavero with his Octopus design.  A 5ft print goes to you!

.

First place goes to Alisa with her ‘Anchor’ design!  She receives an LTL - Larger Than Life print of her choice!  FTW!!!

We really appreciate all the submissions, voting and support. We got so much
posititve feedback that we’ll repeat pretty soon.

Stay tuned for interviews with the 3 winners why the came up with the design
and what they’ll do with their prints. Also check back to see real pics of
the winners with their images.

Congrats and thanks to all of the participants!  You guys rock!

Sincerely,

Carsten Petzold & Kendall Schoenrock
Founders, LTLprints.com - Larger Than Life prints
@LTLprints on twitter

Tags: Alicia Silfies, Brett Mogavero, Carsten, Carsten Petzold, competition, creativity, Design, Design Competition, Facebook, Hamilton, Kendall, Kendall Schoenrock, Larger than Life, Larger Than Life Prints, LTL, LTLprints, LTLprints.com, Mogavero, Paul Hamilton, Petzold, Prints, Schoenrock, Silfies

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

**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

We’re excited to have loyal customers who love our products.  Over and over again our team hears how amazing our prints are and are impressed with the ease of installation and durability of the prints.

After discussing it in the office, we came to the conclusion that more people should be able to see and feel our prints.  Here’s the deal.  At the end of the week we’re giving away a large print.  It can be for a person or an organization or anything, really. It could be for a good cause or no cause; we just want the ideas on where it goes to come from you.

Leave us a comment and tell us who should recieve a LTLprint. Friday, January 30th we’ll post the winner and their story.

We’re open to influence as well.  Leave a comment if you feel one submission is better than the rest.

Sincerely,

Kendall Schoenrock & Carsten Petzold
co-founders, LTLprints.com

Tags: Carsten Petzold, Kendall Schoenrock, Prints, Prints and Posters, Shopping

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

I’ve had this blog post for a while in my ‘to be finished and to be published blog post’. Last week I read on TechCrunch this post about a TokBox recruiting stunt. At first my attention was grabbed by the headline. ‘Just got fired’ somehow grabs everyone’s attention during an economic crisis, right? Then I learned that TokBox gave Tacos to ex Yahoo folks in order to interest them in the company and to maybe recruit some of them. [You can debate if this is a tasteful or distasteful idea – but this is not the point of this post] Looking at the picture I realized that TokBox taped their logo to their taco truck. (see the red circle)

I thought to myself: ‘A LTLprint would have done a much better job here.’ Instead of taping a paper-print to the truck next time just get an LTLprint. It will look much better, the logo would be contour cut, the logo could be much bigger (up to 7ft), and when you give the truck back you simply could re-stick your logo to a wall in the office.

I am not sure how successful the recruiting stunt was. TokBox has still a variety of open positions posted. But the stunt grabbed my attention and I learned about a new cool company. TokBox allows you to talk with your friends over live video for free. You simply post a link to your facebook profile, blog or website. When someone wants to talk to you they click the link and you guys video-chat. Learn more here and on the TokBox blog.


I am sending them a LTLprint with their logo – next time their truck will be decorated a lot better…

Tags: Carsten Petzold, Hiring, Jobs, Logo, LTLprint, LTLprints, Tacos, TechCrunch, TokBox, Yahoo

Lately I have been playing around with a cool service called ‘Monetate’. Monetate provides effective, dynamic and ‘ optimized for each consumer’ promotion & communication solutions on e-commerce websites as ’software as a service’. What does that mean? Well, based on who your customer is, where she is located, whether she is familiar with the site and whether she has ordered before (+ a lot more) you can provide dynamic and very specific communication. Doesn’t it feel good to have the site greet you with a warm “welcome back’ and help you find what you are looking for. BIG THANKS from us at LTlprints to the founder and CEO David Brussin for providing this excellent service to LTLprints.com.

Also: With its innovative solution monetate brings the vision of a persona specific persuasion architecture to fruition. Persuasion architecture has been described by the best selling authors Jeffrey and Brian Eisenberg (founders of FutureNowInc) in their books ‘Call to Action‘ and “Waiting for your cat to bark’. I recommend everyone who is an online marketer and who deals with website copy writing, persuasion architecture and website conversion to subscribe to their inspiring blog. Being a regular reader I gained a lot of insights, ideas and a critical view on our website communication at LTLprints.com.                   

Tags: Brian Eisenberg, call to action, Carsten Petzold, David Brussin, Dynamic Website Communication, E-Commerce, Future Now Inc, Jeffrey Eisenberg, Larger Than Life Prints, LTLprints, Monetate, Persuasion Architecture, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, Website Conversion

I have a secret that I’m going to share with the LTLprints community. I’ve been with LTLprints for quite some time now, and I finally feel comfortable sharing this personal part of my life. I’d like to thank Kwan (our community evangelist) for helping me get to the point where I can talk about it. Let me take a deep breath first - okay. Here goes nothing.

I hate stickers.

Phew! That feels SO much better. Now, before everyone goes crazy and asks “don’t you work for a sticker company?” let me put you at ease. I do work for LTLprints - but we create oversized, “larger than life” customizable WALL DECALS - not stickers. The material is cloth, and it’s removable and reusable. Don’t you worry - I totally looked into all this before applying for the position:)

So back to my weird phobia. I can admit that it’s not normal. But I’m not the only one! I hate the apples and fruit that have stickers on them, and refuse to touch the stickers. Ask any of my close friends who have to peel the sticker off for me (thanks guys.) When you behave well at the dentist and they try to give you a big smiley face sticker - I run. Yup, I’m that cool. In my Public Speaking class at Susquehanna University, we were asked to do a 5 minute speech about something you HATE. I of course, chose stickers. After receiving numerous strange looks as I made my way back to my seat after speaking, I was quickly comforted. The next speaker did her entire speech on velcro. At least I’m not the only one with a weird phobia.
Kendall, Carsten, and Kwan are a bit intrigued by my phobia of stickers.  Leave a comment if you know of any other weird phobias, please, as it makes me feel better about myself:)

Tags: Carsten Petzold, Kendall Schoenrock, Kwan Howard, Larger than Life, LTL, LTLprints, LTLprints.com, Sticker Phobia, Susquehanna University, Trish Noel

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