New Contest Rules – Give us your feedback!

We’ve started receiving some very good feedback through our Foldees Designer Survey, and we’ve come up with a few ideas on how to cater to your requests. Most of you are quite happy with the current system, except for a few things, and here are our findings from the survey.

CONTEST

• The primary motivation for submitting is the prize money, with feedback and seeing your cards on sale coming in second and third.
• Almost all of you would like to split between user-votes and Foldees Team votes for ratings to decide winners
• Most of you would like more opportunities to win (surprisingly, even many of our previous winners)

SITE

• Almost all of you spend most of your time on the Main Gallery, which was very surprising to us.
• Most of you keep up with what’s going on through our newsletters (both regular member and Designer)
• Surprisingly, Word of Mouth is first as a method of promoting your design, while Blogs come 2nd, and the design widget third. (hardly anyone promotes on twitter!?)

Also, here’s some feedback that we’ve received so far.

“I actually like all of these ideas. I am sure alot of us submit to many contests and never win. So maybe a method similar to threadless would be nice, getting feedback from the community until its perfect and foldees buys it. This might result in more sales too, since most cards are good, but just not quite there. “

“One thing I noticed once the new cards for the current contest are loaded is that most raters have good suggestions about changing the wording or color of something. I think that after the contest, designers should have the option of making those changes users suggested. Foldees can then accept or reject the changes.”

”I think the right way to pick the winners could be if every challenger can pick the 5 winners (in order of 1 to 5) buuuutttt, they can't pick their owns designs, by example, if i sent a design I must to pick 5 cards that I think must be the winners but I can't pick My Card.”

“Less server errors or even better, no server error”

As a result, we are throwing around a few new rules that we’re thinking of implementing in our next contest. The reason we’re doing this now (before even the end of the survey) is because we need time to implement these things on the site. Please Please PLEASE give us your feedback on whether you think these things are good or bad ideas.

1. We Vote First! – Foldees staff votes contribute 35% to the total score for all cards. However, to ensure that our votes don’t play with the competition, we will place our votes in private before we allow the public to come in and rate.
2. Designers Matter! – Designers votes count based on the number of designs successfully moderated and on sale at Foldees. E.g. mdavidct’s vote will be worth alot because he has submitted 11 designs. The exact algorithm will be decided later, but the catch is, the designer does not get to vote for his own design(s).
3. Tweak your designs – All cards can be tweaked at any point. However, all tweaks will be monitored and moderated by us.
4. More Prizes! – The new split will be US$800, US$600, and US$400 for the top three, and everyone else in the top ten gets US$100. Total remains the same cos we aren’t rich just yet.

Please let us know your thoughts on these potential changes in the comments below or any other suggestions you might have. In the meantime, we still have 15 days for both our Survey and coincidentally, our Zodiac Zoo contest!

Don’t wait… participate :)

Announcing the winners of "XMAS 2.0”

Guys and Gals – it’s time to crown the final winners of 2009 (yes, Zodiac Zoo ends in 2010, mr. anal). First off, we’d like to apologise for the one-day delay, although if you’ve been following our progress, the delays have shortened over the course of our 18 month existence.

8 contests in 18 months. Wow… and the time between them gets shorter as well. XMAS 2.0 had a rushed birth due to the awareness we now have of when we need to start selling Christmas Cards. Designers had barely a month to submit designs this time around, and honestly, we have no idea how they managed to do what they did.

As usual, you guys were the judge of that, and here… are your results.

5. funkiness – Even If (Prize: US$100)

Number 5 in two contests in a row is funkiness, a relatively new designer to Foldees from Romania who has hit immediate success in her first two contests. Her style reminds us of cardboard arts n craft that we used to do back in high school, and it’s put to excellent use here in this card that shows you don’t need a chimney for Santa to swing by and visit :)

4. Dientes – Merry Crisismas (Prize: US$100)

We’d like to think that after all this time, we’re getting pretty good at spotting our winners. This card was one of the first that we received for this contest, and we had a feeling that we’d soon have to figure out how to send money to Argentina :)

The card itself has a very South American feel, with a cigar-chomping industrialist Santa covering up the state of the the economy. Paired with a truly unique angular style and its milkdly political theme, the card is quite different from anything we’ve ever received before.

We likey.

3. salchipunk – The Christmas Computer Virus (Prize: US$300)

We have a confession. When he first submitted his new design, we gave feedback thinking that the card was perhaps a bit too wordy for our tastes. However, as usual, our feedback is (usually) optional, except for breach of themes or technical/grammatical errors.

Sure enough, Mauricio a.k.a. salchipunk stuck to his guns, and here’s the result. For once, you’ll be more than happy to see a virus. Heck, if you’re on the naughty list, you probably planted it there in the first place. As it is, he’s in third.

Welcome back to the podium, Mauricio!

2. leighdoll – I Won’t Get Lost (Prize: US$600)

Goshdarnit. We *almost* had a new winner again. It’s always a good thrill to know that new designers stand just as much of a chance as old ones, and just like in pretty much every contest before, we get a few surprise winners.

Another luminary from the Philippines (like noelevz!), her card is already selling briskly at retail, once again, with an update just to make sure Santa doesn’t get lost. While it’s not the only card that uses the GPS as a gimmick, the image of a little girl placing her hopes on new technology is just something that makes our iPhones feel all warm and fuzzy.

Welcome aboard, leighdoll!

1. Kokuzo – Santa Delivery Service (Prize: US$1000)

Yup. Franz Liu has become the first ever double winner on Foldees.com. To be honest, if you played around with the vectors on this design, you’ll realise just how staggeringly detailed it is, and how excited we are about where Franz’s career will go from here.

It’s also kind of nice to see that despite the modern theme, Santa seems to be using a good ol fashioned map to find his houses. It’s this kind of detail that has shattered our so far perfect record of new winners each and every time.

And it’s this kind of detail that we absolutely love, and convinces us that our ratings system is awesome.

PS: Franz has mentioned before that he only gets his girlfriend to vote for him, and we believe him.

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Once again, THANK YOU to all of you who participated in XMAS 2.0!

Even if you didn’t win, don’t forget to check out your Royalties page for card purchases. If you want a better chance at making that happen, don’t forget to pop our widget over on your blog/website, and ensure that your profile is up to date! Also, make sure you let your fans know about our Store Locations page, so they have a chance to buy some Christmas cards if they’re in a rush :)

In the meantime, do of course check out our newest contest, Zodiac Zoo! You have about 30 days more to submit your designs, so hurry!

Didn’t think the contest was fair? Let us know by participating in our Foldees Official Designer Survey 2009! It’s your chance to vote on the outcome of future contests, so don’t miss this chance!

MOL acquires Friendster – a sign of things to come? (Think PayPal acquiring Facebook)

We don’t usually comment too much on web trends (aside from posting up videos of cute babies every so often), but this particular topic is close to home simply because…

A. we’re Malaysian and …

B. We believe commerce via social networking is the way of the future.

Anyways, I just got back from the official launch (Thanks to Cheryl for the invites) and I’m still reeling at the possibilities that this acquisition can offer. Aside from the instant international brand recognition that MOL gets, and the momentum of Asian companies acquiring well-known international brands, there is one other big undercurrent that most people today seemed to have forgotten in the hoo-ha. And it’s called the Friendster Wallet.

I just revisited my Friendster account recently, after receiving an email notification that some things have changed. The interface is a cross between Facebook and MySpace – sparse and interactive, but with room for customization. However, the interesting thing is the Friendster Wallet.

Powered by MOL e-Points (duh), the Friendster wallet enables you to purchase Friendster Coins, which at the moment can be used to buy little virtual gifts, and that sorta chintzy stuff. If you’ve used Facebook before, they have similar features, and at least a gazillion apps that let you do the same thing. But….

Anyone care to play spot the difference here?

The difference is that Friendster has a common currency. That might not seem like such a big deal, until you realise that the main reason you don’t buy so much stuff online is because keying in your credit card information to pay for a US$1.00 flash game is so damned troublesome, with the forms, the redirects, the security confirmations, your codes, and not least of all, your 16 digit (count em) CC number.

It’s a problem that we ourselves face as well. Take that barrier away, and you make every transaction a one-click impulse.

Buy a box of virtual chocolates for Pete’s birthday? hmmmm… yea sure… why not. *click*

versus

Buy a box of virtual chocolates for Pete’s birthday? hmmmm… ok, lemme just get my credit card out… and see … hmm… yea 5434, 8832…. and full name? Ok…. expiry date… check… ok redirecting…redirecting….full name and birthdate again? WTF?!

One of the biggest challenges is ease-of-use, and by having a common currency, MOL has made buying stuff on Friendster as easy as buying stuff off the iTunes App store. Now THAT’s powerful. It’s a strategy MOL has already put to good use in MMORPGs, where their players are already buying up some US$20 in virtual good a month.

By buying out Friendster instead of simply working with them, MOL can now call the direction of the website to encourage more types of interactions that could involve gifts (like the Birthday gift trigger when you write on a friend’s wall if it’s their birthday). 

If MOL can get the same sort of returns (that they currently get from MMORPGs) on even 10% of Friendster’s 115 million users (half of which visit at least once a month), that’s some serious money.

Social networking sites should listen and learn. After all these years – your site might actually have come across a business model that works.

We’ll see.

The Edge is never dull

We love the Edge. We’ve been buying it ever since we came out on the cover of Personal Money (which is under the same team)! Some of the people there are familiar cos I used to be with the media in a different life a while back.

Anyways, this time, we didn’t even get a call. The Edge was covering an event called Innotech, organised by our benefactors at MDeC, which we attended to look for potential investors.

Even though we weren’t expecting much interest (cos our company is still very early stage), we still popped together one heck of a Powerpoint, and gave away some of your cards to the nice people in suits.

And guess what? The investors really liked us! Here are some of the quotes off their interviews with (who else?) The Edge.

“For early stage companies, the only thing we can look at is the management. I just  met this young guy with this online greeting cards portal. He is very interestin, very driven. We like the management and will find out more about the company” – Augustine Ow, JAIC Asia Capital Pte. Ltd from Singapore.

Apart from these two companies, (William Liu, chairman and managing partner of Stream Global Pte. Ltd.) felt that energon, which basically sells online greeting cards, had very good ideas.

Click on the pictures to read the entire article!

A short week later, we were also invited onto the netV@lue segment of EdgeTV, a web-based business channel for The Edge. Here’s the two-part interview, hosted by the lovely Aishah Mustapha.

 

 

 

Thank you to all the lovely people at The Edge (we love you love us love you!) and the investors who saw enough promise to mention us in the interviews :)

Oh, and really sorry for showing up in shorts for the interview. We thought it was a podcast. The secret is now out! *gasp*

Zodiac Zoo – What’s your sign?

I never really believed in star signs. The thing that really got to me was that that Virgos, and by association my good self, are supposed to be perfectionists. Just by that belief alone, I thought all star signs were rubbish.

I was the guy in class who would laugh at the other guy who studied 7-days a week to score 99% in Advanced Maths, while I probably put in half a day for my 85%. Both still As after all, right?

However, I have recently discovered my perfectionist streak. It comes in two forms. The first is in language. As a former Editor for some of Malaysia’s top tech magazines, I always cringed enough to form a black hole everytime i saw the smallest error in the final print. Also, yes I do spel-check my blog entries… but then again, doesn’t everybody?

The 2nd is in Foldees’ interface. We were supposed to launch our new interface (which you can check out in a VERY short while) a month ago, but due to small refinements – which, by the way, I think are STILL not enough yet – it’s been delayed till sorta now.

Anyways, as you can see… i’m sort’ve a believer in this now, and it’s for that reason, in combination with my Chinese blood that makes me think this is our most brilliant contest yet! See, this year, Valentine’s Day coincides with the first day of Chinese New Year!

Simply design a card that uses elements of ANY Zodiac Calendar, and you could win up to US$2500 in cash prizes! We’re primarily looking for Love related, and Chinese New Year cards, but if you’ve got a good idea for a get-well, or birthday card, then go for it!

As usual, please submit vector art only, minus the gradients, opacity filters, effects or rasters, and original work only :)

Also, in a new feature I’d like to start, if you have any ideas for a greeting card for this contest, but don’t have the skills to start, why don’t you leave a comment on this blog with your idea and your contact, and have one of the designers contact you to work on your idea together?

Contest submissions close on January 10th 2010, which gives you a month and a half so get cracking and submit your entry here! The earlier you submit, the more time you’ll have to work on the feedback we’ll give you to make the best card possible :) Looking forward to the usual deluge of amazing ideas from you nutty lot.

Foldees is EVERYWHERE this Christmas (14 stores & counting…including Penang!)

As a nice close off towards the end of 2009 (and Foldees peak season: Christmas!), we are very very very dizzily happy to announce that we’re now available in 14 stores across Malaysia, including two of the most hip hoppenin shopping malls in Penang!

Currently, most of these stores will be selling a select number of your Christmas cards, and some will also stock our usual selection of wacky birthday, love and other cards.

We’re also exploring other retail channels in other countries, most likely including neighbouring Singapore by the end of the year!

In the meantime, check our Store Locations page to see where YOU can pick up some very very funky Christmas cards.

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Our newest retail partner is S&J, a company that sells all sorts of gift items! Like us, they’re also started up by some very young (although maybe not so young) people. Two brothers called Sam and Jeff. Thus S&J. These guys started with two stores in Penang, and have now expanded to include pretty much every major mall in Malaysia with the exception of the snobs over at KLCC.

Anyways, we browsed through their 1 Utama store, and here are some of our favourite bits.

WATCH YOUR STEP: A door stop shaped like a banana peel!

 

UH?: As near as we can figure, this is a miniature japanese house that can light up from your car ciggy lighter?

MIDGET SHOPPING CARTS: Useful for Kero-Keropi fans shopping for bottle caps.

HERBIE!

RUDOLPH!: Like searching for a red-nose in a haystack

 

Oh… and an MJ impersonator for good measure :)

Welcome aboard guys!

To see where you can find S&J stores, visit our store locations page, or the S&J homepage itself :)

Interview with Kokuzo (a.k.a. Franz Liu)

We owe quite alot of interviews. As of now, we still owe interview time to RocknRolla and Noelevz. Well, at least we’ve got one out of the way for now.

Kokuzo, otherwise known as Franz Liu, has been with Foldees since our first XMAS contest back in 2008 entitled “A Comic Book Christmas”. He recently took a few minutes to have a chat over MSN about how he started drawing since he was a kid, and the unique way he lets ideas come to him.

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CHAK: So, let's start with the basic stuff. How'd you become a graphic designer?

KOKUZO Hmmmm... simply I can say drawing is just like my daily food since I was a lil kid, so when graduate from high school, I decide to study in design, visual communication design actually...and here I am now.

CHAK: So how old were you when you started and what kinda stuff did you draw?

KOKUZO Wow... maybe I should ask my mom about this question. Can't remember....hahaha

CHAK: Okay, what's the first thing you remember drawing?

KOKUZO if I don’t get it wrong, I drew some stick man on the wall in my room or maybe almost everywhere in the house, and my mom began to grumbling all day

CHAK: Did you get spanked?

KOKUZO Fortunately not...and I'm thankful for that because if my parents stopped me from doing all that thing, I won’t be here now. Maybe I'd study accounting or business in college.

CHAK: What do your parents do?

KOKUZO They're entrepreneurs, producing homemade cake and bakery, kinda like that.

CHAK: Did you study design in Indonesia or overseas?

KOKUZO My hometown is in Medan, Sumatera. Very close to M'sia right? Perhaps you've been there? Or not? Anyway, I studied design in Bandung, West Java.

CHAK: Your English is quite good... where'd you pick that up?

KOKUZO Movie I guess. Hahaha

CHAK: I think I picked mine up from Voltron :)

KOKUZO I just about to apologize you if my grammar is broken. Hahaha...yeah, English is very very rarely use in my country

Inspirations: Mickey Mouse, Manga and Singaporean women.

CHAK: And who are your idols?

KOKUZO Wow... so many. But maybe I can say Walt Disney inspired me the most, and that guy created SpongeBob, (dang, I forgot his name) he's brilliant. For comics, I like Takehiko Inoue. We can say manga actually, cos I seldom reading western comics.

CHAK: Ah...but your art style is not really that manga.

KOKUZO Hahahaha... that’s a bit long story you know? Actually we're targeted to be a creative director or any position in advertising field. I still got my manga style drawing until couple years ago. Then, almost 1,5 years I stopped drawing and focusing on advertising... photography, digital imaging, copywriting, wicked idea, something like that. 

I only draw sketches for idea visualization. But I thought "hey, drawing is what I do since I was a lil kid, why stop doin’ it now?" Then like someone back from hell, I started drawing again and on that time, my friend offer me a project, drawing cartoon and maybe I can say that’s the starting point of my drawing style right now.

CHAK: Is that your day job now?

KOKUZO the project is for promotional purpose of a vehicle dealer company - not exactly became my day job, but still got projects from that same client. I just graduated 2 weeks ago... and I'm planning to find job in Singapore after Chinese New Year. Until then, I'll be a freelancer

CHAK: what's your interest in Singapore? I remember we sent your prize there the first time you won on Foldees

KOKUZO hahaha, I knew you’d ask that. Becoz my girlfriend is there. Good memory Chak...haha

CHAK: is she a graphic designer as well?

KOKUZO yep, same college, same class with me. Couple times I asked her to join Foldees... but she's too busy for that

CHAK: it's okay. We’ll pay her to keep you happy. So how'd you first hear about us and what were your initial thoughts?

KOKUZO I was browsing web and somehow I found a web named GraphicCompetitions.com or something like that and I saw mostly the contests are logo, logo and logo. And then I found Foldees, vector drawing, and thought "Wow, that’s what I'm looking for!” Because at that time I just started to learn AI, so I think it's nothing to lose to join. That time I was still learning AI - the tools, effects, etc...still tried to understand the software.

My college teach Corel draw as vector too, but I thought the colour is not that nice. Then my friend suggested me to use AI so I learned by myself by reading the help tab, and sometimes when I got stuck, I search tutorials online.

The Drawing Cycle: It all starts in the bathroom.

CHAK: How does your drawing cycle start? Let's start with the ideas.

KOKUZO Talkin about this one, it's really depending a lot with my mood. Sometimes it can pop out from nowhere, but sometimes it won't come out even a bit. But tell you a secret - I got mostly my idea while 'relaxing' in bathroom in the morning. While 'relaxing'.

CHAK: HAHAHAH...it's not going to be a secret anymore after this interview goes up

KOKUZO Dang! I shouldn’t tell you that. Now I regret.

CHAK: we will start selling laxatives on Foldees to our designers so they spend more time "relaxing" (compliments with ROLLEES).

KOKUZO Another nice business idea

CHAK: So after the idea, do you need to write it down or draw it out immediately?

KOKUZO Usually I just write it down first with the key words. Then in my free time, I'll draw it.

CHAK: On paper? I remember seeing one of your scanned sketch layers for your Monochrome submission

KOKUZO Oh that one... while checking the file, I remember I forgot to delete the layer, and I thought "oh cr*p".

That drawing I made in Corel painter actually. But before I start to draw digitally, I always draw n doodle on paper first and I'll keep sketching until I satisfied. Then I'll start to draw in digitally

CHAK: So besides us and the vehicle dealer, who else gets to benefit from your work?

KOKUZO Mostly are friends or friend of friends or friends of client.FYI, I also had worked in design studio for handipoints online game, that’s what I do for about a year until last august

CHAK: And how come you don't have a proper website?

KOKUZO Haha... told you I just got back from hell to illustration world. I want to focus on illustration, and now what I want to do first is making many, many good portfolio. Once satisfied, I'll make the proper one. Actually I really, really want to enter this and that contest, but sometimes have no time between college work and freelancing. But I've finished my study, so I think from now I'll try to submit in many contests, just to kill time before I go to Singapore.

CHAK: Don't forget about us once you're famous aight? Anything else you wanna add?

KOKUZO Dunno, nothing I guess, you're the interviewer. Haha...you ask I answer.

CHAK: Hmmm...how about this? Any advice to other designers out there after winning?

KOKUZO Wow, this tough... I'll look like a smartass by answering that... but I think voters on Foldees like funny, cute cards. Also idea is important, so I just try to design according to that. I remember my Halloween design, I like it personally, and you said you guys like it so much (if you're not lying). But not many people like it...not cute enough I guess.

CHAK: Awesome.

KOKUZO. Thanks alot.