Here at Infectious we’re a big fan of trompe l’oeil designs – artwork that tricks your eye and makes your friends do a double take when you get your iPhone out and put it on the table in a bar. So we challenged our community of artists to channel the phrase “Transformers: Devices in Disguise and design a laptop, iPhone or iPod skin that would conceal the identity of the device underneath it.

We saw some dynamite submissions but these were the ones that buckled our knees and tickled our funny bone…

Back slaps and $750 are awarded to Estera Kecek and her whimsical card design Let’s Play. Brownie points also go to our runners up Michael Tesch for his homage to a certain classic controller with Infectious ES, to Greg Koenig and his strum-tastic iAcoustic and Dennis McNulty for kickin‘ it old school with his Supertape Cassette.

Congratulations to all the winners and a huge thank you to all those who shared their imaginative ideas with us!

A little news on some tweaks and modifications to our design challenges here at Infectious. As of today, we are killing Open Submissions.

(Don’t know what Open Submissions were? Basically our ongoing design challenge where you could submit any art for any product we did. We would periodically launch winners, usually a handful every month.)

So we are replacing Open Submissions with a slightly new thing called Free4Alls. Why? Well… Open Submissions felt a little too ambiguous. As an artist you never knew if you were a potential winner or not. There was no decisive end to it. Which left everyone in limbo.

So now, we will hold Free4Alls, a design challenge where you can submit any art or design for any Infectious product, just like open submissions. Except now there will be a beginning, an end and explicit winners.

And if you aren’t chosen as a winner, we’ll let you know…. so you aren’t left hanging.

So farewell to Open Submissions. Hello Free4Alls.

Some obvious questions you might have:

Q: Can I re-submit the same design to another Free4All.
A: Sure. If you submit and we think it doesn’t make sense, we’ll let you know.

Q: What are the prizes for Free4Alls?
A: Each free for all will have prizes associated with and posted to the design challenge page.

Q: Will you do a Free4All every month?
A: Maybe. If they rock and you all love them we’ll do more.

We did something a little special for this week’s launch – we asked one of our favorite artists Ray Frenden to curate it.

Infectious invited him to come up with a theme and to ask four of his artist buddies to create brand new artworks to go across device skins and art prints. No holds barred. Conveniently, he was in the middle of joining a newly formed collective called Falsehorse Art, so they all banded together and dreamed up the motif of “infected”.

The inspiration behind these pieces is, shall we say, diverse… From the adventure films of the 70’s and 80’s, to Smurfs, to Brian Froud’s movie set design on Dark Crystal, to psychedelic cacti, to good ol’ fashioned gore-infested Z-movies.

Check out Ray Frenden’s Infected, Alejandro Fuentes’ Droplets, Drout759’s Dances with Peyote, Miguel Cervantes’ There’s Blood Underneath That Skin and evANIMAL’s Dr. Diablo and the Escape From Infectious Island.

Today we welcome two new pieces to the catalog. Together As One and Chosen Destiny are two artworks recently created by San Francisco fine artist Erik Otto under the umbrella of his collective New Leaf. Erik is currently the Artist in Residence at Recology San Francisco (aka our Dump) where he has been recycling, repurposing and generally making beauty out of our waste. The art and the installation he created during his four month stint is being exhibited this weekend. Check out his blog for details.

This week’s Open Submission winning design Suspension is from the oh so talented Kelly McKernan. The original watercolor piece had string sewn into it and was inspired by a mix tape of songs by Emily Haines, Regina Spektor and  Asobi Seksu. Kelly is an Atlanta based artist who is also part of the Cheap Paper artist collective. She will soon be showing her work at  the Thinkspace Gallery in Los Angeles. And for all of you in the ATL, Kelly is currently prepping for a solo show at Beep Beep Gallery. Don’t miss it! Check out www.kellymckernan.com for more details.

We are importing this week’s Open Submission winner straight from New Zealand. Nope, it’s not a sheep, it’s Paul Shih and his Heavy Metal Panda God “Pandara” rocking out in the design, Hollow Threat. The artwork started off life back in 2007 as a Punk Rock themed concept, inspired by the band Minor Threat. But the idea never quite gelled for Shih. In early 2009 he made the connection between pandas and Heavy Metal’s affinity for unsubtle eyeliner and Pandara was born. Check him shreddin’ his guitar in this promo video for Shih’s matching vinyl toy character.

Infectious will be taking a short break from launching new designs until 2010. We hope your New Year’s celebrations are filled with as much head banging, fire breathing and axe wielding as Paul’s panda characters. Have a rocking holidays!

Team Infectious are on cloud nine as we proudly announce our first ever collection of t-shirts. Eight rocking garments of 100% cotton-y goodness that you get to wrap around your torso, just in time for Christmas. All these have been printed in super low quantities, so get them while the getting is good.

Our community of artists sharpened their pencils and fired up Illustrator and Photoshop to create some wonderful and unique t-shirts for our recent Tee Party design challenge. We were shocked and awed by Hollis Brown Thornton reinterpreting the legendary Three Wolf Moon into a Black Panther graphic, Alphonzo Solorzano’s font-tastic stingray design To the Sea, David Szebenyi’s puckish Spirits tee and SteveOramA’s ThEarlYears – a tribute to the late, great Bob Ross. Grand prize and a kiss under the mistletoe however, goes to Kirsten McCrea who takes home $2000 and the community vote for Take Me With You – her nostalgic love letter to the tape cassette.

And because it’s the season for spoiling you, we also asked some of our favorite catalog artists to rustle up a t-shirt design for you to slip underneath the tree as well. Check out MAD’s Homies, Julie West’s Bear Killa and Kristina Collantes’ The Gummy Inferno of Leonard’s Innards. All tees are available for an astoundingly reasonable $19.99. What can we say… you’re welcome

And don’t forget! Today is your last chance to succumb to holiday shopping at Infectious and get 20% off all products in the process. Simply type in the discount code EGGNOG at checkout.

Happy holidays!

Reuben Rude, Nico Berry, Alphonzo Solorzano and our on-staff artists cranked out some mini-masterpieces on the spot and the rest of the night was packed with goodie bags of free Infectious art, festive refreshments and even a testosterone-fueled jumping jack and push up claps contest. Still no word on who was the winner – we’re sure the saga will continue next year… Until then, happy holidays from us to you.

Time: 7pm on December 16th.

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This week’s launch is from one of our veteran catalog artists, Sket One. Check out his limited edition Running Ripple skateboard which comes in a rather unique back flavor. Sket’s Ripple character was born when he decided that he wanted to create a mascot all his own. Inspired by gas station toys from the 1950’s and the iconic plumpness of figures like the Michelin Man and Bob’s Big Boy, Ripple gives a nod to days past when corporate icons were so much more than supermodels. This little ice cream cone might be round, but that doesn’t mean he’s not fast… Time to start practicing those kick flips.

ps. don’t forget Friday 18th December is the cut off date for holiday shipping. Just type in the discount code EGGNOG at check-out to get 20% off all products.