The Official Foldees Blog! Yay!

Designer collections?

2010-07-18T08:00:00.001-07:00

This post is meant mostly for our designers, but others do feel free to contribute. We’re toying with the idea of cards recruited not from the contest mechanic, but through one of the following models:-

1. Paying a designer a set fee for a collection of 10 cards, for which after they will continue to collect royalties.

2. Recruiting non-contest cards with a significantly higher Royalty scheme (say US$0.30) per card.

3. Some other brilliant business model that we haven’t thought of yet.

What do you think? Really would appreciate your feedback here…

Announcing the winners of “A Modern Fairytale” greeting card contest

2010-07-08T11:12:00.001-07:00

Wow… we’re on schedule for once! Once again, it’s time to announce the winners of our first ever wedding card contest, A Modern Fairytale. The contest challenged designers to reinvent wedding cards into something more hip and modern. From the response we’re getting so far, I’ve gotta say… mission accomplished.

Before we get to the results, let’s cap out the new rules for this contest.

There are now 10 prizes instead of 5!
Final scores are calculated from 70% public vote and 30% Foldees staff votes

With that in mind, may we also say that royalty jumps for wedding cards will be coming suddenly and quickly. A typical order for wedding cards is at least 200, which means US$20 in royalties immediately!

In other words, don’t be too disappointed if you don’t win :)

Alright, enough with the pleasantries. Let’s get matrimonial!

10. ellipsi – Save The Date for Something (Prize: US$100)

I really really like this design. Let’s hope that this new designer, ellipsi, stays with us for a while. As many of you know, our preference has always been on simplicity, and in the case of wedding cards, elegance. This one hits all those right notes and yet presents itself as a modern intepretation. She has another great design in her Gate of Love submission so do be sure to check that out as well.

9. Fox - Priceless (Prize: US$100)

Fox is fast joining the ranks of our regular winners like Salchipunk and Kokuzo in churning out consistently smart and nice designs. In fact, in his own words, he salchipunk-ed this design with the trademark three tier idea, jibbing the famous VISA priceless ad campaign.

Damn, those are expensive glass slippers.

8. xhen – Red Thread of Fate (Prize: US$100)

This one was one of the staff favourites! Since our staff is primarily Chinese, we really appreciated the modern look yet classic message of this design, playing on the red thread that is synonymous with Chinese weddings. It’s also one of the best uses of the SPLIT template we’ve seen, and we were surprised that it didn’t score even higher than its credible 8th place.

Not to worry though, xhen, I’m sure it’ll earn shedloads in royalties

7. catpowers – Tie The Knot (Prize: US$100)

Another really simple and appealing design, using almost exactly the same shade of blue as ellipsi’s. I especially like how the designer has incorporated the elements bringing two people together, without cluttering the card.

Also, the use of red at the bottom in its sparing is very very effective.

6. salchipunk – Happy Ending (Prize: US$100)

The master returns to do what he does best. A charmingly illustrated, three-tier design of our favourite classics. Honestly, alot of the joy from seeing salchipunks designs are just to see his interpretations of characters we all know and love.

In this case, we absolutely love his rendition of The Beast, and quietly note the fact that all three princesses are different.

5. pasteline – Status: Married (Prize: US$150)

Another new designer that fast became joint top-office rated card. The concept itself is simple, but the execution is nearly flawless for this MSN Messenger wedding card. We love how the inside opens up to reveal a conversation window where couples can put their own conversations, and how the designer chose the TALL template to replicate exactly how the window appears in real life.

We reckon this one is going to sell truckloads. Welcome to the winner’s circle, pasteline :)

4. greenwong - Classic Wedding Card (Prize: US$150)

Another new winner! This one almost didn’t make it through cos she initially submitted rasters. Thankfully, due to the captivating design, we did give her one extra day to complete her design and send it in.

Many of you seem to be showing gratitude that we did, propelling this new designer to our coveted Top Five! It’s a very detailed illustration, with a nice use of colour, that we can definitely see people picking up.

3. Richard Lee - Lasting Love (Prize: US$300)

It’s honestly been a while since we’ve had this anime-inspired style win our contest (last one was this excellent anime robot birthday card!). Richard Lee submitted two entries, and while both were great, the simplicity and grace of a couple locking hands on the cover of this one edged this ahead substantially (the other design fell out of the top ten by a whisker.)

Perfect for newlywed couples that love anime. Hmmm… wonder where we’ll find some of those?

2. cscottdraw - Forever & Always (Prize: US$400)

Chelsey has been with us for quite some time now, but hasn’t cracked the winners circle until now. This is what we were looking for when we created this contest. A modern intepretation of weddings. Tattoos are truly forever (because you can’t afford laser surgery), and this tattoo wedding card is actually, when you think about it… perfectly not-so-common sense!

A great idea, boldly realised into a great card.

1. Kokuzo – The Braided Bride (Prize: US$700)

“Oh wow… what a big surprise.”

We hear you. Can someone please topple the dominating performance from Franz a.k.a. Kokuzo!? He’s taken a sizable chunk from Malaysia’s GDP now, with no end in site due partially to his beautiful drawings, but also equally to his willingness to experiment.

Looking back at his previous artwork, it’s not an immediately recognisable style, unlike some of our other designers. His christmas DHL was quite different from his transformer ambulance which is again very different when compared to this Rapunzel wedding riding into the sunset on a Harley Davidson. In fact, the only way you can sorta guess are his hallmarks of exquisite detailed and flawless illustrations. Perfect form, perfect colour, perfect expressions.

God man, give the other’s a break!

Or don’t… cos we love you and apparently everyone else does too. *sigh*

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Once again, THANK YOU to all of you who participated in A Modern Fairytale!

As some of you might know already, this is the last contest we’ll be running in a while. We are in the process of relooking our business model, so in the meantime, we’d love to hear your suggestions about how we can improve our site and the experience for you! Do drop us a mail at ideas@foldees.com and take part in the revolution!

PS: As usual, If you want to know your final position in the rankings, do drop me a mail :)

Star Wars Cards

2010-06-20T08:07:00.001-07:00

Did you know that what transformed James Cameron from a truck driver to the world’s most bankable director was a desire to top Star Wars?

I just went back and re-watched the original Star Wars again and boy do I miss the good ol’ days (not Episode One, which sucked. A New Hope) . Even if Avatar was amazing and did gross a gazillion dollars, I can’t really remember the names of more than two characters in the entire movie.

Luke Skywalker though? Or C-3PO, Hans Solo, or even Boba Fett, who barely made a 2 minute appearance in the first few movies… they’ve all been inducted into the mainstream consciousness, and will probably still be there long after Neytiri, Trudy Chacón and Norm have been all but forgotten.

A cause, or effect of this is the ridiculous amount of merchandise and pop-culture references Star Wars gets, and we’re no different! Our own Star Wars themed cards get massive interest, so it’s about time that we gave them a few unique URLs to help you guys reference or search for them.

Star Wars Birthday Cards

Most of these, except for Cmmoong’s entry, were from our Where No Man Has Gone Before contest. Roddenberry vs Lucas - Lucas wins 8:0.

Star Wars Christmas Cards

I particularly like ud33n’s Santa Vader card, due to the joke on the inside, and the cutesy illustrations that he did up.

Star Wars Get Well Card

Most. Awesome. Get Well. Card. EVER!

May the force be with you and our new SEO experiments :)

5 tips to earn more freelance money

2010-06-17T07:05:00.001-07:00

Not making enough money as a freelancer? The CEO of that eco-friendly card company gives a few tricks he’s learnt along the way.

Wake up at 10.30am, have a leisurely lunch with a friend, then head to Starbucks to check emails on a caffeine high. Doesn’t sound like a bad life… does it? I should know. I’ve spent the last three years off the grid, and now run a site that allows designers from all around the world to do the same.

It’s an attractive proposition, to do what you love, at your own leisure, and to earn everything that’s due to you. However, the reality is that you’ll probably start with flies in your bank account and desperate for cash, thus taking any cruddy job that comes your way. Soon enough, you’ll realize that you’re working on crappy projects 18 hours a day, but you’re barely making rent, much less affording an overpriced blended coffee.

Sound familiar? Here are a few tips to avoid that situation.

1. Getting started – The introductory rate.

Okay. So you’re just starting out and you wanna get as much experience as possible, which means doing things on the cheap to get more jobs. That’s admirable, and absolutely essential to the beginning of any unknown freelancer. The problem is, when you want to raise your rate later on, all your clients start complaining, so you find yourself slogging away at low-paying jobs.

The trick here is the INTRODUCTORY OFFER. Give a time line, something like “MARK is ON THE MARKET! From now until 31 March 2010, Photo sessions at only 100 bucks! While stocks last!”. This works awesomely for two reasons. The first is that it encourages your clients to snap you up in a limited time. The second, is that once the period is over, clients will expect the price to go up, or at the very least, beg you to keep it at that price for just one more job.

2. Offer value, not price.

I am constantly appalled by the wages paid for creative talents in this country. The reason, is that everyone is fighting each other over price. As a consequence, people tend to settle on a low price, and thus submit sub-par work. This is bad for the talent, the client and the industry as a whole.

Price should never be the only deciding factor. Yes, don’t be exorbitant (unless you know you can), but don’t undersell yourself either. The trick here is to ensure your client is interested in your work first before bringing up the topic of price. If they ask up front, be wary, and deflect the question by saying things like “It depends on what you want” (which is actually true). Every creative talent is different – in terms of style, speed of work, accuracy and so forth. Set yourself apart (show them your work, and be professional), and you’re on good grounds for negotiations.

From my experience, the clients that pay top dollar for you are the ones that will treat you best. Reciprocate.

3. The three month buffer

Once you’re getting a few jobs in, you might wanna start out at the local kopitiam before graduating to Starbucks. Trust me on this, you want to build a three-month buffer – basically enough money in the bank to survive without any income for three months.

Imagine that freedom. For the next 3 months, if you don’t get any jobs, you’re fine. Why are you doing this? Because a desperate freelancer is one that will be doing shitty work for shitty pay and forever after be expected to do the same. What you want to do is get to the point where people are bidding top dollar for your time, and you have the flexibility to say no.

4. Never say no.

Well, not to the client’s face anyway. Always offer a solution, even if it’s not from you. Here are some common ones.

Job is too cheap or too short a deadline – Ask for a longer timeline, or a bigger paycheck, or both. If the client says this is impossible, then recommend someone else, and don’t be bitchy about it (yes, designers… you know who you are).
Job is not your specialty – If you’re willing to learn a new specialty, charge to make it worth your while. Or better yet, if you really want to learn this specialty, offer them a discount but tell the client that you might need more time to learn and perhaps make a few mistakes
You don’t do that – Even if it’s totally unrelated, don’t just say no. Recommend the client someone else. If the client sees you as a problem solver, they will bring more business to you. Also, referring business to others will often come back to you.

5. Be Remembered

If you’ve followed the steps above, your clients should have no problem recommending you to their colleagues or friends. HOWEVER, this is only the case if they remember to do so. Certain freelancing jobs (such as programming or accountancy) don’t really get people talking cos they don’t come out much in regular conversation.

What you need to do is to give them reasons to remember you. A memorable business card is a simple way of doing this. These days, you can get some really nice ones from moo cards for as low as US$20 for a pack of 100. Of course, depending on where you are, your local printer might be even cheaper, but watch for ways of making your card stand out. You might want to look professional, but remember that the purpose of a freelancer’s business card is to be remembered. While odd sizes are great, try not to exceed the measurements of a standard business card (89 × 51 mm), since people won’t be able to put em in their wallets, and probably end up losing or damaging them.

Also, if you can… work on people skills. Bond with your clients… don’t just talk about work. If you can find something in common with your client, their memory of you will take a huge leap, leading to them more easily remembering, and thus recommending you to other people.

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Why am I telling you all this? At the end of the day, alot of people are starting to come to the freelance side of things. If everyone undercuts each other, it’s bad for the industry as a whole (and good for those rich, godless, merciless corporations that we call clients). But if everyone starts differentiating, we get a bigger pool of talent that’s better paid, does better work and has a better overall reputation… so everyone wins :)

Before I end, I have to say that all this advice comes with two caveats. The first is that everyone works differently, so if you don’t agree with these tips, I’d love to hear how you do it at chak [@] foldees.com.

The second, is not to try looking for me at Starbucks at 1030am cos I usually get up at 11.

And I make better coffee at home.

This article first appeared in CUTOUT Magazine’ JULY 2010. Do check it out at newstands in Malaysia.

Kuala Lumpur Design Week 2010 @ Cap Square KL Part 3 – Everyone Else

2010-05-05T02:16:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Part 3 of our KL Design Week coverage. It’s now Day 4 (Tuesday), and to be honest, quite quiet during the weekdays here.

(LEFT: note the enthusiasm on these two young un’s from Wall-Tailor)

On the bright side though, we do have plenty of opportunity as you can see, to blog and twit more than we ever have before (our regular followers will notice the upspike in activity over the last 3 days).

Anyways, now that we’ve covered our neighbourhood, we’re going wandering around the rest of CapSquare KL, which we can only say has been infested with color and plastic glasses in all areas!

First off, in all areas, you’ll find these cute little Secret Tents, in which hobbyists and students can sell their handcrafted wares.

I actually bought a rock off this guy… Jux, who loves drawing incredibly detailed skylines with little godzillas and pandas running around. Very Cool.

Downstairs in the main hall, things were surprisingly even more quiet, with mostly foreign exhibits, and a few more tents. This artist, Olivier, was representing a french studio called Hero Studio.

There was also this kinda cool precision projection thing that made this look like moving billboards.

This was the main stage, which was pretty much the only exposure evailable for the sponsors. It was also the place where Mukhriz Mahatir gave his speech. I don’t understand why in Malaysia, we all clap for these VIPs we don’t respect, even when they are 2 hours late. It’s so weird.

Some other artwork. Can’t remember the artists… sorry! But nice though…

The last picture is my friend Thomas doing the Magnum. Incidentally, Thomas was once the king of Quake in Malaysia. He now works in a local audio studio called White Noise.

On the 2nd floor of Cap Square, there’s a very promising student exhibition. Although I’ve said it several times before, I’m continually impressed by the level of talent here in Malaysia, and sad that alot of it goes unnoticed.

Here’s an interesting one. It’s a fully 3-D display, which was displaying polygonal logos and models. Although not quite up to tony Stark standard yet, it was pretty impressive!

Then there was this great character designer, with his Orang Minyak and Chinese Vampires. Very Cute…

And then there was the work from the One Academy people, including their work with Ubisoft (only like the 2nd biggest game publisher in the world!).

Next door to the ONE Academy booth was the UITM booth, with some very interesting typography work.

We couldn’t help but chuckle at what a wandering American tourist might think of this last one, considering that UIAM is the biggest Islamic University in the region.

Also on display were some really cool product designs, like these Handcuff-like clothes hangers.

And then there was the very morbid work of Dayana, who is possibly the sweetest looking girl i know who listens to DEATH METAL. Nine Inch Nails might as well be Westlife :)

And finally some nicely dressed toilet bowls and mannequins for good measure.

that’s it for now, from Cap Square. If anyone has any other articles about KL Design Week, do let me know and I’ll pop it in here as a link.

Not sure if there’ll be a part 4, so for now, Goodnight and Goodbye from Cap Square KL!

Kuala Lumpur Design Week 2010 @ Cap Square KL Part 2 – The Neighbourhood (1st floor)

2010-05-03T02:35:00.001-07:00

OKAY! Let’s take a walk around and see who’s around us. Let’s start with the Big Boys! First off, there are the guys who told us about KL Design Week in the first place, and whom we first met at last year’s event.

Wall Tailor! – A company that does some very cool custom wall decal stickers that are guaranteed for 5 years! They have the most polished, professional and just plain kick-ass booth in sight. Looking at them, we figured there was no point pumping more money into our booth just because there was no way we could outdo this…

No funny jokes about the balloon over her head.

A photo booth for people to take pictures and post on their blogs. Note the syncing of inside and outside illustrations.

A wall of kisses where people can try to see how easy it is to paste Wall-Tailor’s decals (verdict: pretty darn easy).

Incidentally, Wall-Tailor is having a competition too!

Visit www.wall-tailor.com for more info!

At 9 oçlock are the stone creatures from HapaHapa. This is the quietest booth in the exhibition primarily cos they’ve got the worst location on the floor (ours is 2nd worst due to late booking). It’s basically a showcase of stone creatures created by Lucas Blim. He basically wants to generate interest in his project, which is to use these little creatures for an animated movie.

Up next are our neighbours. At11ó clock are the Click Clack Club, a formation of photographers from MIA

They’re selling some really cute camera keychains (RM8 each). I bought one for someone’s future birthday.

Then at 12 oclock is the super colourful puzzling booth of 3 boutique design studios. pixelplayground09, Mars Psychedelic Studeo and iryssstudio.

They’re selling everything from T-shirts to button badges, and their booth and dressing looks like they take copious amonts of drugs. Although I’m sure they’re clean as a whistle.

Kids, say no to drugs.

At 1oçlock are the new boys in town, Cut Out magazine. They’re pretty much the first design-focused mag in town, and aim to concentrate on the synergy between business and design. Suitably, the two founders are Jay (an art guy) and Vivian (a very tall former account servicing girl). Yes they are going out.

They were hosting a competition for their 4th issue cover, and here were their participants. If you want to join, do visit www.cutoutmag.com for more info.

Oddly enough, they’re sharing their booth with a guy that does Sugar-sculptures. They’re really impressive when he does them live. You’ll never look at sugar the same way again.

Over on the other side of the 1st floor are some really cool exhibitors as well. My personal favourite was a very very talented artist called Nana, who brands her items as roomism. I’ll let her art speak for itself.

It’s very Tim Burton, but i love it for not just being design wankery. Each picture has some really funny undertones. Aside from that, she also sells these pouches…

And Has this really adorable rabbit paper sculpture…

Another one of my favourites was Urban Cr3atures, with their really cute paper foldable dolls at a criminally cheap RM6 each. These dolls are basically a printed cut-out sheet, which then fold to become these sorta cute, helpless caricatures. We told them they should be called Foldees instead of us.

Here are some other pictures from the various other exhibitors that I didn’t cover...

There really was too much talent to cover, so I’ll just leave it at this, and post Part 3 tomorrow – everything else :)

Kuala Lumpur Design Week 2010 @ Cap Square KL Part 1 - Us

2010-05-02T07:14:00.001-07:00

Hey guys… in case you can’t make it this year (and shame on you), or to entice you to come, here’s a rundown of what you’ll find at KL Design Week 2010! I’m posting this live, thanks to P1’s free Wireless KL service (although I’m pretty sure i’ll be using up my 500MB limit posting this up!)

Anyways, here’s the rundown on KL Design Week. It’s basically the 2nd year this is happening, and it’s a city-wide event to draw all those hibernating and hiding artists out of their immaculately designed cubby holes.

Here in Cap Square, it’s the design showcase. There are students, hobbyists, and full-blown businesses here, all cheerfully side-by-side, some selling, some not. Don’t worry, we are :)

Here’s the awesome marquee outside by Raffles International College, made of 100% recyclable goods (except maybe for the plastic tomatoes… hmm..

And here’s our booth

We got the booth quite last minute, so we basically spent a total of RM54.80 on design, consisting of a few large format prints, sticky-tape and a box of 2B pencils to replicate the background of our website.

RichardLee’s Wang Lee Hom typography was a real hit – a Swedish guy even asked for a poster!

Oh yea, and the sticky tape was really crap. We kept having to restick them three times a day.

And of course an endless stream of people checking out the cards…

It’s not really optimal to be working on Labour Day, but we’re glad we did!

(… coming up in Part 2, the other exhibitors!)

PS: Don’t forget you have only two more weeks to get your designs in for A Modern Fairytale! Only at www.foldees.com/contest.

Uncle Keong – Malaysia’s most honest cab driver

2010-04-20T08:57:00.001-07:00

Hey guys,

I believe that good deeds should be rewarded so lemme share you a story.

Last month, on the only day I decided to take an LRT in 2009, the bloody thing breakdown. So I waited as the train crawled to Bangsar station, got down, and jumped into a cab. Because I was already late for my appointment, I was in a hurry to get off once i reached Mandarin Oriental. Only after my appointment did I realise that I left my 2-month old iPod Classic 160GB in the back seat!

Because I didn't get the cab's number or company, the only thing I could do was to call the Mandarin Oriental and ask them to just check if any cab driver would return it the next day. I asked them to call me back the next day to double check and they said they would. Unfortunately, they didn't.

Assuming it was lost, I was thinking of getting another one. Luckily I am a procrastinator, cos 2 weeks later I get a note saying that my iPod is with my neighbour! I am totally confused, but when I go to collect it, my neighbour says the cab driver tried dropping it off at my house but i wasn't home. So he left it with a note.

Dear Lau Chak Onn,

I found your iPod in my back seat. Call me at 012 923 2333.

Uncle Keong

HOW THE HECK DID HE KNOW MY FULL NAME AND MY ADDRESSS?!
When I called hi that night and explained who i was, he sorta mumbled into the phone something like

I can't hear you... Ï'm drinking, call me tomorrow!

Next day when I called him, he said he passed the phone to his daughter, who pressed some buttons and found my home address AND my IC and full name! Confused, I thanked him for returning the iPod, and wanted to meet up with him to offer an AngPow. He said he was very busy and would call me when i was in his area.

After I hung up, I immediately went to my iPod to see what button he pressed. At first I thought because I bought it online that Apple puts your data in there. But it wasn't in the About section, it was in the Photo section cos iTunes automatically syncs with My Pictures, and I had a very old scan of my IC there!
And up to today (about 2 weeks after the incident), Uncle Keong hasn't even called to collect his reward.

3 Lessons I have learnt from this.

Even when in a rush, always remember the cab number if you can, and look back at your seat.
Be careful what you sync on your iPod
Sometimes, a Malaysian cab driver can offer much better service than the ridiculously expensive Mandarin Oriental

Thanks for listening, and Thanks to Uncle Keong for giving us hope in an increasingly hopeless country.

Please give him business at 012 923 2333.

chak
www.foldees.com

No it’s not an April Fool’s joke, it’s a Modern Fairytale

2010-04-01T04:53:00.001-07:00

Sorry to disappoint, guys. We actually totally forgot to con you guys today, unlike last year. In fact, irony of ironies, we’re launching something actually quite different (no, really… we are this time).

We’re making wedding cards. No seriously, we are.

The theme is “A Modern Fairytale”, and what we’re looking for is an update on wedding cards, beyond the frills and fancy cut-outs. Here are four pointers to get a better idea of what we’re looking for.

They shouldn’t be too slapstick, and yet, not too normal instead. Think a nicely cut suit with a modern pastel colour on the inside, rather than a clown suit with flower buttons.
Be sure to include lots of empty space on the inside of the card so that couples can add their details. You can even leave room for photos on the cover of the couple.
For wedding cards, people like to write the words themselves, so use a maximum of 10 words, or better none. Instead, try to convey as much of your idea through illustrations as possible.
Submit EARLY! For a new category like this, we anticipate quite a bit of tweaking of your designs before they’re market-ready. The earlier you submit, the more time we have to assess your design, and give you the appropriate advice on how to improve it.

Speaking of the cover, we have THREE new templates for you guys to try out, just for this contest. Please note that we are not accepting cards made in the standard template.

SQUARE & TALL Templates – These are essentially the same format as our Good ol’ A5 sized cards, except one’s .shorter, and the other one’s taller. This is because people getting married want things a little different. Don’t ask us why.
SPLIT Template – This one’s a bit tricky. Basically the cover splits in two, to reveal the inside. We actually allow you guys to customise the back on this card, so do feel free to put a little colour there (although don’t depend on the back of the card to convey your idea entirely).

On top of that, we now allow variants of a single design, meaning that the same card can be translated into up to 4 variants. Our upload engine at www.foldees.com/contestentry.aspx should allow you to do this quite easily. Once all your entries are in, we’ll nominate one as your main entry.

Here are some additional idea directions to explore.

Pop Couples – particularly for the SPLIT template, you can use a Mario and Princess, or R2D2 and C3PO combination, or even an Orc and an Elf.
Updated Fairytales – Very much in theme, feel free to update classic fairy tales like Snow White or Alladin with a modern twist. If you want to see a great example of this, watch the Shrek trilogy again. Now.
Modern Romance – These days, people meet in all sorts of never-before heard places – in Warcraft, on forums, over a game of poker, texting on their mobiles or even on Facebook. Perhaps they might also like to buy cards that highlight these moments.
Motifs – Modern cards have alot of twirls and flowers on them, repeated in patterns ad infinitum. Perhaps you could come up with a modern intepretation of those paterns, using iPhone earplugs or even keyboard pieces.

*Whew*…. okay. This is going to be our last contest for a while, so do your best! Also, because wedding cards are usually ordered in quantities of 200 or more, you can look forward to some really juicy royalties as well!

Contest closes 5th April 2010, so hurry on to www.foldees.com/contest now.

Ok, that last part was a joke. HAH! Gotcha… contest closes 15th May 2010.

The winners of the Foldees “Zodiac Zoo”Greeting Card Contest

2010-03-11T08:18:00.001-08:00

Wow. I can’t believe this is the first blog post of 2010. Serious apologies to our designers and users for neglecting you recently :( We have been rather busy bees, and as such, we’ve kinda slowed down our contests and our interactions with you guys to get the business going.

As such, as some of our designers will already know, we’ve had a very good run in the past 3 months (please check your Royalties page, if you haven’t already). We’ve also been expanding our retail locations, with our current 15 and we’re in talks to double that by mid-year. All with our teeny tiny team. Aren’t you proud of us?

However, leave that for now. Let’s get down to the business at hand. We have 5 winners (this number might increase in our next competition *wink*) that have entirely validated our voting system, since these were some of the top-selling cards of the season. One of the designers was a very early adopter for Foldees that finally gets a long-deserved place on our podium with a truly stellar effort.

5. Anacleto Avarro – Lovely Strike (Prize: US$100)

Welcome to the winners’ circle! This would definitely be our first prize if it was a T-shirt! The design is very very striking (thus the appropriate name) and many people had to get a double take to understand its true brilliance (including us!). Alot of effort was obviously put into this design, and that makes you a deserving winner. Nice one Anacleto!

4. seafishyi – Happy Tiger Year (Prize: US$100)

Another new winner! Awesomeness! Louise Yap (yes, it’s a girl) has a very polished style, similar to that of other previous winners like Kokuzo, and the depth of detail, especially on the inside of the card shows talent that could easily bring her to the top step of the podium next time around. This time though, it’s an impressive 4th place. Don’t forget that in his first contest, Kokuzo ‘only’ placed 4th as well.

3. Fox – The Animals (Prize: US$300)

Not to be biased, but we really wanted this design to win. Not only is it so darned adorable with a frankly brilliant idea, but it’s also by one of our most loyal designers, Terence (a.k.a. Fox a.k.a. terryisdafox) who has participated in all of our contests, and only won once (Xmas 2008!). He’s not the most polished designer, having picked the talent up just for Foldees, but his style and his ideas have improved by leaps and bounds since our first contest, and we’re proud to have grown up together with him. Finally, Terry… we get to give you money. Awesome idea.

PS: Oh, and great seller too. Check your royalties mate ;)

2. salchipunk – How to Celebrate the New Year (Prize: US$600)

y’know… we seriously have to start giving this guy a challenge. Since the day he swept our Christmas awards in 2008, he has won a prize in EVERY contest except for one. Honestly, we’d be afraid that the Spanish might think the rest of the designers in the world were pushovers if it wasn’t for the fact that many other Spanish designers haven’t had the same fortune on our site.

Still, there’s no denying that this guy is seriously talented. While his art style never runs far, it’s so darn appealing (and selling well to boot) that we should just bloody hire him and pay him less than the prize money he’s earning already!

Just kidding, Mauricio… congrats again *hands over cheque begrudgingly*.

1. Kokuzo – God of Wealth is Coming (Prize: US$1000)

It’s a hat-trick for this designer from Indonesia. We honestly don’t know how he does it. When we first saw this card, we thought…”Oh… finally, Franz got tired of his ridiculously intricate yet beautiful artwork!”

And then we saw the inside.

We don’t know how much time he spends on one design. Seriously. It’s so perfectly composed with an amazing attention to detail. On top of that, it’s also been a top seller at retail, and to some of our corporate clients. You might begrudge him for being a constant winner on Foldees, but no one would begrudge this design winning.

It’s absolutely stunning. (Oh and just to add to the woes of other designers, his not untalented little brother has joined us as well.)

Check out our previous interview with Franz after his first win a few months back!

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Once again, THANK YOU to all of you who participated in Zodiac Zoo!

We’ll be making some very interesting announcements next week, in particular to do with our next contest, which is going to be something totally different from what we’ve done before, so be sure to check up on us next week, and keep an eye on those inboxes.

PS: If you want to know your final position in the rankings, do drop me a mail :)

New Contest Rules – Give us your feedback!

2009-12-24T01:37:00.001-08:00

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.

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.
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).
Tweak your designs – All cards can be tweaked at any point. However, all tweaks will be monitored and moderated by us.
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 "Zodiac Zoo”

2009-12-14T07:26:00.001-08:00

5. Anacleto Avarro – Lovely Strike (Prize: US$100)

4. seafishyi – Happy Tiger Year (Prize: US$100)

3. Fox – The Animals (Prize: US$300)

PS: Oh, and great seller too. Check your royalties mate ;)

2. salchipunk – How to Celebrate the New Year (Prize: US$600)

Just kidding, Mauricio… congrats again *hands over cheque begrudgingly*.

1. Kokuzo – God of Wealth is Coming (Prize: US$1000)

And then we saw the inside.

It’s absolutely stunning. (Oh and just to add to the woes of other designers, his not untalented little brother has joined us as well.)

Check out our previous interview with Franz after his first win a few months back!

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Once again, THANK YOU to all of you who participated in Zodiac Zoo!

PS: If you want to know your final position in the rankings, do drop me a mail :)

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

2009-12-09T23:44:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-02T04:37:00.001-08:00

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?

2009-11-29T05:57:00.001-08:00

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!)

2009-11-22T02:21:00.001-08:00

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)

2009-11-05T06:23:00.001-08:00

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.

500 Days of Summer – the Foldees review

2009-10-13T06:25:00.001-07:00

First, why are we choosing to review this movie? We don’t usually review stuff here on the Foldees blog, but there are two good reasons why I’m starting now.

One. In Malaysia (our home country), it’s only showing in one cinema (UPDATE: now showing at KLCC as well as Sunway. Whee!). Yup… one. And if you ask me, not really in its target demographical area (no offense to denizens of Sunway :)). Part of the reason we love what we do here at Foldees is that it promotes underappreciated artists like yourselves, which is, in our own small way, why we’re reviewing this movie.

Two. The lead character makes greeting cards!

and Two and a half. I used to do this (review movies .. and cars, games, phones, PDAs…etc) for a living, so I kinda miss it. Indulge me.

So here we go.

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As the title indicates, the movie, told from the perspective of Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a young man, spans the 500 days of his involvement with a girl called Summer (Zooey Deschanel).

Tom, is a young man who, like alot of young men in this day and age, believes that his happiness lies in finding The One. One day, a new girl joins his greeting card company, named Summer. Upon observing that…

A. She is attractive

and

B. She likes the same music as he does…

…he does what alot of guys i know do, and falls hopelessly in love with her. He chooses to challenge the fact that Summer, the product of divorced parents, believes that committed relationships are doomed to fail once both parties settle into reality.

The gravely Morgan Freeman-esque narrator warns you up front, that it might not be a happy ending. This sets the tone for the movie, which jumps non-linearly from day 42 to day 1 to day 387 and so forth. However, unlike some movies, the time-hopping gimmick isn’t just to give the film its “indie-ness”, but to illustrate the changes in dynamic that happen over the course of a relationship.

For instance, one scene shows how a simple trip to IKEA for the couple was so much fun early in the relationship, and almost heartbreakingly please-move-on-to-the-next-scene-quick towards the end of it. It is these timely observations that make 500 Days sometimes seem like a relationship documentary, observing the plight of Tom Hansen like a chimp in its journey to find a mate.

However, don’t let that last comment make you think this is a boring observational movie. The sharp script, Ally-McBeal like surrealistic visual touches, the awesome soundtrack and incredibly charming characters make this one movie that will charm its way into your heart over a scant 93 minutes.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is boyishly charming, but with a flawed everyman quality that reminds me of John Cusack. We particularly love that he works as a copywriter for a greeting card company, so you can imagine how the words on the cards vary according to which stage of the relationship he’s in. Zooey Deschanel, whom i’ve never heard of before this movie, plays Summer perfectly, as the exact kind of girl that guys get their hearts broken on. The supporting cast, although fleeting, are also very very good.

The movie isn’t perfect though, with an ending that seems a bit too contrived in contrast to the very real feelings portrayed throughout the rest of the movie. Also, one happy dance number stretched a wee bit too long for my liking.

However, much like the girl you’re pining for, the rest of it’s so irresistible that you’re more than happy to forgive her for talking a bit of sweet nonsense just before you send her home.

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Guess what? I’m not the only Foldeesian to review this movie! Also check out this review from ZacYouth!

The ratings system – suggestions?

2009-10-10T04:34:00.001-07:00

Once again, there have been some feedback, emails and comments to suggest that our ratings system is a popularity contest. Allow me once again to re-iterate that this is EXACTLY what we’re trying to avoid.

In fact, even our Design Slut winner didn't manage to crack the Top 5, despite not only having some great designs, but also the most comments and support from his fans.

Why is this? Well, because we get raters to rate not only their friends’ cards, but others as well, we can track trends. We won’t go into the specific algorithm (to protect our own system), but needless to say, it removes votes that appear bias in any significant way.

The system, we believe, takes individual popularity out of the equation, and makes our voting system a true representative of which are the best designs in each contest. However, if you feel differently… let us know.

Leave your comments below, but play nice okay? :)

The Other Winners

2009-10-09T03:49:00.001-07:00

As is now becoming customary for Foldees, here are the ‘alternative’ winners for Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto! The first, is an award which we’ve revealed since the start of the contest.

The Design Slut (US$200)

This award goes to the designer that drove the most traffic to his own designs and his own profile. The eventual winner, had driven hundreds of visitors to his own profile (TWICE as many as his closest competitor), mainly through his website at www.photodito.com and what we can only assume is some direct slutting.

The winner is ayeisha! To help him slut some more, here are some of his designs!

Congrats ayeisha! We’re thinking of making this a monthly award. If you think that’s a good idea, place your votes in the comments for this post.

Most Awwwwwwwwwwwsome card (US$200)

This all-new award goes to the card that resulted in the longest lasting “Awwwwwww” among our colleagues. The winner in this category created an “Awwwwwwww” lasting approximately 18.2 seconds, with approximately 234 w’s. That’s a record if we ever saw one. And the winner is….

larrieeee – Messy Love

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww….

Congrats to all the winners and don’t forget to join us in our current contest! More random awards coming then…

Announcing the winners of “XMAS 2.0”

2009-10-04T11:30:00.001-07:00

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!

XMAS 2.0 (a very short contest!)

2009-09-13T08:29:00.001-07:00

Christmas is coming a little early this year! We’re running a sprint contest until October 15th 2009. This is so we can pop the cards on shelves in time for the early Christmas crowd in November.

To be honest, we have been scouring the net and every greeting card store we could find to come up with a decent theme for this year’s Christmas contest. And what have we come up with after all this exhausting research? Christmas cards are surprisingly DULL.

Here were the best ones we could find.

Oh wait… right… you guys designed these, didn’t you? :)

Anyhow, this year, we’ve come to a conclusion that it’s time for a change. Santa, Rudolph and the elves need a serious MAKEOVER! Welcome to Foldees 2nd ever Christmas contest, simply entitled…

Maybe Santa needs to get on facebook… maybe he needs some budget cuts, or perhaps an army of cyborg elves and a hover-sleigh.Come up with your envisioning of the new XMAS (either based on present or future environments) and yes, you could win more than US$2500 in cash!

The contest runs until October 15th 2009, Details at www.foldees.com/contest. Don’t wait – participate!

Paypalz4Eva!

2009-09-06T08:34:00.001-07:00

At long last, we’ve caved into the demand! Yes, we finally support PayPal. It was surprisingly difficult to integrate (cos it’s a bit more sophisticated than most payment gateways), but it’s all done now!

Enjoy, and tell all your friends about it!

If you have any issues with PayPal, we’re here to help at support@foldees.com

Our first Magazine Cover! (?)

2009-09-02T09:14:00.001-07:00

Yup, someone’s finally decided that we’re worthy of a cover… and it’s… *drum roll*…

Sure, I’m sharing the stage with three other lovely ladies, but that’s fine :) They picked the only photo where I actually look shy. Here’s an excerpt of the article.

Anyways, the article’s about being an entrepreneur, and knowing what you’re getting into. It’s a good read (if slightly scattered), so go check it out at your local newstand (that is, if you’re in Malaysia).

The finalists for “Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto”!

2009-08-24T01:05:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to all 85 finalists! There are a few more pending comfirmation, but for now, we are proud to present our biggest turnout yet for a Foldees contest! There are some truly remarkable designs this time around, that we’re sure will be a hit with our customers.

In the meantime, once again, it’s up to YOU GUYS to decide the winner! Visit www.foldees.com/ratings to vote for all 85 cards, and get yourself a free one to send ANYWHERE in the world!

Don’t forget to share the love with your facebookians, blogfans and twitterees!

Bonus prizes for Monochrome

2009-08-02T09:21:00.001-07:00

Over the past year, we’ve seen alot of designs go unrewarded. On average, we approve about 50-60 designs per contest, so essentially, only about 10% of you get significant prizes. And even then, it’s by public opinion, which means that weird, quirky cards are seldom recognised.

As such, for this contest, we wanted to change that. We want people to keep coming up with weird stuff, which is why we now have a few new awards to introduce, each worth US$100!

So, without further ado, the first award we’re giving out today is…

The “My-kid-could-paint-that!” Award

This one goes to the design that best illustrates that you don’t need a PhD in Graphic Design from the London School of Economics to win on Foldees. The design should be simple, but get the point across with an illustration that anyone could put together.

And the winner is…

You Light Up My Life
by melissachan

With about 6 months experience, you could have done this card with MSWord (although yes, we only accept AI). It’s a brilliant example of a simple concept that people appreciate simply because of it’s simplicity, echoed by the first commenter of the card - “just text, but somehow ..i like it.”

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The “Fourth-wall” Award

For this award, the user has to break what’s known as the fourth wall. This means talking to his audience in a way that makes them forget for a second that it’s just a printed greeting card. This award goes to..

Them Ol' Birthday Blues
by catpowers

Let us just say that those blotches on the right of the inside are awesome! It’s this sort of out-of-the-box thinking that we really do appreciate here at Foldees. Not to mention that when giving this card physically, it’s a great thing to be able to attribute different comments to different bugs. We’ve already used one ourselves :)

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The “How-come-it-didn’t-win-an-Award?!” Award

This award goes to the card that gives us the same feeling as going to watch “Burn After Reading” in the cinema. We’re wondering why we’re the only ones laughing, and attribute it to the weird sense of humour that was handed down by our ancestors.

Stop not laughing. Anyways, the award goes to….

Out Of Stock
by streetfx

Maybe it’s a Malaysian thing, cos you ALWAYS get this comment whenever you go to a shopping mall, simply cos the attendants are too lazy to get off their bums and look for the item for you, which is sorta like you being too lazy to go out and get your friend a gift. Whichever it is, we totally cracked up when we saw it!

And after the contest, we sort of realised that not everyone got it. Oops.

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The “What-were-you-smoking?!” Award

This award goes to the card that demonstrates best during his creation process that he was high. Without hesitation, this award goes to ….

Worried About Getting Older?
by Baskirovs

Not really much explanation needed. I’ll have what he’s having.

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We’ll be contacting you to arrange for your prizes in a bit. Congratulations again, guys… and stay whacked aight?

Winners of “Monochrome”

2009-07-30T10:56:00.001-07:00

The time has come to separate the colour-blind men from mice. As you know, Foldees received a record number of entries from MONOCHROME, a contest suggested (but not joined… tsk) by one of our current designers, jayemcee. We’re proud that a contest created for designers by designers has garnered sucha response.

Unfortunately, the new contest also means that not everyone can possibly win, so for this contest, we have yet a new winner (no, we absolutely swear that we do not doctor the results), and quite a few first-timers. Because there were quite a few commendable entries this time that didn’t win, we’ve decided that on top of the prizes that we’re announcing today, there will be a few extra prizes that we’ll be announcing over the next coupla days, so do keep watch!

Without further ado…

5. ZacYouth – Surrender Now! (Prize: US$100)

ZacYouth has joined EVERY single contest that we’ve had at Foldees, and we’re grateful for it. Of course, we’re sure he’s pretty grateful as well, since he’s won prizes in more than half of them (and came within 0.05 points of winning almost all!). His style is best recognised by the thick outlines he uses on his characters, which make them look simple and appealing, despite their intricate designs.

This latest design is a true tribute to his creativity. God knows what kind of mind would think of pills as police chasing down worms as bad guys (maybe Vitagen?), but we absolutely LOVE IT!

4. shuwan – The Power of Love (Prize: US$100)

Continuing the Malaysian fight-back is a new designer that hails from the Klang Valley (not too far from where we are). She recently wrote on her blog that after seeing her card in real-life (at one of our stores), she doesnt “care much whether I can win the contest now. I know there're designs much better than mine.”

Well, not that many, shuwan. Your simple lines and great we-are-the-world theme are just the sort of thing we, and apparently the public, love! Congratulations on your first win… we hope to see alot more coming from you.

3. ayeisha – True Color Of Love(Prize: US$300)

For some reason, we always seem to have a special place in our hearts for the third place card. Our last third place winner was one of our favourite cards in the entire contest, and such is the case again. We love the concept of this card from ayeisha, another talented designer from the Philippines.

We also love that it adheres strictly to the monochrome rule, with only black, white, and one shade of green on the cover. We also love the fact that it’s the first ever Foldees card featuring a lizard on the cover (unless you think Yoda kinda looks like one)! Incidentally, one of our staff has already used this card.

2. dezilove_09 – The Hare & The Tortoise (Prize: US$600)

We originally wanted to reject this card. Because it was so detailed that we thought it was a raster. Upon closer inspection, it’s simply an extremely detailed vector, done by a barely-legal Aussie guy.

The message is simple (with more undertones than is at first apparent), but the attention to detail, both in the lighting on the cover and the pictures on the wall on the inside are absolutely staggering. If this is an indication of what you guys can do Down Under, then we’re hoping for the Marmite invasion asap!

1. Kokuzo - You Color Up My World! (Prize: US$1000)

We were smart about this. We gave Kokuzo an iPod Classic for our last Christmas contest, and he’s been hooked ever since. His style of drawing is very very versatile, as you can see here and here, which is nice since every card is a new surprise. And no where is is versatility more apparent than in his winner entry. It’s enough nuance and attention to detail for 6 cards, so this one’s a real bargain! A few things details we really, really liked about this card

The eyebags on Tired
The rain cloud above Sad
The girlie bear has brushes hidden behind her back.
The expressions of the singing flowers

Franz, here’s hoping that you’re enjoying that iPod classic enough to join us for many, many contests to come.

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THANK YOU to all of you who participated in Monochrome! 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!

PLUS On Sunday, we’ll be revealing a few extra “Special Mention” prizes, so don’t forget to revisit the blog then.

Ratings period closed for Monochrome

2009-07-26T11:16:00.001-07:00

Ok, critics, mouses down please. The ratings period for the Monochrome greeting card contest is now closed. We will be tabulating the ratings and announcing the results on the 31st of July (maybe sooner if we’re itchy!). Keep tabs on the results at www.foldees.com/contest/monochrome.

In the meantime, if you’re feeling itchy, the deluge of entries has already started for Mr. Roboto! Hurry and submit your entry early for a better chance at better feedback from us! Submissions close on 15th August. Here’s a preview of some of the entries we’ve already received (some of these are not finalised or confirmed as yet).

Sweet.

Foldees now in 4 new stores!

2009-07-12T11:38:00.001-07:00

Slowly but surely, we are taking over the world.

Foldees recently signed a deal with Designer Greetings and Precious Thots to place our cards in their shops, conveniently located in some of the busiest malls in the Klang Valley.

The guys that run these companies are a really fun bunch of women, who share one thing in common with us – a love for this little rock we live on. Not only do they recycle boxes, minimise use of plastic and conserve energy – but they even have a box of earthworms in the back of their warehouse to process compost! How cool (ewww, but wicked) is that!? We didn’t have our camera on the last visit, but we’ll be sure to make a return trip down to find out how these little earthworms change everyday trash into the best natural fertiliser and insecticide in the world.

So if you need a card in a rush, or don’t have a credit card, do look for our cards (guilt-free!) at Designer Greetings and Previous Thots stores in Mid Valley Megamall, 1 Utama Shopping Centre and Bangsar Village! Check out all our retail locations here on our new Store Locations page.

Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto! Greeting Card Contest

2009-07-05T11:41:00.001-07:00

I have a confession. Due to time constraints, and severe lack of talent, I have never drawn anything on the site (aside from buttons and text). I know, i know... it's quite shameless seeing as how I own the world's only vector-art greeting card site. So anyway, I finally caved in to the guilt, had some spare time today, and started work on this simple little poster.

Whaddaya think? Not too bad right? Well, ok, shutup. Stop laughing.

Anyways, welcome to the new contest. We figured what kinda greeting card company called Energon wouldn’t run a contest using robots right? With all the interest in Transformers and WALL-E lately, we figured it was about time anyway.

So the contest? Yup. Robot-themed cards. Mechanised birthdays, cyborg party girls, whatever your sick (and sometimes brilliant) minds can conjure!

You can find out more about it here. Deadline is August 12th 2009 so GET CRACKING!

The Designer Widget is done!

2009-07-02T11:47:00.001-07:00

We’re proud to announce the launch of designer widgets. It’s been long overdue, and for that we apologise. In fact, it’s been so long overdue that some of our designers have even come up with their own versions of the widget.

Anyways, as pretty as that one is, we’ve decided to come up with our own! This one’s not explicitly for voting, but more for you designer people to highlight your designs to visitors on your blog. Yes, it’s just part of the little service we offer. Anyways, without further ado, here it is!

Yes, given that they do look just a wee bit similar, but isn't ours groovy?! If you’re a Foldees designer, you can add yours by going to http://www.foldees.com/widgets. You need to be logged in though.

Also, it’s using iframes, so that while Blogger is a cinch (and right now is the only officially supported blog), it means that myspace and wordpress are going to be tough, but we’re looking into that at the moment. In the meantime, if you have any other blogs that you’re using that you’d like to embed this on, let us know and we’ll try to the best of our ability to figure out a way for you.

Do let us know your thoughts on the widget. It’s our first, so we’re pretty sure there are ways to improve it. Once again, you can grab your customised widget code here.

PLAY NICE: Part Two

2009-06-28T10:00:00.001-07:00

Guys, we’ve been noticing some comments being posted on some of the designs that clearly do not classify as either compliment or constructive criticism. While we’re not deleting them yet (because they are short, and thus far decent), do note that we will be taking a closer look should the situation escalate.

Please refer to our earlier blog posting about the dos and don’ts of commenting. Essentially, it follows what mummy used to say. If you ain’t got anything nice to say, then don’t say it. Unless you think it will help the artist improve his future submissions to our site. Speaking of which, if you’d like to leave a nice compliment to the designer, do check out our new Designer Profile Pages.

On another note, if you guys haven’t noticed yet, a few last-minute entries have been added into the running for this contest. Most of them were in less than three days after ratings commenced, so they shouldn’t be affected in terms of the overall result. One design has also been removed from the running due to use of non-original vectors, although the designer’s other submissions have been kept for now.

That’s all for now! Happy Rating!

Designer Profile Pages now active!

2009-06-21T03:54:00.001-07:00

By popular request, we have now launched Designer Profile Pages! You can access them by clicking on the designer names in most places that you see em! Here are some profile samples featuring a few of our designers who have quite a number of designs :)

www.foldees.com/designers/fox

www.foldees.com/designers/mdavidct

www.foldees.com/designers/milkberry

It’s quite basic now, but we’ll be adding more features as we go along! In the meantime, one of the most important features is that we’ve also included your designer URLS on the back of every card we sell!

This means that if the recipient or sender likes your card, they can now visit your personal profile, leave you a message, or better yet, buy more of your cards! This applies to cards bought both online, and at our ever expanding retail presence (more on this next week!).

Yes yes, we love you too.

75 confirmed entries PLUS a few more to come!

2009-06-18T13:47:00.001-07:00

As you might have guessed from the recent flurry of activity on our site, the MONOCHROME contest has been a real barnstormer for Foldees. We received more than 200 entries this time, of which, a select range of 75 have been initially picked. A few more will be added in the coming days, but if you think your entry should be up here, do drop us an email at design@foldees.com and we’ll be more than happy to check it out for you.

First off, apologies to those who did not receive feedback, or who missed the contest deadline. For the former, unfortunately, when all the entries come in at the eleventh hour, it’s difficult for us to provide quality feedback to everyone (although most of you will know that we’ve tried our damndest!). For the latter, we will be revising our rules to ensure minimum confusion next time.

Anyways, a great big huggy thank you to all those who submitted entries for our contest this time around, and congratulations to those who’ve already made it through! We’ll definitely be offering some bonus prizes this time around, so keep your ears to the ground, and tell all your friends to come in and help us pick a winner!

Also, we’ve provided this nifty Latest Comments tool for you guys so that you don’t have to keep refreshing the same pages. We’ve barely tested it before releasing it, but we wanted to make sure it was out in time to help you keep track of the usual flurry of comments once the ratings period begins.

AND thanks to Kokuzo for guessing that YES, we were very busy, cos there were some last minute technical details that we needed to fix with some of the cards before we uploaded them. And thanks to all of you for your patience :)

Enjoy the ratings period as usual. ONE FREE CARD per full round of ratings, so go get em, tigers!

All cards for A-Buck-A-Piece

2009-06-16T09:57:00.001-07:00

To commemorate the loss of our milk teeth, Foldees.com is offering all our cards at US$1.00 a piece! If you’re looking to stock up on Birthdays for the rest of the year, now is the time!

Check out www.foldees.com for details. Offer ends July 1st 2009!

FOLDEES turns ONE!

2009-06-16T09:46:00.001-07:00

Wow. Time sure passes quickly when you’re having fun and losing hair. I can’t believe it’s already been 365 days since we launched the site. June 17th 2008 was the date we launched www.foldees.com with our first contest, “We Are All Geeks”.

I remember, we were very insecure back then. Would anyone join our contest? What if the designs were crap? What if our engine was buggy and people didn’t get to submit.

And then I remember the excitement, when my programmer said that within 5 minutes of launching the site, we got our first visitors (mostly friends, and friends of friends…), and by morning, 12 hours later, 200 people had already seen www.foldees.com!

Those were very very exciting times, and if there’s one thing I’m totally honest about, it’s still really exciting today. For me, this is my first time out starting a company, so it’s a nice feeling when things go well (if not entirely according to plan). Today, we boast a collection of over 200 designs (not even including our massive new contest, Monochrome), from a massive pool of designers from 30 countries. We also sell cards all the way across the globe from Toronto to New Delhi.

However, enough about the present. To commemorate our first birthday, I would like to share with you five things you probably didn’t know about Foldees.com

1. Foldees is owned by a company called Energon Sdn. Bhd.

First person who answers a comment in here with the origins of that name gets a free card. Here’s our logo to give you a hint.

2. Foldees.com was formed in Chili’s BSC

I still remember this day well. I called up my two potential partners, Alvin and Noel, both my high school mates, and told them I had something very important to discuss with them. I used dinner at Chili’s as bribery for them to come. When they arrived, I handed them a basic 5-page brief to both of them as I laid out my grandiose plans of being the Threadless of greeting cards. They were excited enough to commit on the spot. Here’s a shot from that first “company dinner”,

3. Foldees is funded by the Malaysian government

After that first meeting (you can see the business plan on the table!), we immediately set about applying for the MDEC Technopreneur’s Pre-seed grant, which after 3 months of paperwork, awarded us RM150,000 (approximately US$40,000) to start our little site.

Incidentally, the grant is still active for those who want to make their ideas a reality. It’s a great programme that’s really helping to foster an entire generation of entrepreneurs in Malaysia, so make sure you check it out!

4. Foldees was originally called Baweet

What the heck is a Baweet? Well basically, we are humoungous nerds (in case you couldn’t tell) who idolised the Transformers movie. If you’re like us, you’ll know we’re not talking about the AllSpark, but the Matrix of Leadership. Yup, that’s right.

The original Transformers movie cartoon, where all 80s kids learnt the horrible truth. Transformers can actually die (OMG!?!).

Anyways, one of the running themes in that cartoon was a phrase used by Hot Rod and Kup, “Baweet granna weet ninnibon!” which was used as a universal greeting to show good intentions at all the planets they visited. Universal Greeting? what a perfect name for the website! Except that no one could pronounce it. So that’s why we settled on Foldees. Incidentally, it was originally spelt as Foldies, until someone indicated to us that it kinda sounded like “F*** Oldies”.

5. We went through (and sorta fired) 3 designers before even launching our website.

The first was an ex-girlfriend of mine (probably a mistake doomed from the start). She gave us our first logo, which is of our original name, Baweet, but we eventually could not afford her services.

The second designer was a talented freelancer called Maeka, who came up with the Foldees logo that we’ve all come to know and love. He then went on the become an art director for some big shot agency and was never heard from again. Here are some of his mis-steps before the masterpiece.

The third was a quiet, reserved magazine designer from The Edge named Jun Kit, who came up with the early versions of the Foldees website. Although it has evolved quite a bit since then, you can see from this screenshot that the basic ideas were from him .

Wow. Just like a relationship, your first anniversary always brings back a flood of memories. Eating cup noodles at 6am in the morning to stay awake, playing Burnout in between writing our business plan… etc.

I’d just like to thank my two programmers, my financial dude, MDEC, our talented designers, all the people who’ve helped us along the way and all you people out there reading this for your continued support of our humble little greeting card site.

Thank you for taking my little dream this far.

Chak

Founder&Fluffy Vision Guy

www.foldees.com

Monochrome now closed! Come back on June 18th to help us rate!

2009-06-11T11:04:00.001-07:00

Sorry guys, we’re closing the doors on time again. Yup, for those of you new to Foldees, we previously had a tradition of extending our contests (check here, and here ) for various reasons, but ever since the last contest, we’ve been dead serious about our deadlines and it’s paid off!

This time around, we’ve been receiving a few entries EVERY DAY since the 2nd week of the contest, and the response to this contest has been the BEST EVER. We’re still doing a final count of entries, so wait a coupla days to check out who you’re competing with this time.

Also, if you’re from Malaysia, do check your mailbox for a little something from us ;)

Most importantly, don’t forget to come back on June 18th 2009 to help us rate the cards!

Thanks to everyone for submitting your cards to our little contest!

Why the name change?

2009-05-24T12:20:00.001-07:00

Did you even notice? Here. Look at this.

Yup, we probably wouldn’t have either. Which is precisely why we wanted to change our tagline since June 2008 - “Designer Greeting Cards” to “the ongoing greeting card contest”.

Why? Well here’s the typical conversation when someone receives our namecard.

“So uh… what do you guys do?”

“We do designer greeting cards. It’s sort of a crowd-sourced models where we recruit user-created designs via mont-..”

“Oh! so you design greeting cards!”

“Uh no, actually the really interesting thing is that we don’t actually have any desi-…”

“Wow… that’s great. I’ll check it up sometime! Seeya later!”

“-gners on board with us wait where are you goin oh ok just check us out and ask all your friends to join our contest okay?”

At the time that we wanted the most all-encompassing name that didn’t restrict us, and yet (we thought) conveyed what we were about. I think sometimes running a business or a project requires a level of humility, so this is it. We made a mistake, and we’d love to do what we always to, and try something new for size!

So anyway, we decided to try the name change at Unconference in Singapore. And by golly, did it make a difference!

Conversations were so much shorter, and people were instantly interested in the concept!

“So uh… what do you guys d-… Oh!… the ongoing greeting card contest?”

“Yup! We offer cash prizes in regular contests that recruit designs from designers all over the world”

“And you sell ‘em online?”

“…and through retail, which we’re expanding on now.”

“Wow… what a fulfilling conversation! I’ll be sure to tell all my lady friends about you!”

“Sure thing, sweet cheeks. *spank*”

So, as you can see, the change is clear! Anyways, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject!

Unconference 2009 – Singapore kinda rocks.

2009-05-18T08:29:00.001-07:00

As those who have been following our Twitter or Facebook feeds might know, we recently got invited to a manic meeting of entrepreneurial minds in neighbouring Singapore called Unconference 2009. The entire Foldees team actually hoofed it down from KL over the weekend, and are now thoroughly exhausted, and thoroughly amazed at what an exciting weekend it has been.

The first thing that amazed us was the venue. Much as its name indicates, the Biopolis is a purpose-built bio-research facility. The minute to enter the compound (which is HUGE!), you get the feeling you’ve just walked onto the set of Gattaca (below photo courtesy of Henry Leong).

Here’s my best impression of Ethan Hawke at the ground floor of the Biopolis…

Hmm.. ok. Well, moving on.

The Unconference itself was held at the MATRIX block, and took up a whopping 3 floors! Despite being called an unconference, the event was surprisingly structured, with keynotes, breakout sessions, pitches and of course, the display booths, which is where we were. I think the whole naming thing is just to con us entrepreneurs into coming – which we’re damn glad we did.

Our agenda this weekend? Gain a foothold into Singapore, and launch @ddress. Here are a few shots of our booth, which consisted of two buntings…

…a greeting card stand with some of your ol favourites, and a plug to our contest!

And the smallest cocktail table EVER, where were were showcasing the @ddress function. We made our table a little bit less corporatey with our lime green tablecloth.

Also, we were giving out these wicked customisable stickers… Here’s one we gave to our neighbouring booth, fellow Malaysian startup, Elevyn.com.

In a nutshell, we were swamped! There were at least 4 people talking to both myself and Alvin the entire time, and the general consensus was that we needed to move into Singapore, both in terms of designers to recruit, and cards to sell! Despite totally ignoring the card stand (which we were incidentally selling cards at S$4.00 a pop), we sold a ton of cards as well!

We also made some very important contacts, for whom we will be working out some very interesting collaborations in the coming months, which we are unreasonably excited about!

If there was one key thing we took away from Unconference 2009, it is that us Malaysians could learn a thing or two from our Singaporean counterparts.

First, the organisers, e27, did an amazing job of not only organising this conference, but getting bigshots from Cisco, Google, SalesForce and Skype to come down and share their insights. This is above and beyond anything I’ve seen in KL, and great both in terms of exposure and education for us. Kudos to Mohan and the rest of his team.

Tragically, they actually made a loss on the event, due to a last minute cut in budget from a sponsor. So to those who didn’t want to shell out S$ for your tickets, shame on you (unless you were one of the awesome volunteers! Thanks Niyi for providing us loose change when we ran out!)

Also, the other startups were just jaw-dropping. From what we’ve seen, Singapore has a much more vibrant scene than our own, with loads of awesome projects, mostly from people so young it makes the Foldees team look like a coupla grumpy old men in an old pub talking about the good ol days. These guys have built up some fantastic products with minimal funding, while studying for their university exams! It’s absolutely amazing!

We’re gonna cover these guys instead of the more prominent ones that went for the pitch, since they’ve probably been covered enough in places like this. Rest assured that the pitches were almost uniformly excellent, but what I want to tell you about were the smaller startups that were no less amazing.

One such example is CareerAlbum.com, a startup created by some very young people that is basically a social-media enabled jobsite.

How they differentiate themselves is through providing job-hunters with more ways to convince potential employers (integration with LinkedIn, video and music file linking), and employers with more information by which to make educated choices in terms of who they want to hire.

On top of designing this amazing site, one of the girls, Shuyan also has a wicked design for a wallet, which I wanted the moment I saw it.

And now, I’ve GOT IT! Thank you shuyan for SMS-ing me the details of where to get it after the event. Much much appreciated!

Another really cool startup we saw was Phokki.com, which acts as a sort of online version of a street-side portrait sketcher, except that they use vectors instead of pencils and a pad.

They also offer those same vectorizing services at 25 photo outlets in Singapore! Yes, we’re already in talks with them about distribution of Foldees cards at those same outlets :) Also, if you’re curious, the name of the site was created specifically to make you snigger like you just did 5 seconds ago.

Further down the hall, were a bunch of really enthusiastic er… kids, led by this efferverscent Chinese guy named Casper. Yes, he was certainly friendly, coming by our booth 4 times to take the “I WISH YOU” Stickers. The first one I wrote for him said “I WISH YOU WOULD PLAY GAMES WITH ME” because that’s what Casper does, with GameMo, a company that specialises in Mobile gaming.

What’s really interesting about GameMo is that they offer both the option of Ad-supported free gaming, as well as pay-to-play, an option that most providers stay away from. This gives users the flexibility of Try-before-you-buy, which isn’t available at the moment.

Another really cool startup (albeit without a profit model) was FFFFoundtape.com, which can grab music from ANY site, and allow you to forever drag it into your own customised playlist, that you can share with anybody. HOW COOL IS THAT!?

The only problem with the site is no clear business model. Yup, it’s run by a bunch of really idealistic people, and we here at Foldees absolutely understand that. However, in the long run, you still need some cash, so you guys should probably hook up with these guys… www.cravecharts.com cos they have a pretty good business model.

Lastly, but not leastly (if there’s such a word, which according to Blogger, there isn’t), is Foliohouse, ironically the first startup we met since they were our neighbours. The site’s not up yet, but we got a sneak peek at it.

Doesn’t it kinda look like Foldees except more orange? That’s cos the concept is very similar to our own! It’s called an Artist Incubation Project, and aims to use contests and events to recruit a bunch of designers to their site, and match those artists to corporate work (this is the part that’s not so much like us). We can’t wait!

----------------------------------------------

Anyways, that was what we remembered from Unconference2009, which is probably at least in part due to the fact that we were standing and talking the whole day on 3 hours of sleep. To those startups that we didn’t feature, please don’t get mad at us. We need to rest too, so we can’t cover everybody :)

Speaking of which, we’re going to catch up on some now.

Ok Singapore, Good night from KL.

Sell Out!

2009-05-12T01:49:00.001-07:00

Barely two weeks ago, I blogged about how talent in Malaysia is being lost to other countries due to lack of local support. I also wrote that most examples of popular art needs to be validated overseas before it becomes a hit here. Lo and Behold, here is a perfect example.

Sell Out is a film written and directed by a fairly new Malaysian director named Yeo Joon Han. It tells the story of four characters – an unpopular but ambitious arts show host, an ambitious but unsupported product designer, and two wacky CEOs of the FONY corporation. Their stories are linked together by a common theme of what should be sacrificed in the pursuit of the bottom line.

And here’s the overseas validation.

WINNER - Young Cinema Award for Alternative Vision, Venice Film Festival

WINNER - NETPAC Award, Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival

Best Film of the Venice Critics Week 2008 --Italian Critics Poll, Cineforum

“a gem from Malaysia” - Gertzan Zuilhof, The New Straits Times

“A story of our time. … humourous, wink-filled comedy” - -Kong Rithdee, The Bangkok Post

"a film that involves and constantly surprises the audience" - Jury, Young Cinema Award

"punchy songs and comic routines" - Derek Elley, Variety

"the daffiness and enthusiasm are infectious… one of 10 best films of 2008 not yet released in the USA” - David Walsh, the World Socialist Web Site

"moments of pure brilliance that let you know Yeo Joon Han will be around
for a very long time" - Matthew Tsang, Schema Magazine

"a film that (feels) really new" - Emma Engstrom, the Gotenborgs-Posten
(Swedish press)

"an infectious energy, brilliant at all levels" - Jean Noel Nicolau, Ecran Large

“Sell Out! is one week’s worth of laughter in 110 minutes” - Now News, Taiwan

"the biggest surprise of the festival!" - Taipei Golden Horse Festival

C’mon, admit it… you want to watch it more now, doncha? Well, here’s your chance to support the local industry, and have a darned good time as well. The movie’s currently playing in Golden Screen Cinemas all around Kuala Lumpur, so do be sure to catch it this week or next, because I doubt it’ll be playing for very long.

Our personal take on the movie? It’s a sequence of really well-executed, and really funny scenes. The cinematography, framing and soundtrack are fantastic, and the script is as sharp and witty as the actors. One thing we really liked about the movie was that it’s one of the few Malaysian movies to truly portray our quirky version of English correctly. Most other films I’ve seen always sound too American or British, or lampoon our version of English (called Manglish) until it becomes a caricature.

If there were one criticism to the film, it would be that it feels a little patchy sometimes with the way it weaves the stories of the four characters into each other, unlike Ciplak, which concentrated only on one guys story', and was all the more focused because of it.

Still, it’s a staggering achievement for Malaysian film-making, simply because it’s not just an arty indie-house flick, but the sort of flick that can entertain audiences at the Guangzhou Film Fest as much as at your local packed cineplex.

And that shows us, at least, that there is truly a balance between artistic direction and commercial viability. How’s that for an ironic lesson? Now if we could only get people to plonk down a tenner to watch a local movie.

What are you waiting for?

Sellout official movie site

Sellout Facebook Group

BookBinder Designs

2009-05-07T01:52:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a woman called Sonia, who owns a shop in Bangsar Shopping Centre saying that she was interested in getting a consignment of Foldees cards. The first thought that came to my head was “What the heck is a consignment!?”.

And that concludes today’s lesson in world domination. Anyways, as some of you might know, Foldees cards so far have only ever sold at the odd bazaar (really well, we might add!) and InQBox@One Utama.

Well, after we met Sonia (a lovely little Irish-Malay girl), we found out that she owns a small chain (well, two branches at least) of shops called BookBinder Design. It’s actually a Swedish franchise of stores, that specialise in premium paperworks stuff, like greeting cards, gift boxes, photo albums and the lot.

Here’s the front of the store, with the two very helpful assistants, Liza and Marina (hope i got that right!). I really do like that quote on the wall.

Walking around the store, we love the colours they use, and the in-no-way-random order that they’ve been placed in. Very nice attention to detail.

EVERYTHING is placed very very precisely where it should be. So much so that it actually looks like the interface for Photoshop or something.

If there’s one thing you should check out in the shop, it’s the notebooks, which are absolutely AWESOME, particularly these endless hairball ones.

Also, these giftboxes finally make sense out of throwing the gift away and keeping the box (which in this case, might actually cost MORE than the gift… *ahem*)

Wait, did we say greeting cards?

OMG! Foldees is now selling at Bangsar Shopping Centre! According to Sonia, since we put them up less than 24 hours ago, they’ve already sold a couple!

And next week, we’ll also be moving into Bookbinder Design’s other branch, in Parkson, Pavillion. Look out for that, and more as Foldees endures to come to a branch near you!

In the meantime, BookBinder Designs has been gracious enough to give us 25 x RM25 vouchers for their BSC store, which we’ll be giving to the first 25 designers to get approved designs for our new contest, Monochrome. So hurry and get those designs in NOW (only valid for people who are in Malaysia, unfortunately).

Be a fan of Bookbinderdesigns on Facebook!

The Monochrome Greeting Card Contest (first 25 designers get RM25 Bookbinder Design Vouchers!)

2009-05-05T09:05:00.001-07:00

Yup, it’s contest time again! This time around, we’re challenging designers to an exercise in simplicity, using only one colour (and black and white are not colours which means you can use black, white and one colour).

What kinds of designs are we looking for? Any kind! Although if you’re unsure, we’d probably prefer that you stick to staples like Birthdays, Flirty, Get Well, or Friendship cards.

Please keep in mind that we’ll be keeping an extra sharp eye on not just design, but card themes that make use of the “Monochrome” theme. The official rule for now is that the cover must only be of one colour (not including black and white), but the inside of the card has no limitations on colour, except the usual Foldees rule of strictly vector art only. This means you can go wild with plays on the names of the colours you’re using… like Seeing red, feeling blue and so forth. If you’re not sure about the theme, or need help with an idea for your design, do hit us at design@foldees.com and we’d be more than happy to help you out.

Also, if you're planning on adopting an idea that uses copyrighted materials, please be aware that we have strict rules regarding the use of such materials. Be sure to read our guide regarding copyrighted materials in the FAQ first before submitting.

Monochrome was a contest suggestion from jayemcee, voted by the designers themselves through our Open to Suggestion initiative!

As usual, we’d ask you to submit your entries early, but this time, we’ve got something BIG to put the fire down your pants! In conjunction with the recent partnership of Foldees and Bookbinder Designs (more on this tomorrow), the lovely people there have decided that they’d like to support the design community by offering FREE RM25 VOUCHERS at BOOKBINDER DESIGNS, redeemable at Bangsar Shopping Centre for the first 25 designers who have successfully moderated designs in our contest!

BookBinder Designs is actually a Swedish firm that sells really pretty stuff like picture frames, customisable calendars, photobooks, gift boxes and of course, greeting cards! Unfortunately, this deal only applies to BookBinder Designs in Malaysia, so only designers based in Malaysia will be given the vouchers. Yes we love the rest of you too… and will get you something for the next contest,k?

So hurry and get those designs in! We’re giving one voucher per designer, not per design, so multiple submissions will still only net you one voucher.

Check out our spanking new Contest Page at www.foldees.com/contest for further details! Submissions period ends 11th June 2009!

The Winners of “Where No Man Has Gone Before”

2009-05-04T09:58:00.001-07:00

*drum roll*

It’s time once again to announce our winners. First off, some really interesting facts about our recent contest.

For the fifth time, we have a new winner! So far, the winner of the Foldees contest has never been the same.
Every other winner in the top 5 has won a prize on Foldees before.
Foldees now has 95 designers from 29 different countries
For the first time ever, no Malaysians made it into the Top 5 (although one of our winner is a native Malaysian now located elsewhere)
Out of 42 cards, 8 were about star wars (what , no space invaders!?)

So, now that we’ve whetted your appetite for what lies ahead, let’s set the warp drive for “Tooth-pulling” and awayyyyy we go…

5. Kokuzo – Rabbit on the Moon (Prize: US$100)

A very cool idea with a difficult birth. Kokuzo (or Franz, in real life) must’ve sent this file to us a bazillion times before we ended up with what you see before you. The idea of an alien wearing a bunny suit is just so darned cute that it was damn near impossible not for him to win something this time around!

4. salchipunk – The Birthday Machine! (Prize: US$100)

Since winning our Christmas contest last year, our little Mexican friend has not stepped off the podium yet, scoring a 2nd, and now a 4th place. And it’s not difficult to see why… with his clean, cutesy, cartoony art style matched with an equally clean, cutesy brand of humour, Mauricio looks like he’ll be sweeping up for some time to come.

3. noelevz – Yoda’s Birthday (Prize: US$300)

We’re not ones to play favourites, or choose winners (we let you guys do that!) but when we saw this card, we knew it was going to be a winner. The simplicity of the play on Yoda’s inability to show age is perfect! As such, this placing so highly is once again proof that the crowd-rated model works just the way we want it to! Congrats Emmanuel!

2. Milkberry – Alien Probing (Prize: US$600)

We’ve said it many times before, but we absolutely LOVE milkberry’s art-style. Her cards are still some of our retail top sellers, and if you look at them, you’ll understand why. It’s a very confident, clean style that doesn’t try to be too shouty, but rather takes the approach of less being more. The wistful look on the bunny (why do Foldees designers like bunnies so much?) is a great example of this.

1. rocknrolla – Astroman! (Prize: US$1000)

And for the fourth time, Foldees.com has a new winner! Ladies and gentlemen, rocknrolla… who hails from Serbia! This design reminded me instantaneously of that awesome old cartoon series on Nickelodeon. Once again, much like the previous Foldees contest winners, it showcases a very neat and clean style, with a clear and simple idea conveyed across two pages.

A little surprise :)

Congratulations once again to our winners! Also, even though we did not reach our targetted 100 new designers, we have decided to award the SHOTGUN award to Mdavict for making it through with a total of FIVE kickass designs, most of which scored very well, and just marginally missed out on the main prize money! Well not anymore… we’re awarding you with the prize of US$200 for your efforts!

Congratulations to all the winners! We’ll be contacting you shortly. Just a quick note before we go - despite our international aspirations, we’d LOVE to see the revenge of Malaysian designers in our next contest, which will be announced tomorrow. In fact, we have a surprise incentive for Malaysian designers ONLY, so make sure you come back tomorrow to check that out!

Don’t wait, participate!

Two Close!

2009-04-30T12:36:00.001-07:00

We love puns.

Sorry to keep this really brief, but we’ve been up to our necks trying to close some rather big deals this week. If things go well, you’ll soon be seeing our cards popping up just about EVERYWHERE! More on that next week…

Anyways, a Foldees first today - Two contests closing on the same day! The first is, of course, the “Open For Suggestion” contest running to decide what our next contest will be. Do continue to speculate on who might win in our forums… there seems to be quite a bit of controversy going on there already…

The 2nd one is the close of our ratings period for “Where No Man Has Gone Before”.

Results for both these contests, as well as our new contest announcement will be on the 5th of May 2009 so stay tuned!

We’re losing talent!

2009-04-23T11:16:00.001-07:00

Two days ago, a friend sent me a link to www.stardrawing.org, a site that basically covers talent around the Asian region. I immediately checked out the segment for Malaysian artists and at first, i was once again in awe of the amount of sheer talent available here in our country. Then after reading a while, I noticed a trend.

“…she was born and raised Malaysia and graduated at The One Academy. She currently works in Shanghai as an Interact…”

“…Han, is a Malaysian artist currently living in Singapore and working for Lucasfi…”

“..he is currently based in Singapore, working in Imaginary F…”

To be really blunt about it, Malaysia seems to be losing talent, and I’d betcha, it’s not just for graphic design either. For instance, many of our filmmakers need to make it overseas first before they even get a smidgen of respect here in Malaysia.

Back when I worked in a certain men’s magazine, I had the privilege of watching a movie called Ciplak, by a guy called Khai. It was about one guy’s quest to fund his way through film school by selling pirated DVDs from Malaysia in the UK.

The film, shot on a budget of RM10,000 (approximately US$3000) had bad sound, amateur actors, and overall atrocious production values.

It was, however, the best Malaysian movie i have seen. Well-cut, well-scripted, thought-provoking and funny as hell, Ciplak was a revelation for me. The best compliment i can pay to the movie is that after 15 minutes, you forget about the lousy sound, the lousy production values, and the fact that the lead actor is your friend.

It was released for about a week on GSC International Screens (how ironic!) and when I went to watch it again in the cinema (I’ve seen it 3 times now!), i dragged 5 unwilling friends with me. They all enjoyed it. However, there were only 5 other people behind us in the whole cinema, and eventually we found out that they belonged to the cast and crew, who had acted and worked for free on the movie.

Ciplak eventually didn’t get anywhere notable at all. A very sad state of affairs. His current film is called “London Calling”, which i can only assume is going to lead him out of the country just like everyone else.

What i find in this country is a lack of faith, almost to the point of insecurity about our own talents. We need other people to tell us they’re good before we believe them. This reflects across all industries, but perhaps none more so than design.

Another sucky thing about alot of Malaysian employers is this “If he’s passionate it means that he’s cheap!” mentality, thinking that pure passion will pay the bills. While designers will usually do the work here, sooner or later, they hear about the greener pastures over at our neighbours down South and next thing you know, our complaints of a dearth of talent become a self-fulfilling policy.

This is part of the reason why I came up with Foldees. We want to create an eco-system for you guys to thrive. We want to reward artists, not just with credibility, but cold hard cash.

This gives them the willingness, and resources to continue whatever they’re doing, where they’re doing it, in the way that makes them unique to who and where they are, and hopefully, the world can benefit from that :)

The finalists for Foldees “Open To Suggestion” contest

2009-04-16T12:15:00.001-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemammys... here are the finalists to the Foldees "Open To Suggestion" Contest! For those who don't know about it, this contest was conceived because we felt our own ideas for contests were getting stale, and we wanted to hear what you guys would like to do! We received a total of 63 entries for the contest, which we've narrowed down to the ten you see below.

Just for clarification, these ten entries are picked not only from ingenuity, but also commercial and creative viability. Some of the entries were truly brilliant, but perhaps a bit too niche for a small site like ours. For instance, cards with a very specific target in mind (e.g. working dads) might not sell as well as other ideas that formed a broader scope.

Also, for the ideas that were similar, we took the one that was posted first.
However, if you don't see your entry here, or even if you don't end up winning this contest, fret not! We will be picking up a few of your ideas for future contests for sure, and will be sure to drop a little something something to show our gratitude. In the meantime, here are the top ten entries, and why we picked them!

WE ARE FOODIES - If there are two things we love, it's food and people! This was a concept we ourselves were thinking of, and we figured could get really yummy and messy given the right ideas. If this is picked, all we're asking for is at least ONE card related to cannibals. Not too much to ask is it?
A LITTLE PICK-YOU-UP - Pick-up lines in cards!? That's so brilliant we don't even have to say anything on top of it. We can just imagine some of you guys buying 20 of these, bringing them into a club and presenting them on the spot. Our favourite pickup line is "You are the rose, I am the thorn. Without your bloom, my prick's forlorn". But uh... don't use that one, okay?
FAIRYTALE - Another idea we were thinking of. Shrek is one of our all-time favourite movies and goes to show that there's ALOT of potential for poking fun at old fairy tales.
EXCUSES, EXCUSES - This theme would be great for everyday use cards. Especially in Malaysia where "I was late because" cards would be all the rage. However, there's a danger alot of the cards would be too niche to be too commercial, so we would probably have to come up with a few pre-emptive categories such as "Sorry I didn't make it on time" or "Sorry I was in a bad mood".
STREET ARTS - Graffiti! This should lend us some street cred... no more cutesy cuddly aliens! Foldees will be all about keepin' it real... know what'm sayin?
THE WRONG WAY - This one will take some serious ingenuity from our designers. It's a great idea for a contest, but it will be difficult. Think before you vote!
FROM THE SCREEN - Well, this one was coming sooner or later, wasn't it? Three people suggested this, so we're just taking the first one. Goodbye cards featuring Arnie saying his immortal lines? No brainer.
LET THE CARDS SPEAK - This one is very very cool. Conveying a greeting without so many words gives alot of opprtunities. Anyone ever heard of Silent Disco here? Or how about a Charlie Chaplin card? Also, you wouldn't even need to worry about grammar!
MONOCHROME - As you guys already know very well by now, we love simplicity here at Foldees, and it doesn't get more simple than just one colour. We're just salivating at thinking about how incredibly striking this collection would look in a store.
FADS - Bell-Bottoms and Hula Hoops! We think nostalgia cards would be a totally awesome trip down memory lane (*pun*)! Of course, the designs would have to cater to that era, but there's a heckuva lot of potential here!
Honourable mention goes to Milkberry, for her postcard suggestion. It's brilliant, but we just don't have the infrastructure to support it with our current engine.

Please cast your votes on our recently cleansed forum! As you might know by now, your login details (username and password) have already been transferred from our main site to the forum, so you don't need to register again. All you need to do is login with your current details. If you're having any problems with logging in to the forum, please email us at support@foldees.com!

29 countries. Wow.

2009-04-12T12:05:00.001-07:00

In a random scanning of our database, we realised that we are now displaying designs from 29 different countries. Holy crud. That’s ALOT!

Here they are in no particular order from A-Z

Wow. This calls for a celebration. NAME ME FIVE COUNTRIES FROM THIS LIST in the comments of this post (that haven’t been mentioned yet) and I’ll give you a free FOLDEES coupon! If you’re naming the last 4, I’ll give you not only the card, but I’ll throw in something else special ;)

Hmm… still nothing from Kenya? C’mon guys… you’ve already taken my name. Give somethin back!

In other news, we’ve extended our little “Open To Suggestion” contest till this thursday. Check it out here!

KL Design Week 2009

2009-04-07T08:16:00.001-07:00

I didn’t even know CapSquare existed until last week. It’s blocked by uncool buildings all around, so it’s pretty freaky to see what I can only describe as a full design district in the middle of old (not rustic, just old) buildings.

Anyways, I’m glad someone posted something up about KL Design Week, so I eventually ended up taking a quiet stroll of the exhibitions there last Friday. Just to reaffirm Foldees’ beliefs – there is some serious talent here in Malaysia, just waiting to be discovered. While I did see ALOT of cool stuff there, I just really wanted to tell you guys about two booths that are doing really interesting things in the design space here in KL.

The first booth we visited was for a company called Genesis Culture. They are a T-shirt company that sells t-shirts made by designers. Sound familiar? Well, not quite. Genesis Culture defers from the other website that starts with a T, in that they approach specific designers, and ask them to do a limited edition run of exclusive designs for them, in exchange for a cut of the pie.

They were selling two series of designs that day – a Black&White abstract series from Dennis called Sin, and a totally cool series of Zombie T-shirts called The Dreamwalker from a guy called Daryl.

I really liked the zombie shirts. Like seriously. In fact, I bought two of em, each for a very reasonable RM50 (the equivalent of about US$15). They retail for about US$25 on the site. Each shirt features a large colour illustration of the zombie on the front, and a smaller, related illustration on the back. Here are some pictures I stole off the site cos my pictures sucked.

This first one’s called Food for Thought. On the cover, it shows a zombie eating someone’s brain and getting an idea in the form of a lightbulb. On the back, it shows the zombie eating the lightbulb.

This next one shows a normal human girl in the arms of a zombie, with the zombie thinking about love. On the back, the zombie is shown in the exact same position, but thinking instead about brains. Very aptly, it’s called Love Bites.

Just one floor upstairs, there was another really cool company called Wall Tailor. They do custom wall decals that are easily applicable and more importantly, do not leave stains when removed. Again, the concept is simple. In fact, you can already buy such wall decals from Ikea. However, much like everything else, implementation is everything, and these guys have some seriously cool designs on sale.

First off, their exhibit is already wicked, with their Laugh Wall.

Basically what they encourage people to do is to take either a letter H or A from a bowl, and stick it onto their wall. The overall effect is that not only does it make a seriously cool wall (Robin, please if you’re planning on throwing it away, please do so outside my office so we can collect it and use it for ourselves), but it also shows visitors to the booth how easy their decals are to apply. Yes, they are seriously easy to apply, and definitely stick way better than those Swedish budget ones. While their designers are currently internal (full-time staff), Robin the owner did mention that they actually wanted to run a contest during KL Design Week to source for designs, and says that he probably will in the very near future.

Their designs, which are currently sourced internally, are very cutely displayed on these cardboard t-shirts, with prices ranging from RM30 upwards, depending on complexity and size.

Honestly, with these cool decals, who needs furniture?

There were so many other cool exhibits at CapSquare that we probably would run out of space talking about them. I chose these two because they show interesting business directions for design here in KL.

So it looks like Foldees is part of something bigger… a move to make design a bit more profitable to our extremely talented local designers, and thus create a sustainable environment in which they can thrive.

It will take time, blood sweat and tears, but we are already talking to these two kindred spirits to see if we can work together to provide an even better platform for local designers to share the stage with other designers from all over the world. Wall Tailor is already thinking of expanding to Australia, while Genetic Culture is already in talks with other t-shirt companies across borders to do designer exchange programs and other cross-marketing opportunities.

As for us? Well, we recently sent a card to Serbia & Montenegro :)

I’ve never even met anyone from that country before, so that’s kinda cool.

Foldees heads in a bold new direction!

2009-03-31T10:57:00.001-07:00

As you guys know, our last contest was entitled “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. This actually got us thinking. Perhaps greeting cards as a medium was too limiting. After all, who sends greeting cards in this day and age? Perhaps we should diversify into something a bit more mainstream. Something people use every day, whether they like to or not.

Thus, ROLLEES!™

ROLLEES!™ was born out of a need to make the washroom-going experience a more unexpected one. Starting tomorrow, you will be able to take any of your favourite greeting cards from our collection, and customise it into your own unique toilet paper!

Here are just a few of the designs we’re offering!

These two poke ones are great for those tough moments when nothing seems to make it through.

And this classic design by milkberry encourages users to wipe, instead of messy water-based solutions.

This one is from our latest collection, and brings an other-worldly feel to your everyday activity. Speaking of which, the latest designs are up now! Vote for them and get a card free! Voting period closes 1st May 2009!

ROLLEES!™ are made from 100% recycled TP and available in 2-ply, 3-ply and 11-ply.

The Foldees “Open to Suggestion” Greeting Card Contest!

2009-03-26T10:01:00.001-07:00

NOW EXTENDED TILL 16th April 2009

Yes, we are really all geeks. Some of you out there have noticed that all our contests have similar themes, and that’s partially due to our inherently geeky natures. Yes, we play video games, we own busloads of comics, we all have wookie masks and we all know how to program a VCR, if necessary.

But darnit, we fear we might be running out of ideas here (*gasp*), so we’re once again, depending ON YOU! That’s right.

We want you to suggest our next contest.

So how’s this gonna work? Well basically, we have a comments box here, so just pop on your thinking caps, suggest your best ideas (as many as you like), and we’ll handpick ten, which we’ll then pass back to you to vote on! Our only condition for the contest is that the theme should be flexible enough to accommodate different kinds of cards – Birthdays, Love, Thank You, Sorry.

To submit your idea, please fill up these two fields and post it in the comments of this blog post.

Title – e.g. “Where No Man Has gone Before”

Description – a two-sentence description of your idea. To get a better idea of how to write this, check out our previous contests here.

As an incentive, the winning theme (which will first have to get shortlisted, then voted) will get a Microsoft ZUNE 30GB MP3 player worth more than US$200!

We’re open to suggestions until 13th April 2009, so hurry!

NOW EXTENDED TILL 16th April 2009

YES. Submissions for “Where No Man Has Gone Before” have really ended. We mean it. No, seriously. We’re not joking.

2009-03-22T08:49:00.001-07:00

Stop laughing, darnit! This ain’t funny.

We have really closed entries this time for “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. No extensions for any reason. Yes, we know… we’ve extended our last 3 contests, but if we keep doing this, sooner or later, we’ll have to make a double extension.

So that’s that. For the next week, we will be helping the designers out with their cards, providing feedback about design, theme and grammar to get you guys polished to a sheen :) Most of the designs came in the past 24 hours, so we’re trying our best to provide quality feedback to each and everyone of you. We’re hopeful that most will get a reply from us by Monday or Tuesday at the latest, after which you’ll have just less than a week to get those entries back to us in time for the ratings period.

Ratings starts on the 1st of April (Not a joke, darnit! STOP LAUGHING!).

Foldees in the fastlane!

2009-03-15T00:37:00.001-07:00

One of the complaints we get frequently is that our little site seems to be loading rather slowly. We’ve tried switching hosts, but the speeds on other hosts were slow as well. We also noticed that most of the complaints we received were from Malaysia. Recently, we figured it out. TMNet’s connection has been excruciatingly slow to all overseas sites, especially those hosted Stateside. So guess where' Foldees is hosted?

Yup.That’s right, the land of opportunity.

Anyways, recently the connection to the US has been getting better, but we thought we could take it another step in the meantime. As such, we’ve made significant (and mostly invisible) changes to the site code so that it loads MUCH MUCH faster now, in particular the gallery section.

Since its invisible, why are we telling you? well, because we can only test in on our little laptops in our office. If you’re experiencing a slow connection to foldees, do let us know!

Speaking of slow, don’t forget that you only have 7 more days to submit an entry to our contest! If we can recruit 100 new designers (we have quite a few already), you can look forward to more than enough dosh to go around for everyone.

Get crackin!

Foldees Twitters!

2009-03-08T08:45:00.001-07:00

Damn.

This is actually quite addictive. You might be wondering why the heck it took us so long to get on twitter. Well, it’s cos we hate to jump on bandwagons. We don’t want to jump onto every trend that’s promising the world, and we sure couldn’t see the point of updating something in short sentences to let them know every little thing going on with us…

…until I realised that I was updating my status updates on facebook every 36 hours.

And getting 14 comments for every update too.

Gosh darn ADD generation! So that’s the story. Someone really nice posted something up about us on twitter (thanks Jacob!), directing a whole buncha traffic to us, and all of a sudden, we’ve already made three twitter entries, and are itching to make some more (except for the fact that we want the current one to stay).

Fellow crowded bandwagon passengers can follow us on www.twitter.com/foldees :)

Our new PRESS COVERAGE page!

2009-03-01T06:39:00.001-08:00

Hey guys, just a quick note to let you know that we've put up a quick Press Coverage page to give quick access to some of the articles written about us. If you know of any other articles written about us, do let us know at contact@foldees.com. Ditto, if you want to write one of course!

We figure a page like this will also help us carve out a bit of credibility with people overseas, so we've included a link to it that appears randomly at the top of the page as well.

View the PRESS page here.

A Simple Plan

2009-02-28T23:45:00.001-08:00

Was just browsing through the Threadless newsletter, and I found this.

I think i would cry if we didn't receive at least one Space Invader card.

Foldees in Top 10 Most Interesting Web 2.0 Use by Malaysian Brands

2009-02-25T03:10:00.001-08:00

Wow.

We just found out about this. Just to be mentioned in the same breath as luminaries like AirAsia (incidentally Malaysia's top-visited site), and Maybank2u (malaysia's 2nd most visited site) is a huge honour! The list by GreyReview isn't written by just some n00b blogger that created this list out of thin air, but a guy who's been in the industry long, and big enough for his site to be mentioned by TechCrunch and Guy Kawasaki.

While it's not a thoroughly objective list (how could it be?), we are touched all the same. We've put alot of hard work into making Foldees and it's nice once in a while to get a pat on the back :)

We'd also like to thank our designers, for their talent that makes our site a possibility, our customers, and of course, our suppliers. Wow... okay, I know the Oscars just ended, so I'll keep this short and sweet.

100 Designers or Bust

2009-02-22T06:36:00.001-08:00

As our current designers already know, I've officially issued out a challenge to all potential participants of our current contest, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". If we can recruit a total of 100 New Designers this time around, we will increase our prize money by US$1000!

This additional money doesn't go to the top 5, who already have very nice rewards, but to the other designers, whom we wish to appreciate for their efforts. As such, we came up with 5 totally spanking new prizes to give away (please note that if you are already a Top Five winner, you do not qualify for these awards)!:

Mr. Popular (card with the most views from start to end date of contest) US$200
Mr. Controversial (most commented card from start to end date of contest) US$200
Mr. Shotgun (most accepted designs in contest during submission period) US$200
Foldees Biased-Award-Nominated Favourites-Explanation-Exempt (or BANOFEE for short) US$200 x 2

In case you haven't figured it out yet, the last award goes to two cards of our choosing, which we will be exempt from explaining. We'll explain it just by saying this... these will be our two favourite cards that we believe should've won something. You may commence sending us nice flower emails of praise to design@foldees.com right now :)

In the meantime, here are THREE EASY WAYS to help make sure your buddies enter our next contest.

Get them to sign up as Foldees.com MEMBERS now! This will ensure that they get on our newsletter so we can pester them until they're forced to join our contest out of sheer exasperation.
Invite them onto our Facebook EVENT list for WhereNoManHasGoneBefore - So we can send them constant updates and remind them when the contest due dates are over. Since they (and you as well) probably check this more than email, this is probably your best shot
Tattoo "22nd March" into their skin while they're asleep, preferably somewhere easy to see, like their foreheads (unless they don't have bathroom mirrors or are horribly deformed). This will serve as a cryptic remind of what's to come. Better still if you do it in Klingon.

C'mon guys... we can DO IT!

Interview with Milkberry, winner of “The Game Of Love”

2009-02-16T02:52:00.001-08:00

“What if you wake up and then you're in wonderland, but it's catland, where all people are cats, but all of them are braggards, but you can eat them, and they taste like chicken?”

That was a comment left by milkberry on bem69’s blog, and reflects the kind of nutter that she is. Which is why, she’s quite the perfect fit for a site of nutters like ours. Milkberry is known in the real world as Rumanza Zaini (or Ikin, or Kiki, depending on who you ask). She’s a Malaysian living in Japan with her husband for the past two years, who just picked up vector art a short two years ago.

“I started with photoshop...”, Rumanza laughs. “Because I was a rabid anime fan, I thought I should just jump on the bandwagon and draw anime characters. Wasn’t very good at it, sadly. I even had a DeviantArt account to show off but that account has grew dust taller than me”

That was 4 years ago. During the heyday of her anime craze (her favourites were Bleach and Full Metal Panic in case you were wondering), Rumanza had a close friend who was studying in Japan, and supplying her anime cravings on a monthly basis. “I decided to be friends with him so that he can buy me stuff from there.”. Little did she know that a few short years later, that friend would become her husband, and uproot her life as a customer exec in KL to unfamiliar Japan. she laughs. “I’m such a bad person! I didn’t know we’d eventually hook up. After we got married, I followed him there. He hates anime ironically,”.

One of milkberry's early works from her DeviantArt space.

However, it didn’t quit turn out to be paradise, even for a devout anime fan like her. “Japan wasn't really that wonderful as I imagined,” she said. “Japanese can be awfully rude..I dont know how to speak fluent Japanese, so at the time, the best option for me was to be a teacher. My friends are all English teachers here and hearing stuff from them, I know enough that I’d rather not be an teacher.”

Apparently, Japanese schools aren’t far from what’s being portrayed in animes, “You wanna be a primary school teacher teaching kids who like to poke your ass and squeeze your boobs when you're not looking?” she says. “ I think it's a cycle. They see it in anime and they do it and it goes on and on.”

For this reason, Rumanza is a housewife. With no job and few friends in a new country, she struggled to find things to keep herself occupied. “This is going to sound so weird. I joined a knitting group so we meet every week.” she shares. “If not I'd have died of boredom.”

Somewhere along the way, some of the artists (including fellow Foldees contest, Bem69) encouraged her to try out Adobe Illustrator to expand her passion for drawing. “I liked the clean style so I dabbled in it for a while,” She took part in IllustrationFriday, which challenges designers to a new theme each week. The incentive to designers was to showcase their work, but to Rumanza, it was a great way to keep her passions alight, and her skills sharp.

“I used to do it on occasions for my blog but then I joined illustrationfriday.com so I make illustrations every week thanks to that” she recollects. “It was kinda like a homework. I have to push myself to do it”.

Slowly, but surely, she started developing her own style. “During my deviantart years I was more into emulating other people's art,” she says. “At some point I realize that I want to have my own style and I went ahead with that. This is going to sound so corny but Sanrio helped a lot, and I realized that I love that cutesy vector look”.

Rumanza did, however, have a few early influences that shaped the way her beautiful, simple style of art is now. “It's hard (to name my influences) because a lot of great cutesy vector artists inspire me, but I don't want to follow them 100% coz that would be just stealing. so I incorporate I guess? plus I try to make my own little world,” she says. “Meomi inspires me a lot. Tokyobunnie, crowdedteeth... oh and Charuca too.”

Initially, she was wary of showing her works. One of the first contests she entered was the Uniqlo T-shirt design contest. “It didn't go too well. My design was too elaborate for them, jugding from the ones selected”.

Too elaborate? I asked to see her design.

Milkberry's first contest submission for the Uniqlo T-shirt design contest.

It didn't look very elaborate to us. In fact, it looked exactly like the type of design we love. "I made this and some of the designs that were in the semifinals were like a plain t-shirt with a single red dot and another one with a single blue square," she recalls. "I lost to a dot. A freaking DOT!".

From there, the lesson she learnt was to always design for her target audience. And it was about that time, that she found out about Foldees."I've been a Foldees stalker since the “We Are All Geeks” contest!” she confesses. “But I didn’t think I was good enough laaa. I have self-esteem issues.. To be honest, I didn't expect to win but I just design something that I feel I want to buy. I hope I can beat myself for the next contest though”

Milkberry's winning entry to the contest, entitled "Please Say Yes"

She even admits to having a few more ideas that she didn’t even submit. “when I have an idea I'd paste virtual post-it notes on my desktop”. When asked about the details of those designs, she’s purposefully vague, describing them merely as “zombie-themed and haha hentai-game-ish”...almost as if she feels they still aren’t good enough for public consumption just yet.

To close the interview, as we do with our other interviews in the past, we asked about her feelings of winning. Her reply was exactly what we've come to expect from this talented, humble, and perhaps a little eccentric little designer from Tokyo. "Just lucky I guess" she retells. "When I won Foldees, I got a migraine for three days because I got overwhelmed".

"That wasnt for the closing statement actually," she laughs. "But if you want to use to it, go ahead".

Congratulations once again, Rumanza! You can check out her artwork at www.milkberryland.com.

Life's like a box of philatelic chocolates

2009-02-12T03:47:00.001-08:00

From this picture, it's clear that this is a bad year for stamps. Birds, fruits, and birds eating fruits. This is what Foldees users have unfortunately been getting so far.

A friend of mine recently suggested that i checkout the Malaysian Philatelic Society, which at first sounded like people who are lactose-intolerant. Eventually I found out that they were the group in charge of keeping a chronicle of the stamps in this country. I don't care what you say, that's so cool!

So anyway, i expected to go into a room with a guy with huge gold-fish like glasses that was going to tell me all about stamps. Instead, it's a simple counter, with a simple foldees that lets you view all the different stamps from different years. The cool thing is that because they are stamps, they're only allowed to be sold at stamp value (an RM2 stamp will cost RM2 and not a penny more). However, because of this, collectors come here in flocks to buy whatever they think might go up in value over the years. As such, you can usually only find stamps from the past few years. Still, there were some very COOL ones... and we sorta went overboard. I don't think I've ever bought this many stamps in so many varieties before.

A couple of hundred bucks worth of stamps, which we'll be using for all Foldees cards sent out this month! In this shot, you can see these lovely LAT ones. Lat is the nickname given to Mohammad Nor Khalid, Malaysia's most popular cartoonist. I have at least 20 LAT compilations at home, and still read em once in a while when i'm feeling nostalgic about my childhood. Here are some of the other choice picks...

I really like this one. It's the clocktower in Kota Kinabalu and just seems to make our envelope so much more classy. I also did not know they have all these beautiful elongated stamps!

Neither did i know they had triangular stamps! How cool are these!? They go onto the envelopes' corners like this...

Here's a few inspired by our dear Malaysian fiasco into space. It's funny how our first astronaut in space was a doctor, and literally served zero purpose up there (except being the first to observe fasting times). It's a sign of the ills our country is facing. The stamps are pretty funny though.

Speaking of which, we found this stamp pretty funny as well. A sign of the times?

Some scary animals. Check out that horny toad and the afro-skunk!

One of our favourites. This is a beautiful rendition of the fruit season in Malaysia. It looks like something out of an old Mexican chapel.

Another example of excellent local artwork. The topic is map-reading. God knows what it has to do with Malaysia, but that guy in the hat looks totally bad-ass.

These three are special edition RM2 stamps, that sadly, only our overseas recipients will be receiving.

And finally, here are the free stamps the kind lady gave me after i asked her for a bulk discount. She gave me about 40 bucks worth. But then again, I bought quite a lot.

There are a heckuva lot more stamps in our collection, but I've already spent half the day scanning these, so I this i need to get some real work done now. Wanna take a gander at these stamps? Order some cards today!

"you never know what you gonna get..."

PS: On a smaller note, there was a typo in the contest page. Originally, it said US$400 for third prize, and has now been corrected to US$300, which is what it's supposed to me. sorry for the inconvenience!

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" Birthday Card Design Contest

2009-02-08T03:31:00.001-08:00

Spocks and Leias.... it's CONTEST TIME!

This time, we've decided on a sci-fi theme, entitled "Where No Man Has Gone Before"! We're primarily looking for Birthday Cards, but if you have any other ideas, (for say love, or friendship related cards), do try submitting them as well.

W e're looking for cards that you would totally give to a Trekkie, a Closet Jedi, or anyone who's ever watched Aliens, The Terminator or even Back to the Future. Just make sure the films you're adapting from are well-known enough, and of course, that you're not violating any copyright laws.

Here's a coupla ideas to get you started...

Movie poster spoofs

Hand gestures

or spoofs of famous scenes and quotes, like this previous entry into our christmas card category.

The contest deadline is Sunday, 22nd March 2009, but as usual, we encourage people to send their designs in early. As you may know, we have been experiencing some unreliability which we're still trying to solve right now, so better safe than sorry. Also, Foldees has a policy of consulting the designers constantly about their designs to come up with the best finished product. As such, we often feedback certain comments back to the original designer before submitting, to improve his/her design before we finalise it into our contest.

Go nuts like you always do!

The winners of "The Game of Love"

2009-02-05T10:25:00.001-08:00

Guys, I'm sure by now that you guys are already salivating at the thought of that sweet sweet US$1,000 first prize.

"MMMMMM..... Money for kickass designs!"

This time around, the response was overwhelming! Some cards even got more than 50 comments! Each card was rated more than 240 times, so you can ensure that the final vote really counts :)

On the brighter side, we also have some amazing designers who voted other designs higher than their own designs. *sniff* you guys are so awesome!

So anyways, without further ado, here is the list of winners for "The Game Of Love".

OUR FIRST WINNER TODAY hails from our home country of Malaysia. This is her second time submitting for the Foldees contest. You can easily identify her works from the simple, whimsical drawings that have become her trademark, and that have made her entries some of the office favourites! Her winning design is taken from one of the very first games ever released on the PSP called Loco Roco.

In 5th place, with a score of 3.01, winning US$100 in cash...

5. Dayze - Fill Me With Your Love

THE 4TH PLACE WINNER is a bit of a minor celebrity! When we first received his entry, we knew we'd seen that name somewhere before, and sure enough, we had. As you know, the founders of Foldees are very very ardent fans of a certain T-shirt site. This designer has had not one, but THIRTEEN designs printed by Threadless. So while the prize money probably won't make a dent in his bank account, we're very very very proud to that he took the effort to join our little contest. Like Dayze, his entry is also linked to a video game, albeit one that has been with us for the better part of a decade.

In 4th place, with a score of 3.21, also winning US$100 in cash...

4. radiomode - Bubbly

THIRD PLACE GOES to someone who was also second place winner from our previous contest, which means that he is building up a nice retirement fund right about now. He's known for his colourful style, with a particular affinity for the colour pink, which suits us just fine for the upcoming non-holiday. Here, he's followed suit with our previous two designers, and used a game that brings back alot of sweet memories for the Foldees team - Sonic the Hedgehog. We're guessing he's also a rather forgetful little feller, since he's now entered all three contests under three different names (we're assuming you haven't discovered our password retrieval system yet?).

In 3rd place, with a score of 3.24, winning US$300 in cash...

3. Zhet (aka ZacYouth, aka BryanZ) - Heal Me!

OUR SECOND PLACE WINNER should come as no surprise to Foldees fans. This Mexican designer has already swept the acoolades once before, and almost pulled a hatrick this time with his homage to one of the most beloved video-game characters of all time, Mario. Even our official Game of Love poster was a tribute to Mario, so he was obviously on the right track with this submission, which follows closely from his previous contest-winning entry.

In 2nd place, with a score of 3.31, winning US$600 in cash...

2. salchipunk - I Don't Need

AND FINALLY, THE WINNER OF "THE GAME OF LOVE", is someone totally unexpected. Not only did she buck the trend and choose a game that has been with us since a time when console "meant to be a friend to" - before Mario ever jumped on a turtle, before the first quarter went into a Pacman machine. Her design style is in many ways, everything that Foldees looks for in a winning entry. Sharp wit, paired with a simple, clean, yet incredibly attractive style. In many ways, a relative Illustrator novice could have put together this card, and yet, the greeting card market is flooded with much more cluttered designs that try to do too many things at once. This is the reason why we are here, and we believe, the same reason why all the users on the site eventually gave their votes to a Malaysian girl in faraway Japan.

In 1st place, with a sizeably higher score of 3.39, winning US$1000 in cash...

1. Milkberry - Please Say Yes

YES, milkberry. On your first try too! Congratulations! And congratulations to all our other winners as well! We'll be contacting all of you very soon to arrange the prizes to be handed to you.

On a side note, the cards are already on sale, with only a few days to promote it on your individual sites to help them sell well this Valentine's Day, so don't forget to plug the contest results on your blog.

To the other designers who participated in our contest, do try again for our next contest (tune back into the blog this Sunday to find out what wicked ideas we have planned next!), and don't forget, that sales of your cards still nab you US$0.10 per card purchase! If you want to find out how you placed in this contest, do drop us a message at design@foldees.com and we'll tell ya!

Thanks to everyone who participated, either by submitting designs, leaving comments or helping us to design between all these fantastic designs we've been receiving. We're feeling the love, and we sure hope you are too!

Site outages this week (Foldees is moving to Ireland!)

2009-02-01T09:41:00.001-08:00

As many of you wee little laddies and lassies might know, we've been having no end to problems with our hosting provider, VPSLand. Well, when the site disappeared for 3 days last week, we finally gave up on them. Because of this, we'll be moving over to our new hosting providers in Ireland later this week.

During this time, as we migrate the data, some of you might have interrupted access to the site, especially with the Checkout and Ratings pages. No fear though, we've tested a mock migration several times and found that neither of these will do any permanent damage (either to us, your reputation or your credit card).

We expect the majority of interruptions to occur on Tuesday (2nd Feb) and Friday (5th Feb) at about GMT800. If you are encountering technical leprechauns of any sort and need assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us at support@foldees.com.

Can you hear us pumping on your stereo? Tune in to BFM 89.9 Feb 3rd!

2009-02-01T09:34:00.001-08:00

The nice people at BFM have decided to interview us for their Open For Business segment at 10am on Tuesday, February 3rd. BFM stands for BusinessFM, and is a rather unique station in Malaysia because not only do they play some half-decent music, but they do so with business folk in mind :)

Anyways, their Open For Business show often interviews up and coming businesses. They've even featured Mike Tee, CEO of our friends over at Elevyn last month. Our interview will be just with me, so I get to go into the studio and have myself a nice cuppa coffee while the rest of the Foldees team are toiling away to bring you @ddress, our upcoming email friend finder function.

UPDATE: The interview went smashingly! Thanks to Frida, Grace and Noelle for the opportunity to "whore" ourselves! In case you missed it, click here to listen to the podcast.

In other news, we've also been featured on a prominent entrepreneurs blog, YoungUpstarts.The website has lots of useful information for budding entrepreneurs, and also highlights new businesses such as ours. So if you ever want to start your own little business, do check em out. Our article is permalinked here.

VPSLAND killed Foldees, scared the crap out of us, and brought us back

2009-01-29T12:00:00.001-08:00

At this point, we're struggling to find the appropriate words for the usually good-natured Foldees blog while dealing with the current situation. As you can see, we've already failed with the blog title.

The past 48 hours have been the scariest of our brief existence as the world's only designer-created greeting card site. Here's what happened:-

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About a month ago, we had some serious outages with our site due to a highly unstable server provided by our hosting provider, VPSLAND. This resulted in our site being down during our crucial contest submission, which we then had to extend.

During this period, we were in frequent contact with VPSLAND to get to the route of the problem, and they suggested migrating over to one of their more "stable servers". We came to an agreement that we would get 5 days to perform the migration, while VPSLAND kept both the old and new servers active. We decided that the low period of late January would be a good time to do this.

On Tuesday night (Jan 27th), we emailed VPSLAND to start up the new server to begin the migration. On Wednesday morning, we woke to find Foldees.com was unreachable. We sent several emails to VPSLAND that day (they have no phone support, which should be a fair warning) to restore the site, but they only sent one support email back saying that the site was fine and that the connection was "verified".

However, as you guys know, the site has been down for the past 48 hours. After three days of frantically emailing our hosting provider, the Foldees team went through some of its darkest hours in our brief existence. We feared the worst, that the server instance had been deleted and that we would lose our database.

Would we be able to recover the database? What about the contest ratings and comments? In this time, they did not reply a single one of our panicked emails as we set up a quick program to continually ping the server to let us know if it ever came back to life.

Half an hour ago, the site magically came back up. I'm not by any regard a religious person, but at moments like this, one has to thank the big guy upstairs. Also, even though we'll be leaving you very soon, thanks to VPSLAND for at least bringing the site back up (even if it was your bloody fault in the first place). Quite a few of you have sent your well wishes to us about the site, and we'd just like to thank you as well. Your support during this brief, but trying time has helped greatly, and we love you for it!

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Anyways, just to let you know, we have already signed up for a significantly pricier (and more reputable) host called Blacknight in Ireland. We are also putting significantly more frequent backups in place to ensure that this does not happen again. While I'm on this point, let me add something of value a midst the death and despair.

How we stumbled upon our current hosting company was through searches for "best VPS provider" on Google. The lesson we've learnt here is that in future (and this is awesome advice for all professionals sourcing for suppliers), is to do the opposite. Having searched "VPSLand sucks", we found a slew of sites condemning our current provider to Internet hell. Other words we found linked to them include "incompetent", "buffoons" and "nightmare". All sentiments we can share at this point in time.

So, the painful lesson we've learnt here is that for any future sourcing for providers of anything (plugins, hosting, blog engines... etc), do make sure to search for "<provider's name> sucks" on Google

</valuable advice>

We are currently checking our database to ensure that no data has been lost in this time. If you feel something has gone missing, do let us know at support@foldees.com and we'll do our darndest to get everything back working the way it should.

Once again, we offer our apologies for your inconvenience, our gratitude for your support, and our humble hope that you will stay with our little site for a long time to come :)

The site might be experiencing some outages

2009-01-27T09:30:00.001-08:00

We're trying to migrate Foldees.com to a more stable server, but immediately after requesting the transfer, our site is noticeably dead. We are currently talking to the provider, but please be patient as we sort this out with VPSLAND.

Yes, let's publish their names here. You have been warned.

Happy Chinese New Year!

2009-01-27T00:15:00.001-08:00

New year means different things to different people. To us, it means a brief break to feel like kids again. For those 20-somethings (barely) from chinese families, you'll know exactly what we mean.

Yes we still collect Ang Pows (red packets given from married people to single, regardless of age), we gamble alot just like we used to (although the stakes are a little bit higher) and we also follow our parents around and pay our respects to our elders.

In other words, not much has changed in this routine since we were kids, and thus, every year, we feel like kids again, just for a few days. Here's a brief pictorial of my CNY

All three elements of CNY in a nutshell - oranges, money and lots of sitting on floors

Really cheap wine, usually free if you order a set meal. Separates the real connoisseurs ("No thanks, I'm driving") from the real chinamen ("Wah... not bad wor this wine. Free somemore from FRANCE!").

Found the morning of Chinese New Year. Quickest photo essay. Ever.

A bench I found in my hometown in the middle of a residential area. Lemme zoom that in for you...

Happy Chinese New Year, fellow chinamen!

Note: for those of you who ordered cards last week, you might have to wait a few days longer as our printer has closed for Chinese New Year. They'll be open tomorrow so the cards will go out to the post office tomorrow, which means within Malaysia you should get your cards within the week, and by the first week of Feb for everywhere else! Sorry, Malaysians really do love a good holiday :)

14.2% OFF all Foldees cards and you don't even need a credit card!

2009-01-18T10:22:00.001-08:00

As you can see, Pink is our new obsession!

We've got some Double Happiness coming your way before Chinese New Year. Unfortunately, we didn't have the time to do a CNY contest, so you guys'll just have to make do with our lovely gaming-related love cards from "The Game of Love".

Speaking which, all cards on the site will be 14.2% off until Valentine's Day! As mentioned on the flyer, if you need to ask why we chose that magic number, you'll probably need to buy a stackload of em :)

The 2nd bunch of happiness we're bringing is a new tie in with MOL to purchase cards using MOLePoints! MOL is short for Malaysia On Line, and MOLePoints are their primary offering (and incidentally Malaysia's #1 prepaid online currency)! You can purchase MOLePoints at any 7-Eleven in Malaysia. With these points, you'll be able to come to our site, and use 'em to buy Malaysia's #1 greeting cards with an attitude!

Unfortunately, this function is currently available only for the Malaysian public, but very very soon, we'll also be integrating with MOL's other branches in India, Singapore and China! This is good news not only for Indians, Singaporeans and our Chinese brothers, but also great for all you designers looking to expose your work around the world, and us (of course!).

Spread the love peeps!

Start a Facebook Boycott for Shark's Fin this Chinese New Year! HOO-HA!

2009-01-11T23:10:00.001-08:00

In case you didn't know, Foldees was started by 3 bored Chinese dudes from Malaysia. Being Chinese, we get to celebrate the New Year twice (yay!). First, we drink to the high heavens on 31st Dec (as demonstrated here), and usually about a month later, Chinese New Year falls, which means gambling, visiting relatives who keep telling you you get bigger every year, and of course, the annual reunion dinner.

The reunion dinner is a tradition for Chinese families all around the world, where relatives meet once a year to welcome the new year. Usually, this means a ten-course dinner with a red table cloth, and of course, the obligatory Shark's Fin Soup.

I've been eating this stuff since I was a kid, and never thought twice about it, except that the soup tasted pretty good with some vinegar as you grew older. The shark's fin in it? Well, we always kinda ate it cos it was there, felt like we were getting back at JAWS, and someone told us it was expensive and "good stuff, so don't waste it".

About five years ago, my sister, who has always been a bit of a rebel, refused to eat the shark's fin soup because it was "cruel". Sure, I already knew that sharks aren't half as dangerous or evil as what people claim but to be honest, she has new causes every week, so I just ignored this boycott as one of her phases. This year however, a friend recommended I watch "Sharkwater", a film about sharks, and how it's not just cruel to sharks, but dangerous for the entire underwater eco-system and thus, us.

It's a beautifully-shot movie. It's got some of the most amazing underwater footage I've ever seen in it, and I'd recommend it to anybody who has the same fascination that I do with what's undar da sea. However, beyond that, it also shows what's going on with the shark trade around the world.

Basically, sharks are already an endangered species. This is because the Chinese people (like us) demand it, and at such high-prices, that it has become a literal gold-mine for fishermen, more so than any other fish. also, because only the fin is sought after, it takes ALOT of sharks (100 million a year and climbing at 5% annually) to make up for the demand.

100 million sharks.

And yes, sharks do get back at us... there are about 70 shark attacks each yea, usually resulting in 1 to 3 human fatalities per year.

Heck, I was reading an article today that showed that Malaysia alone has an average of 6000 deaths from road accidents every year. That's more than 16 deaths a day from those evil cars. Spark-plug soup anyone?

Because of this voracious demand, sharks are already dwindling in supply all over the world. As such, fishermen who still need to make their quotas are going to only two places in the world to fish where they're still in abundance. The film focuses on the Galapagos (yes, the island with the giant turtles and funny statues of David Coulthard), where fishermen are illegally killing sharks, and the governments are politically inclined to close an eye.

It really is cruel seeing the sharks getting their fins cut off and thrown back into the water, but that's only part of it. Studies have shown that when shark populations go down, other species do as well, because they're part of the eco-system (for instance, there's less tuna because sharks prey on other animals that would otherwise prey on tuna), and the ocean's eco-system is so fragile that it might just come crumbling down.

All for something that tastes like gummy noodles. Honestly, if you took the shark's fin out of the soup and replaced it with a similar looking noodle, most of us wouldn't notice. Thing is, as long as shark's fin soup goes for up to US$300 a bowl, there'll always be one guy who's willing to fin for em and make a mint, and 10 other guys who'll say "It's already happening, so why don't I just get my share?". That's why the only way to stop it is to stop wanting it.That's why I have politely declined shark's fin since CNY last year.

This year, I've decided to go one small step further and message all my cousins on facebook (children of the same generation usually sit together at these reunion dinners) to ask them if they'd like to opt out of shark's fin this year. I don't want to impose my personal beliefs on the older generation just yet, but I'm pretty sure that the young influential ones will probably join me, and the rest will follow suit due to peer pressure. With this, we can agree early on enough to let the organisers (my uncles) know to cancel the bowl of shark's fin this year.

If everyone here just did the same, a quick message to your relatives on Facebook (don't need to create a group or an event cos that's too distant, but just a quick Facebook mass message to vote NO on shark's fin for reunion dinner is something people can easily achieve), and we can do away with one piece of tradition that's not doing anyone any good.

Except for a few illegal fishermen. We'll send them a few I'm Sorry cards on your behalf.

Feel free to pledge to mass message in the comments below :) Happy CNY everyone! (sharks included)

Start rating our "Game of Love" entries and get a FREE CARD!!

2009-01-06T09:44:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the delay guys, we were waiting for a few small fixes to some of the entries, and right on schedule, VOILA! The tragic Foldees team has missed another deadline.

However, we received some CRIMINALLY wicked cards this time around, with themes that varied from Donkey Kong to Poker! We did receive quite a bit fewer entries than usual this time around, which we assume is because everyone's having a rollicking good Christmas (ourselves included!)

But that's good news for the rest of you... the less cards to rate to get your free one! As has become our tradition with Foldees, each of you gets to send a FREE card to anywhere in the world, as long as you take the time to vote for all the entries in our contest!

Don't forget.... vote unfairly (and we do have ways of finding out) and your vote gets nullified. So please do save us, and yourselves the time and try to be fair to all the participants :)

So far, as you can tell, our winners have always been deserving, not due to popularity but sheer appeal of their designs, and this time isn't going to be any different.

We also have some rather interesting announcements coming up in the next coupla weeks, specifically for those of you without credit cards.... Foldees will be offering some payment options that'll open us up to a whole new audience.

So stay tuned, and start rating out our fab new designs here (you need to be logged in first)

Closing date for ratings is 3rd February 2009

Foldees Top Five Moments of 2008

2009-01-01T03:50:00.001-08:00

5. Playing Fallout 3 for the first time

There's nothing quite like your first time. Furthermore, this is Fallout we're talking about here. For those who don't know, Fallout is a series of games based on a post-nuclear holocaust world stuck in 50s era music and technology. I'll just refer you to the wiki right here for more information. That's because for those who are Fallout fans, you already know what I'm talking about... and well. There's no such thing as a casual Fallout player. We're all fanatics. Put two complete strangers who've played Fallout in a small room, lock them in there for four hours, and they probably won't even notice.

Here at Foldees, 60% of the office are hard-core Fallout fans. So you can imagine that December wasn't exactly the most productive month for us here :) That aside, the feeling of walking out of your Vault and adjusting your vision to seeing sunlight for the first time falling on the wasteland that was once Washington DC.

Magical.

4. Obama winning

We thought the world had gone crazy for 8 years. Or at least America had... Many of us here remembered avidly watching the John Kerry-Bus debates and being darn sure that Kerry would win hands down.

That same shock-horror threatened this time around when waiting for the final polls to come in for the 2008 election, much less with the US's potentially first African-American president. We love Obama here. We love the hope that he represents for the rest of the world, and we were all cheering madly when he won. We also watched the victory speech and were reminded of those American action movies where there's a rallying speech from the president, and a surging orchestral score.

We named our new company dog after him. Meet Barrack. Or Barrie, as I prefer to call him.

3. Our all-nighter launching the Foldees Shopping Cart

Launching your first shopping cart is a harrowing experience. Many of you Foldees fans out there know that we're not exactly known for our timeliness. One of the unfortunates of having a really small team is that there are no contingencies when things sometimes don't go according to plan.

This was one of those moments. For various reasons (Paypal, Javascript, database...etc), we were ironing the bugs up to 11am in the morning - three days in a row, with barely 4 hours of sleep the entire weekend. In that time, we consumed about 28 packets of instant noodles, and countless cups of instant coffee (damn Coffee Bean for not having 24 hour delivery) and Red Bull. We did also, however, play quite a bit of PS2 along the way as well to chill-out (ironically, our game of choice was Burnout), and I've gotta say, our team was much stronger coming out of that than going in.

You can see in this picture that our notebooks are right next to our PS2 controllers.

Nothing unites people like a common goal, and that's to bring the best greeting cards in the world to the public.

2. Watching the Dark Knight for the second time

I wasn't really raving about Batman Begins. Sure, even some of the other guys here at Foldees thought it was awesome, but personally, I thought it really needed a proper villain, and I couldn't even pronounce Ras Al Ghoul's name (or spell it without referring away from this page).

All that faded away once Heath Ledger walked on screen. With the shadow of his death leaning over that very first bank heist scene, it lended an even more mythical feel to the entire movie, helped along by one of my favourite actors, Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent.

Watching it the 2nd time was even better. When you know when all the big surprises, explosions and deaths are coming, you're even more surprised to find out that they still affect you. And you realise the little nuances like the fact that Harvey Den'ts famous coin was burnt on one side during the explosion, and not scratched by himself (showing his transformation was involuntary in this movie). It's a real ballet of tragedy that's beautiful to watch.

This is the best movie I've seen in years. Ok ok, so It's my top 5, but since I'm in charge of the blog, the others can go hootie-patootie.

1. Seeing all the entries come in for "We Are All Geeks"

When we first decided to launch our site on June 16, we had absolutely no idea what would happen. Would designers join? What if the prizes weren't attractive enough? What if there was something wrong with the Template, our engine or our hosting provider?

Of course, it didn't help that the majority of the entries came in at the 11th hour (and 59th minute), leaving us absolutely balls-out anxious until those entries started coming. And boy did they start coming! We received over 70 entries in the last hour itself.

Seeing all the awesome designs and ideas coming through was really a dream come true for all of us. Seeing the thousands of comments flow in just hours later, made everything... all the hard work, planning and praying... absolutely worth it. We had something that worked.

Now, a short six months later, we're into our third contest, sold hundreds of cards and things are moving a bit more smoothly than they used to. We know roughly what to expect, although the design approval process is still very much our favourite part of the process.

That being said, I'm sure you guys can understand... There's nothing quite like your first time.

Thanks for supporting us guys! We are so going to rock it up for you in 2009.

Happy New Year from the Foldees Team!

Contest Deadline Extended to 28th (yes, we know... we know...)

2008-12-24T00:56:00.001-08:00

Okay. I know what we said earlier (No free lives, no extensions... blah blah), buuuuttt... how were we to know that our dear hosting providers would be visited by evil elves in the middle of the night and sabotaged on THE LAST TWO DAYS OF SUBMISSIONS!?

Anyways, even though the site is back up now, we would like to at least give a chance to those who have been trying to submit their entries to the site for the past two days. So, we're extending the contest to the 28th of December for submissions!

You can continue to submit on the site, but once again, if you have any problems whatsoever, please submit your entries via email. Details for email submission here. also, if you're unsure whether your submission got through successfully, do send an email to design@foldees.com and we'll check it up for ya :)

In the meantime, our humblest apologies to those who have been trying to get through to our site with submissions for hours! We're really grateful for your efforts, and will find a way to make amends for your patience, so watch this space.

Looking forward to seeing your entries... In the meantime, if you're looking for something to do this Christmas, check out www.kiva.org. It's a place where you can sponsor micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries to help them improve their situations! We've just sponsored a candy shop in Tajikstan!

Make a loan
Change a life

Name: JOSEFINA C
Location: Bolivia

Loan Needed: $2,725

25 % funded

Foldees.com would love to wish everyone in the whole wide world, including our users, customers, suppliers and designers a wonderful Christmas!

Problems with uploading engine

2008-12-19T02:29:00.001-08:00

Quite a few of you have emailed in saying that you're having problems submitting your designs. Unfortunately, it's a problem with our hosting company, which we have already submitted a complaint about already.

They have offered to move us to a more stable server, though, but this will require a few days of downtime, which we're scheduling for the Christmas period instead to minimise the inconvenience to you guys.

For the time being however, if you really really can't submit through the uploading engine, please email the designs directly to a new email I've set-up for you guys - design@foldees.com.

When you email your design, please include the following information.

Email - (The email you used to register to Foldees)

Design Title

Description

Tags

Speaking on that topic of Titles, I also want to mention that you should try for more unique sounding titles. This will enable your card to stand out from the rest, and be more easily indexable and searchable on our site, and other search engines. For instance, for our first contest, there must've been at least 15 cards entitled "Happy Birthday". Why not change to something a bit more unique, like "Only one candle!?" or something else that describes the crd a bit more. Here are a few good examples :-

cmmoong - I Don't Like Big Butts!

uden - Santa Vader

KarmaKloth83 - The Missing of Mr.Snowman

Remember, only 5 days to go! Get those submissions in quick!