Chiquita’s latest ad campaign imbues its audience with an instant sense of wonder. Using playful illustrations on stickers juxtaposed to the iconic Chiquita stickers, the product and brand become more engaging to the consumer—plus they just look cool.

Check out the interview with art director, Dj Neff, here

And while we’re on the subject of the fantastic pooks (banana in my language) check out this clip and learn how da monkeys do it. We humans are like, soooo stupid.

AND I thought you should enjoy this:

Yea I took these pics on my phone cos my sony camera turned out to be a piece of crap, I’m sure the quality of their products would be ten times better if they advertised with us. My good buddies at Matix in London stole these puppies from the warehouse and posted them over. Since we absolutely HATE music, I thought it would be a good idea to give them away to some faithful reader that can be bothered to inspire us in one way or another.

Coffee and coffee glass not included in the prize – I just thought it was a good idea at the time to prop them up, and while we’re on the subject, that coffee was so strong it almost made me shit my pants.

All you’ve got to do is send us a LOWRES!!! picture of the one thing that inspired you or made you stoked today (or whatever day you take the picture). It could be a funny shaped dog poo, a picture of the sun (not really gonna be that good is it?), a hot girl who gave you her phone number, the % discount tag on those new kicks, your pet goldfish – you get the picture.

Most creative and inspirational picture wins.

Winwinner will be drawn next thursday the 18th.

Click here to send us your pic

Our buddy Jeroen from Amsterdam, who is frequently in Copenhagen and Århus due to his love sitch, and works as a magazine editor for Reload and art curator, has recently got his fingers on a fine new space in Amsterdam to showcase new young contemporary artists.

YOUR:OWN is a gallery space aimed to facilitate young contemporary artists in Amsterdam. Over a period of four months, nine artists will be invited for a solo exhibition. The artists come from different backgrounds and work in different mediums. Creative energy is what connects them.

The artists showing are:
Lil Shy
Joe Holbrook
Pinkyvision
Stefan Glerum
Lennard Schuurmans
Gijs Kast
And our very own local hero Silencio

The space opens on the 26th of March, with its first exhibition of Amsterdam based artist Gijs Kast. His exhibition titled ‘SHOW’ will see portrayals of people he encountered at various ’shows’ throughout the Netherlands and Belgium, like a dog show and a ’strongest’ man contest in Antwerp. With his raw and confronting illustrational portrayals he has won the Dutch Design Award in 2009 for Best Illustration.

OFFICIAL OPENING
Friday 26th of March
YOUR:OWN presents; Gijs Kast
19.00 – 22.00

Last Sunday we did a boys mission out to Lego World in the Bella Center. It was basically a gigantic branding exercise which you still had to pay 140 to get in. Sweet concept: come and let us advertise the fuck out of ourselves and while you’re at it, give us some cash. But perhaps – because 3 or us are hovering 30’s and the fourth was passed out in his pram – we lay outside of the direct target group and leaving the majority of the proposed 14,000 guests unaware to the blatant bombardment of company ‘core values’.

Either way, it was hot as a nutsack for thousands of keen dads, and the discreet competition to build the most advanced structures while sitting in a pool of hundreds of thousands of Lego (yes you can link to their site here, and no, we’re no getting fucken paid) bricks.

One of our tuffguy gang was Alistair Wiper, a keen and diligent shutter-button frequenter, who extracted a series of focussed fathers having the absolute time of their lives.

I screwed up the posting the gallery so just click on one and wizz through from there until I get it fixed.

Go here this Thursday and support a great cause and help make a huge difference for the lives of a lot of kids.

Skateistan is Afghanistan’s (and the world’s) first co-educational skateboarding school. The school engages growing numbers of urban and internally-displaced youth in Afghanistan through skateboarding, and provides them with new opportunities in cross-cultural interaction, education, and personal empowerment programs. The students are selected from all of Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. They will develop skills in skateboarding, skateboarding instruction, healthy habits, civic responsibility, information technology, the arts, and languages. The students themselves decide what they want to learn; we connect them with teachers who will enable them to develop the skills that they consider important. Since Skateistan has been active in Kabul, we’ve seen that Afghan youth of all ethnicities, genders, and socioeconomic backgrounds love to skateboard. Skateistan brings them together, equipping young men and women to lead their communities toward social change and development.

Last year, the Skateistan fundraising project set up in Copenhagen. A mix of on online art auction (where well known Danish artist redesigned skateboards which were sold through Lauritz), a skate contest and a sick line up of musicians and DJ’s.

Sponsors stepped up and donated cash, time and goodies. Everyone worked for free and the whole thing was a super success raising 306,770 kroner. Skateistan has such a fantastic momentum which was solidified in its claiming of the KPH Award and a further 25,000 to toss on the pile.

Thursday the 11th March, Skateistan2010 is going down at Copenhagen Skatepark with a superduper line up of crazy crackers playing records, skateboard foolios and of course all the donated art work.

16:00-17:00 DJ TYKMESTER (AKA Master Fatman)
17:00-18:00 COPIA DOBLE SYSTEMA
18:00-19:00 BANG BANG CLUB
19:00-20:00 KJELD TOLSTRUP
20:00-21:00 COHNNY JAZZ – sætter kog under skatekonkurrencen
21:00-22:00 LADY BOX
22:00-23:00 DOKKEDAL/DIXEN
23:00-24:00 LULU ROUGE
24:00-01:00 DJUNA BARNES
01:00-02:00 WHITE PONY
02:00-04:00 SOULSYSTEMET (POLKA)

Skateistan Copenhagen 2010

I’m putting pennies aside every single day for one of these puppies. Good reviews across the board, we’re actually sitting in the office today doing absolutely nothing but waiting for the kind folks over at Olympus to call us asking if we should get a couple of these to test and, yea while you’re at it, you may as well just keep them. The OLYMPUS PEN Lite E-PL1 is simply a light weight version of the hugely popular OLYMPUS PEN E-P1. Slip slap slop.

This is so nice. Sneaks and macarons, could it be any better? The lovely store colette always has the most fun events. Now they have started a cooking workshop, called cooklette and they will release a pair of  pistachio and raspberry Nike Air Royalty made of macarons. Wish I was in Paris March 13!

THE ART AND LIFE OF CHAZ BOJÓRQUEZ

I want this one – this is a crazy impressive publication documenting 40 years of the very personal artistic journey of Chaz Bojorquez, and it reveals a deep love for the beauty of handwriting. Pre-order it at amazon.co.uk

SUPREME: DOWNTOWN NEW YORK SKATE CULTURE

Looking forward to this one, a hardcover release can be expected in April. Yeeearh! Preorder right here.

URBAN INTERVENTIONS

All sort of crazy street art, graffiti and urban interventions in this new book from Gestalten. Buy it at amazon.co.uk

STREET ART COOKBOOK

See how street art is made, check out this new guide to all the materials and techniques used in street art today. Buy it right here

FACES AND CHARACTERS OF DISTINCTION

Okay this one is a bit nerdy. It’s a visual history of fonts and graphic styles, and it’ s crazy. Buy it soon at taschen.com

ALL CITY WRITERS

Sorry I’m a bit slow, but haven’t bought this one yet! Lexi book about graffiti from New York to Europe, and a must have for all art or graffiti followers! Buy buy!

Our friends over at Plant have recently developed this creative competition for students together with Danish Internet Awards. The task? To make a digital campaign or activity that creates some deserved fame and fortune for the nice people at Børnehjælpsdagen (a national organisation that helps children who are placed in care).

A full list of guidelines are available here so if you’re a student, a bit webby and creative, then hit it up.

To be honest, I’m not quite sure I totally agree with the payoff on the posters, since, well, we run a print magazine and all – but rumour has it that kids these days have a better on-screen readability than if just reading normal print.

That’s fucked up.

Ok. Just to keep it nerdy, these super limited Parra Air Max 1’s will be released March 13, available exclusively from Patta in The Netherlands and a few selected Nike Sportswear stores. Even more nerdy specs are that this shoe is made from burgundy suede and mesh with a terry chenille on the swoosh. They’ve got multi-coloured outsole and a shoe liner with hand drawn graphics. The tongue tag sports the Parra logo. And just for those with light blue tee shirts, the ankle eyelet is done in sky blue with matching laces and air unit. I’d like mine in black please.

Parra blew up ages ago and has done stuff for mostly everyone. Check out LOTS of his stuff here. Below I’ve grabbed a couple of my favs just to fill in some space and make it more like a real blog post – even though they’re ripped from google and are lo res.