Last month, we embarked on our first-ever open call for a Poketo wallet design in collaboration with Booooooom. Today, we’re proud to announce our five amazing finalists.

We had such a hard time choosing between all the great submissions that it took us a few back and forths between Booooooom and Poketo before we could trim it down to the final five.

Now, it’s your turn to decide. Which one do you think deserves to be the winner? Vote for your favorite design and you might even win one of the wallets for yourself! Head on over to Booooooom for all the details. Here’s what you have to choose from:

Design by Jake Pauls

Design by Alice Maca

Design by Jessica Fortner

Design by Andrew Lawandus

Design by Heiko Xylophone

Found what you like? Don’t forget to vote!

If you haven’t popped by his site yet, do check it out. It’s a great community filled with a lot of creative energy. Every day, we’re amazed at Jeff’s finds, but also the amazing submissions on his “Projects” page. We got together with Booooooom creator Jeff Hamada to ask him what his site is about and how his projects figure into the whole picture. Here’s the rundown:

Hi, Jeff. Could you give our readers quick one liner bio?
I am a Japanese-Canadian artist and I spend way too much time surfing the internet.

You’re also an artist yourself right? Could you tell me more about what type of work you do?
I like to draw with pencil crayons and enjoy playing around with text. Lately I’ve been working on some drawings of my childhood experiences.

Do you consider yourself more of an artist or a blogger?
I am an artist who became a blogger who hopes to return to being an artist at some point.

What the initial inspiration to start Booooooom?
It was just a way for me to collect creative images and share them with my friends, I never intended for it to become what it is today.

Why the name Booooooom?
I thought it would be funny to sort of hi-jack a url by adding a stupid amount of letters to a small word.

So, last week, we launched the Afterlife series of wallets. Could you tell us what the inspiration for that was?
The theme of this series is the “Afterlife”. I have always been interested in what people think is going to happen to us after we die. This was also kind of a sneaky way to have artists make self-portraits without telling them that’s what they were making.

Sneaky indeed. How did you choose the artists?
I wanted to work with a few artists who hadn’t already worked with Poketo so I decided to highlight some emerging Canadian talent! We aren’t all friendly hockey players, and dog-sledders, there are amazing artists living here too. I chose Josh Holinaty, Andrea Wan, Winnie Truong and Howie Tsui because they each have a really distinct drawing style, quite different from one another.

You also have some pretty cool projects through the site, what was the idea behind them?
I wanted to encourage people to get out and do stuff, make things. If everyone sat around on their computers everyday it wouldn’t be long before there wasn’t anything new to look at. The projects are also just opportunities to have fun.

Could you share your top 3 favorites?
I could go on and on if I pick 3 so I’ll just talk about my favourite project. When the “Where The Wild Things Are” film was coming out I joined forces with Spike Jonze’s blog We Love You So and launched a fort building project. People built forts out of trees, blankets, rocks, couches, anything they could get their hands on. I really like giving people license to go and do things they used to do when they were a kid but could be embarrassed to say they would still enjoy now. There were hundreds of submissions in the first four days of the project and the images spread like wild fire around the internet.

That sounds awesome! What do you hope the Projects will affect the Booooooom community?
I’d love it if the most interesting images posted on Booooooom came from submissions to our own projects. So far the projects are doing a great job of cultivating the kind of positive people I want engaged with the site and I think as the projects get bigger and word spreads about them, the quality of work submitted improves too.

What kind of submissions are you looking forward to seeing for the Poketo x Booooooom “Before Life” project?
I’ve never really seen this done as a theme so I’m really excited to see where people go with it. It’s cool to learn about Booooooom’s audience by having them make things. I think you can tell a lot more about a person by looking at something they’ve made than you can by reading something they’ve said.

True that. We’re looking forward to seeing what everyone’s going to come up with too! Thanks, Jeff!

Here’s how to submit your Poketo wallet design.
See the Poketo x Booooooom Before Life submissions here.
Check out booooooom at booooooom.com

For the first time ever, we’re doing an open call for submissions to design a Poketo wallet with none other than Booooooom. Get a chance to add your name among the ranks of over 200 international artists we’ve worked with.

So here’s what you have to do (READ CAREFULLY):

1. CREATE! Design what you think “Before Life” was like. What did the world look like before we all got here? Did it have a lot of color? Did it ooze with neon? Did that primordial sludge really look quite handsome? You let us know!

2. DESIGN! Your design must be 300 DPI, 8.75″ width x 4″ height. But, DO NOT submit the hi resolution version. All you have to design is the exterior of the wallet. Make a low resolution version JPEG(no more than 1MB) for submission. If your design wins the contest, you will need to send us the hi resolution version later.

3. SUBMIT! Post your low resolution submission on Poketo’s Facebook Wall. Multiple submissions per artist are allowed. In the post title, write “Poketo x Booooooom Wallet Contest”. You have until July 3, 2011 to post your designs!

4. VOTE! We’ll post a gallery of selected submissions on Booooooom’s Facebook Wall and let you guys vote and help decide which design gets the top prize.

5. THE PRIZE! Winner will be announced on July 12, 2011. Poketo will produce 50 pieces of the winning design to be sold alongside the works of 200 other international artists on poketo.com. On top of props from both Booooooom and Poketo, the winner also gets 20 of the 50 limited edition wallets to keep. How’s that for bragging rights?

Don’t forget: Deadline for submissions is July 3, 2011. Post your wallet design on facebook.com/poketo. If you have any questions, post a comment here. Good luck and happy designing!

This got us thinking… What would the afterlife be like? So, to celebrate our milestone partnership, we’re giving away all four awesome wallets to the best, most imaginative answer. Tell us: “What does your afterlife look like? What would you be? What would you do?”

Answer on our Facebook Wall. The contest ends tomorrow, June 17!

Our 10,000th order came over the weekend…. and that means that lucky Poketo shopper will get an extra $100 worth of Poketo goodies along with her order. Wohoo!

Our fortunate shopper comes from the mile high city–and we’re sure she’s sitting on a mile high cloud right now If you want to get in one some cool promos we’re cooking up, Like us on Facebook or add us up on Twitter (@poketo). See you again soon!

This is an amazing opportunity for all of you filmmakers out there. Our friends at Powershovel / Superheadz are holding a contest and film festival at Space15Twenty in Hollywood from May 27th to May 31st, 2010. For all those that follow Poketo, you know that the Digital Harinezumi 2 is a mini digital video camera that makes images look like old super8 film. It not only creates a rad, lo-fi film look, but, also records sound!

Here is what you need to do to be part of the festival:
1. Submit a short film under 10 minutes shot on the Digital Harinezumi to the Vimeo Pool by May 21st, 2010
2. The film will be judged by a panel comprised of Powershovel, Space15Twenty, and The Masses
3. Those selected will have their film screened during one of the four days.
4. The jury will then select the a winner for “Best Film”.

Grand prize for the winner will be an all expense paid trip to Tokyo to meet the Powershovel crew and another opportunity to make a short film in Tokyo!!

The Powershovel team are super rad. Last we were in Tokyo, we had the pleasure of meeting with Hideki, Jun, Yuki, and the Powershovel team at their studio/office in Daikanyama district. It was a place of dreams, a total inspiration–a new three floor building full of creativity. Along with running a very successful business with offices in both Tokyo and New York, one thing you need to know about Powershovel is that they are deeply passionate about music, audio, and photography. The first floor of their Tokyo office is dedicated to their sales team, but, oddly enough, has a killer DJ and VJ set up with a top of the line German crafted speaker for full range sound. The second floor is where their creative and graphics team continuously work on photography publications and product development. Third floor is a killer meeting room.

Okay, what are you still doing reading this? Go and buy the camera and start making! Deadline for the festival is May 21st, read the full rules here.

It has been a few years since our last major redesign. If you haven’t seen it already….Poketo’s got a new look! We’ve launched a fresh new website just in time for Spring! Not only have we introduced a new identity, but, the shopping site is cleaner and easier than ever for a seamless Poketo experience. Navigate through the new site and check out all of your favorite Poketo items including our brand new wallet series with artists Julia Heglund, Maki, Marcus Oakley, UPSO, and Will Bryant.

Name-That-Series Facebook Contest
This time around we wanted to see what awesome names YOU come up with. For TODAY ONLY, visit our Facebook fan page, take a look at our newly released wallets, and help us think of a name that best encapsulates this series. Along with bragging rights, the best name will win all six wallets! So start spitting those names out!

Thank You!
And we’ve saved the best for last. We want to say ‘thank you’ to all of our loyal fans by releasing a special discount code that will only last until THIS FRIDAY!
Simply type in “poketonew” at checkout to automatically deduct 15% off your purchase!

We hope you enjoy the new site, please let us know what you think, comment, email us, or tweet it!! Thank you for your continued support!!