Drum roll please…. and the winners of contest #1 are…. Jennifer Young, Michelle Carmona, and Tracy Cayaban!! Tons and tons of pictures from y’all, so many amazing shots of the Poketo for Target displays around the country, these 3 lucky winners picked at random. We’ll get in touch shortly and send you a Poketo pack of goodies. Stay tuned!

Now, for Contest #2. Winner will get a killer pack of Poketo goodies!
-Snap a picture of yourself modeling one of your purchases!
-Share on your facebook, blog, twitter, etc
-Share it on our facebook.com/poketo Fan Page.
-We’ll pick 3 lucky winners at random.
-Deadline is Friday August 20th. Winner will be announced on Friday, August 20th at 5pm.
-Go, snap a pic , and share with the world! Some examples below.

Alexandra, seriously rocking this tote by Joe Rogers. So cute
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Brigitte showing off Leah Chun’s wallet design.

Pete, rocking a Mike Perry weekender.

Janelle, oh man, this is awesome. One of many, but, that DGPH tote is looking good.

Little Rifka fits in a tote! How adorable.

Baby rocking Poketo. Betsy Walton fan.

Chris, working it. Big love to Pietari Posti.

We haven’t officially released the Poketo for Target accessories collection yet, but some of the goods have already hit stores. From the looks of it, they’re going fast! Check out some of the pictures we got from our beloved fans:

Poketo for Target wallets in Eagle Rock, CA

A Poketo display in Pasadena, CA

Tote Bags in Portland, OR

Another display in Toledo, OH

And a picture of a picture of us!

Some fans showing Poketo love in Milwaukee, WI!

It’s been amazing to see months of hard work on Poketo for Target finally come to fruition.

Fear not, Target stores nationwide are getting another shipment in a week, but be sure to go and get yours soon! The full microsite launch is August 10th at poketo.com, and will display the full Lookbook and product catalogue.

Meet Jon Vermilyea, another amazing Perverse Universe artist. He studied cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in New York and served as Production Manager for visual culture hub PictureBox Inc upon graduating. Jon has since gone rogue as a freelance illustrator, lending his talents to apparel, comics, animation and screenprints.

Recent projects include a five-color silkscreen book based on the Mars Attacks imagery from the 1960′s (on which his wallet designs are based), and a very psychedelic music video for Animal Collective’s My Girls.

Jon has done extensive comics work for publishers like Fantagraphics and Vice Magazine, and two of them, Pizzatime and The Princes of Time, are available at Poketo here. They are sure to make stellar additions to your comics collections.

Check out the entire Perverse Universe collection here, and stick around for Jon’s very special illustrated interview!

For a Monday, a very good productive, quiet, and creative day. Dig it.

Echo Park style.

UPDATE: Because there were some requests for the type of camera used in these pics… it’s the Harinezumi 2… I’ve been playing with it a lot, it’s super killer and very small, unintrusive. Shoots both digital video and stills. You can find it at poketo.com.

Our trip to The Alhambra, Spain a few years back. I feel wanderlust coming on. Travel=Inspiration. More to come.

Commissioned by Oakland Museum of California, an awesome video with a glimpse of Barry’s studio and a time lapse of the installation at the museum. It’s great to see his studio, all the order/disorder and to see the process and head scratching involved in putting one of his large installations together.

If you are in LA, you’ve probably seen the many street banners of Barry McGee’s work advertising an exhibition at The Hammer. Currently on view is Outside The Box, an exhibtion with master print maker, Jacob Samuel. One might wonder, why is Barry McGee’s work on the banners? From the Hammer website,

Working primarily in series in intaglio mediums such as etching, drypoint, and aquatint, Samuel has invited artists to create prints in his Santa Monica studio but has also traveled internationally to collaborate with artists in their own studios. The number of prints included in each portfolio range from 6 to 36, with more than 550 individual prints included in the 43 portfolios.

Barry McGee is one of the artists that Samuel has collaborated with in a series of new prints, there is a video where you can see the process and collaboration between Samuel and many of the artists.

Our Upcycled Street Banner Bags have become wildly popular because of their graphic colors and the uniqueness of each one. It shouldn’t be taken for granted, however, that each bag has a story behind it. We received one such story today from one of our twitter followers, Hana, inquiring about a very specific bag that she had seen in her friend’s blog.

Her parent’s names just happened to be on that bag, and in a wild coincidence, it turns out that the banner was from a lecture given by her parents in Korea in 2009!

Photograph and diagram by Hana Du

Check out how Hana diagramed how the original banner made its way to its final form:

It was a delight to see that one of the Banner Bags’ stories came back to us through coincidence and the magic of the Internet!