Who are the creators behind elefunds?
Elefunds was founded by Tim, Yannick, Christoph, Ben and David in autumn 2011 during the StartUp competition @ the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin). Our founders team includes a wild mixture of professions ranging from Senior Business Consultants over Software Developers, Philosophers, MBAs to Anthropologists. We enjoy this diversity in professions as well as experiences and lifestyles because it is the essential to our work as well as the key to our motivation and endurance.
Since we love what we do and how, by now our Team has grown to become a company of 10 People supporting our idea and working on product development, marketing and sales to enrich our idea of sustainable and ethical consumption and make elefunds available in thousands of shops worldwide.

What is the idea behind your company?
The primary idea has always been to provide a more convenient form of giving to charity.
In a time of Web 2.0 and social media we thought it would be cool to give whenever you want, whatever amount you want and share it with your friends, therefore becoming an evangelist for your favorite charity. While thinking about that we noticed that not only charities but also shops could be promoted that way and therefore we could make shopping more ethical and responsible.
Based on that idea we started elefunds with the development of the Plugin you are beta testing in the UCON-Shop right now. All friends and fans of your products can round-up their grand total by the end of their shopping tour, choose up to three organizations by which the money is split equally and give for good. Afterwards you can share your good deed on facebook and promote your favorite charities just as UCON-Acrobatics.

At the beginning “.com” companies always have to be fast in order not to be bought up by bigger competitors – are you worried and how do you avoid something like this from happening?
For sure the whole web business is fast growing and rapidly changing. But since our project is a unique feature in the e-commerce market and we are not aiming for huge profits but a more sustainable economic system as such we don’t think anybody will copy elefunds.
The most important contribution to this believe might be that we are well trusted by our international charity partners for we have been fundraisers for quite a while. So we can guarantee that all donations are efficiently directed to your favorite organization via our foundation and this ist he most important issue of all. So we hope that we will build a sustainably growing company that provides creative software solutions to give for good for quite a while.

How did our cooperation come about?
We had been working on the project for almost two months when our developers told us about your berlin-based Streetwear brand. Since we all are used to skate, surf or free ski and strictly prefer T-Shirts over Suits we came to meet you guys @ your showroom in Friedrichshain and fell in love with the products right away, as you can see on the pictures your shirts are daily workwear ; ).
But seriously, beneath the opportunity of testing the software in a berlin-based store we especially like the way you guys work on your products. We identify with your philosophy in the way you are trying to create long lasting and therefore sustainable favorite pieces. This is exactly what we think to be the paradigm of our generation to do/own or wear things that are making a difference.

How do you choose the aid organizations for your collaborations?
In fact every charitable organization or foundation can become our partner. But, there are some restrictions as for example a verified „Gemeinnützigkeit“ from the german tax authority. Furthermore we prefer organizations that have transparent as well as democratic structures in terms of decision making and disposition of funds. As a form of simple benchmarking we are currently using the catalogues of the „DZI“ for trustable charities just as the Initiative for a transparent civil society (ITZ) guidelines. We built up these restrictions to be able to secure that the donated amounts are efficiently and directly used in a straight forward manner.
Concerning ourselves, we do apply the rules of the European Fundraising Association and do have a verified „Gemeinnützigkeit“ as well, so we can guarantee that your donation gets where it belongs.

What are your future plans? Are there more companies you want to cooperate with and how do you define your goal?
By now we are simply as amazed as grateful for all the support we experienced in the last months.
Since so many people joined us on our way, enchanted us and liked the idea of giving to charity while shopping online, we will definitely increase the number of shops and charities we work with, to make all areas of e-commerce and charities available to our fans. Therefore we are looking for experienced developers an office as well as investment right now.
The next step then will be to get elefunds international and give donors all around the world the possibility to shop and share for their beloved charities. Because giving is easy!

Featured products: The Scream Tee and Gustav Hood

Look who we spotted here rocking the Jakup Tee during a magazine shooting.

The Jakup Tee worn by ‘La Pulga’ (The Flea) aka ‘Fifa World Player of the Year’ is a single jersey t-shirt with a peached twil collar and available in 4 colors. It’s a piece from our current spring/summer collection and shows again how versatile our designs can be and how easy a basic t-shirt can look pretty formal. This is due to the typical shirt characteristics which we integrate in this t-shirt and which range from a stand-up collar, yoke, button facing over to a classical hemline. Yeah, you know its a brilliant product, if a brilliant athlete sport it.

Go and get it here, before ‘CR7′ does

It is time for our Facebook ‘Sample Gamble’ again and all you art connoisseurs probably know, why we chose this item today. Munchs iconic masterpiece painting ‘The Scream’ has become the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

One of our latest artist tees by Christopher Gray which is a homage to ‘The Scream’ will now be raffled. If not already, like our Facebook page and comment the post with your size there.

The lucky winner will be announced this friday 04th of may 2012 and all of you who didn’t have the 120.000.000 € – you should definitely click here

The Ucon Silhouette line differentiates itself clearly through a fundamental ethos of subtlety. Unique clothing focusing on innovative cuts and solid materials, highlighting the male silhouette. The pieces are characterized by their clean and body-conscious form.
Silhouette is not for those who choose to mask their identity behind random clothing, its for people who prefer a clean, minimalistic aesthetic mixed with a certain sense of unique fashion.

See the new Silhouette Lookbook here and checkout the interview with the designer Dirk Oelmann on ASTONISH Magazine.

We would like to welcome you to our new Ucon spring/summer collection 2012. Our latest assortment reflects our dedication to the t-shirt. We asked ourselves how else a simple t-shirt could look like and opened our mind to enter new paths. The result is a widespread selection from very basic t-shirts to t-shirts that can almost be considered as shirts. The influences range from sport to chic and the materials we used from single jersey to fine twill to piquè. Despite simplicity we still added the love to the detail. Enjoy our tribute to the t-shirt and many other new pieces!

Featured products: The Scream Tee, Yorick Tee, Snorre Tee and Nelson Sweater

Two years ago, Christopher Gray was the first designer we featured in our Artist Collection. Since then, many things have happened around him: he went through several stages of progress with his work which reminds us a lot of how we as a brand have evolved in the past. That‘s why he was the perfect pick for this season yet again! This time we also did an extensive interview with him and present even more of his great artwork.

For anyone of you who don‘t know him yet, Christopher is a designer, illustrator and picture taker. Originally from Manchester, England but currently living in Sweden, he is writing for Tourist Magazine and Sticks & Stones. Apart from that, he is director of Toy, an award winning collective of European designers, artists & illustrators which is working for brands such as Sony, Nike and Hilton.

Christopher, you’re a designer, an illustrator, a picture taker and writer. Does one of those occupations stand out as being your main focus?
Design is predominately the thing I loose the most amount of sleep over. I spend a great deal of time thinking the last idea wasn‘t good enough or that my projects could have been smarter, more poignant, better looking and so on, all very counter productive but I haven‘t yet found a way to stop it. Taking pictures – I wouldn‘t call myself a photographer – has certainly become more than just a hobby. I bought an old Praktica with 3 lenses, a metal box and 50 rolls of film from eBay for £50 which got me hooked pretty quickly, especially after seeing the results of using outdated film. From there I started colletcting anything that I liked the look of without googleing to see if it was good or not. I am a terrible writer, I‘m pretty certain I have a certain type of dyslexia that twists what I want to write into nonsense. I better not re-read this or there is a good chance I‘ll scrap it and want to start over. I do like it though. I started writing a story a few days ago after having some thoughts on the positive aspects of people living with Hypochondria in relation to making life changing decision.

Lately your work has evolved a lot. From your first Ucon artist feature we know you as a very funny illustrator. Your new artworks show a really abstract and minimalistic style. What has happened? How did you get there?
I started thinking about death a lot. It was my brothers fault, we were talking about being on our deathbed and wether you would be proud of what you had done. I figured I wouldn‘t want to be known as ‚the guy who made funny drawings about nipples‘. I think from that point I completely stopped anything related to that kind of humour. I‘m not anti-funny. Not one bit. There are people who do it very well. I just don‘t want to be one of them. I wanted to work on projects that really meant something to me, which documented a time of my life but also didn‘t rely on things I had learnt before.

Are there any modern day designers or past masters you really like? How did you get inspired or influenced for your new series of posters?
There are so many artists and designers that fascinate me. If you pick up any Graphis annual from 1960 until 1975 there is so much great graphic design from that era. Every time I get bored of looking at overly polished work I just have a browse through the few I own and it‘s my own little zen retreat. It‘s so easy to get wrapped up in how refined design looks now, it‘s so refreshing to remind yourself that a few bits of ripped paper can have so much soul. A year ago I had a student come and work in the Toy studio for a few weeks, his work inspired me a lot. His name is Mike Redmond (www.mikeredmond.co.uk) he draws stories, every mistake he makes he just re-drew it in pen over the top, leaving a kind of ghost of the rejected drawing. I really like it. As for the inspiration, I‘m pretty sure I can credit a great deal of it to my girlfriend. I spent a lot of the winter in Sweden starring out of the window at the snow moaning about how I didn‘t have anything to do. She reminded me to make the most of it and produce something for myself. I‘m not entirely sure why I wanted to do the classic painting series. I had been looking at Flaming June as a desktop wallpaper and thought the shapes were amazing.

You want to do 100 poster designs within a half year. That is an amazing output! How long on average would you spend on an illustration?
I think the 6 months will become 12 months, but that is ok. I have to put commercial products first for this time in the year. Summers are always busy before everyone closes down and hibernates during the winter. There is no average time per print. Sometimes I have to fiddle with one for hours or days to get it to feel right. Every now and again (very rarely) something magic happens and everything goes together perfectly.

Looking back, what have been some of your favorite projects?
In my eyes, it‘s all about collaborating with other people. The Toy exhibition in Berlin was one of the best times of my life, it was a ridiculously cold February day, and the room was packed wall to wall with good vibes. I‘m heading back to England tomorrow for another group show with tons of other amazing artists, so I‘m equally as excited about that. The one project which doesn‘t really look like any of my work but I still really like is the 18 wheeler design I did for Freitag.

In what place do you feel most home?
For the moment, definitely Sweden. It suites me perfectly. I‘m so lucky to be here for the summer. I‘ve never been in a position where if I get bored of work I can stroll down to the harbour and swim out to the pontoon and soak up some sun for an hour before heading home. Absolute bliss.

How does the countryside and Sweden influence your work? How is it different from working in a city such as Manchester?
It is certainly different to Manchester. I used to sit opposite an inner city multi storey car park. During the winter I watched kids who had gone to the very top, roll giant snowballs, dropping them off the side without really understanding that if they were to hit someone there was a good chance they would kill them. It went on for about ten minutes with me completely helpless to do anything about it. That depressed me a bit. Someone also told me that after a while you start to realise that you hear ambulance sirens at least once a day. I don‘t hate Manchester, in fact it‘s nice to go back to every now and again, but I‘m not sure I can say it feels like home. Out here I can concentrate much better and my work has certainly become a lot more refined.

Describe your typical day
I‘m always up before 9. Most of the people are in the UK so I have a 1 hour head start on them because of the time difference. I drink the liquid tar disguised as coffee with plenty of sugar and milk. Then I need to get the first ‚Get Mail‘ out of the way to make sure there isn‘t some ridiculously urgent file that needs to be sent over. If there isn‘t I can usually sit in my own little quite spot of the garden and do some reading. I‘ve just finished Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl which was amazing and a bit disgusting. I‘ve also just finished reading about the meat industry which had an enormous impact on me. Then it‘s full steam on work. I usually don‘t take on anymore than three commercial projects at a time so I allow myself some breathing space. Plenty of breaks throughout the day is essential, no good design comes from locking yourself into a computer. My evenings are all about making too much food, sitting in the evening sun, reading and making my way through an overblown list of movies I should have seen by now.

We heard that you were really into computer games when you were a kid and you wanted to develop games. What would you like to do that you are not doing at the moment?
Yeh for sure. I was a massive geek. I still kinda am. I was paid by a company in the UK to play Counter Strike, which included a few trips to LAN competitions and fulfilling my lifetime quota of being pale and skinny. I don‘t regret it one bit, some memories from back then will always stay with me. Somewhere on the internet there is a photograph of me as a 16 year old posing with some horrific bikini models holding computer hardware I never used after winning a competition. It was like King of Kong for pubescent boys. I stopped playing years and years ago but I recently installed it again just for fun, but I‘ve certainly lost the magic. I‘ve said a few times I want to do some proper manual labour, big life experience stuff. Perhaps felling somewhere in the woods for a season eating cheese sandwiches with over brewed tea. I watched a documentary about Richard Proenneke who moved to Alaska to live a simple life after his retirement which has super inspired me to not just rely on the internet. I think a few months of no computer time would do me a world of good.

Aside from your own creative work, you’ve set up „Toy“ to represent other designers. What drew you into management?
There seemed to be so many agencies setup to „represent“ illustrators but really it was more like using younger talent who knew nothing about business to line their pockets. Still now, the majority of agencies select the work that will probably sell well to boring advertising agencies. Iheard so many stories about artists being treated terribly and companies doing all they could to weasel out of paying for work. I set up Toy to work with artists who deserved to be paid properly and have their work exhibited.

Which are the three most important links you check everyday?
I only follow three, so that is handy.
http://reform.lt/
http://haw-lin.com/
http://www.weoccupy.co.uk/blog/

What kind of people do you find interesting?
Anyone with good stories or who really cares about a subject they can talk passionately about.

What was the last song you listened to?
Everyone always lies when asked this. Not me. It just finished. Circles by Sandro Perri.

Thanks for the interview!

Even though the weather is getting slowly better, we are not satisfied yet. If the forecaster don’t want to brighten up our lifes with some sunny news, at least we at Ucon are going to brighten up your weekend with good news. Good news is, we are extending our winter clearance, meaning your favourite garment will be reduced by an additional 20% till sunday the 19th of February. So hurry up and be lucky to receive 50% off on your beloved Ucon piece. Exclusively in our onlineshop!

Insert the following code during your order process: SALE50UCFW