With the world facing energy issues imminently, environmental groups reminding us of our responsibilty to our planet and governments taxing everything that pollutes the globe, you are probably trying to limit your carbon footprint in one way or another - even if its just to save a bit of cash. The Un-plugged project is growing into a global phenomena taking over the streets of even the most inaccessible urban spaces. Un-plugged is an on-going project highlighting the possible loss of power that humanity will one day face! (A scary thought - can you imagine life without Concrete Canvas!!!).

The Un-plugged project involves the placement of stickers designed to look exactly like mains power sockets. As you probably know, not all countries have the same power sockets and so the variety of stickers is still there. It is a strange site seeing an indoor power socket on the street, especially on the outside of a multi-storey car park.

The project has been active for over 7 years, in 20 countries involving more than 40,000 stickers. Get involved asap and spread the message.

Links:
Un-plugged Website
Un-plugged Flickr Group

Our sticker competition has now drawn to a close and our winner has been decided by the forum residents.

We are pleased to announce that we will be getting Matt Robinson’s design produced. He has won 1000 of his design too.

However, as the competition was drawn into a second round of voting due to an initial tie, we will also be getting Cleandemon’s (who came second) design produced. He will be receiving 500 of his design:

Thanks to all those that entered. Keep checking back on Concrete Canvas for more competitions.

Another quick reminder to all those wanting to enter the sticker competition for a chance to win 1000 stickers of your own design.

The competition deadline is this tomorrow (Friday 24th October) so get your entries in asap!

Rules:
There is no theme so submit any design you want (within reason).
The artwork must be around 300dpi.
The artwork must be one of the following sizes: 3×10 cm, 4×10 cm, 3×12 cm, 4×12 cm, 6×6 cm.

Please submit all artwork in this thread on the forum.

EDIT: Sticker competition closed. Winner will be announced shortly.

A quick reminder to all those wanting to enter the sticker competition for a chance to win 1000 stickers of your own design.

The competition deadline is this Friday 24th October so get your entries in asap!

Rules:
There is no theme so submit any design you want (within reason).
The artwork must be around 300dpi.
The artwork must be one of the following sizes: 3×10 cm, 4×10 cm, 3×12 cm, 4×12 cm, 6×6 cm.

Please submit all artwork in this thread on the forum.

Concrete Canvas and competitions go hand in hand, we love making dreams happen :P. Remember last time? Our charity t-shirt event was a massive success but we still really need you guys to buy t-shirts. All of you that voted for inkJoy or FAKE need to buy a t-shirt now!

This time Concrete Canvas have teamed up with Cromatics to bring you guys a massive competition. You could win your design on a sticker being distributed globally.

Rules:
There is no theme so submit any design you want (within reason).
The artwork must be around 300dpi.
The artwork must be one of the following sizes: 3×10 cm, 4×10 cm, 3×12 cm, 4×12 cm, 6×6 cm.

Please submit all artwork in this thread on the forum.

The winner will receive 1000 stickers of their design.

The closing date for submissions is Friday 24th October 10:00pm GMT a winner will then be decided.

Typography is a very important tool for artists. We’ve seen how the swiss group CCC have created a storm and now have mass of followers through using different style work on their stickers.

Mr. Say Bubble, like CCC, is also primarily a sticker artist. His work is awesome and the mixture between his ‘bubble’ character and the typography creates an unlimited number of variations on what could be pretty limited. Mr. Say Bubble says:

I don’t like to brag, but I do have a bit part in almost every comic strip or book out there. I’m, uh, kind of a big deal. *flex* I might even make an appearance in a city near you.

Have a think about that one :P.

The CCC cccrew are known globally for their awesome sticker designs, the majority of them taking a form of the letters CCC. With the recent rise in sticker trading and collecting, CCC have made their opinions of this activity well known and have decided to go against the fashion. The guys even created a t-shirt design for our Charity t-shirt design project. We managed to put some questions together and ask the lads from Switzerland the hows, whys and wheres about their stickers.

Click the read more for the interview.

(more…)

Dotted around urban environments are a whole range of critters and I don’t mean your usual city wildlife. If you know where to look, you can find some awesome character designs. So this is a safari guide to finding those little bastards ;).

First up is a rare beauty found across the UK by a young artist known as inkJoy. The critter in question seems to be some form of drunk dinosaur - you better keep an eye on him as he’s often up to mischief.

If you look to the right ladies and gentlemen you’ll see a fantastic Cat/human hybrid by O Dear! Another sticker based artist who produces some great character work on and off the street.

The last stop on our tour is Starheadboy - if you look through those trees you can just about make out his ears. Another great artist, Starheadboy is based in Seattle, United States.

That concludes our safari tour, thank you for coming along. On your way out you can pick up some souvernirs from our gift shop!

One thing I don’t believe we have covered yet on this site is the sticker. And, after receiving a pack of fantastic stickers yesterday, I asked myself a question: can the sticker be seen as real street art?

I guess the answer to this would be similar to the answer of how long is a piece of string? It also brings us back to the question of what is street art? This is a crucial question with no definite answer.

If you want to label slaps as street art, then you must recognise how different they are from your usual street art mediums. For example, the main idea which is holding me back from giving stickers there full street art symbol is, slaps are made prior to going out unlike throwups. Now, you may here say that ’stencil artists produce there own stencils before going out’ - and you’d be right, but an incredible amount of thought goes into making the stencils (assuming they aren’t using photoshop :P).

On the other hand, sticker artists do often produce there own stickers to an incredible standard with a whole host of materials: spray cans, markers, stencils etc. They often drip with imagination, style and originality.

I think this then takes us to another question: when do stickers move away from art and become propaganda?

Slaps can be put up very quickly similar to a tag but for me a tag isn’t street art. And with the ability to put this ‘art’ up in a few seconds and hundreds in a hour, does the art just become an advert for the artists?

I would define the stickers produced for Concrete Canvas as propaganda  - its whole purpose is to advertise as you’d expect mass produced stickers to be. However, after receiving a very generous pack from AURORA yesterday this has made me change my mind slightly. AURORA’s stickers are mass produced but they are beautiful, they have been designed by a wide variety of artists and I look at AURORA’s stickers thinking they are art.

So, can stickers be considered as real street art? YES. They sure can!

Today we got our first batch of Concrete Canvas stickers, 500 of them to be exact.

We have lots to go around so if you want some get in touch via the contact page and we’ll send them out asap.

Thanks very much to Awesome Badges who got these to us, really appreciated guys.