It’s that time of year again, simultaneously the beginning of the guacamole season and the official end of the holidays: the Sunday when all Americans gather together for buffalo wings, nachos, and FedEx ads.

The championship game of the sport Americans peculiarly refer to as “football” (when in reality it’s closer to rugby), about a hundred million people watch the “Big Game” every year, which even if it isn’t as many visits Picnik gets in a year, is still a lot of gridiron fans. So as a service to all you hundred million devotees of the game, we have a brand new collection of Shapes for you to adorn your Sunday parties with: helmets, jerseys and, of course beer.

We would also like to announce the other big release today for Premium Picnikers: Gritty! Sort of like Orton-ish’s worst enemy, Gritty is designed to make you look real, tough, legit, right there, stepped up, and not taking nuthin from nobody. Like, don’t mess with me, I’m Gritty.

There’s an exciting new Effect just released for Premium Picnikers: Dots and Dots! Actually more like 8 features, Dots and Dots include Impressionist Dots, Light Peg Dots, Color Spots Dots, Circle Dreams Dots, Newsprint Dots, CMY Halftone Dots, Jumbotron Dots, and Scoreboard Dots. Also, each one has the full range of Advanced blend Modes and each can be painted in (and out!) of your photo!

A year ago, Picnik had a little over a million monthly visits. Last week, we had one million visits in one day. Exceeding all our wildest expectations, our 1400% increase in traffic this year translates to 25% more happy Picnikers each and every month!

Since this time last year, we launched the Free side of Picnik with our ad-supported features, professional printing services through our partners at Qoop, professional fonts from FontShop, added the Picnik Basket with the Layering, multi-file uploading, and collage capabilities, Collages and Fancy Collage, a whole slew of fabulously popular touch-up tools like Shine-Be-Gone and Eye Color, the Sandbox tab’s Pixelbender effects, launched with Adobe Flash 10, teamed up with new API partners like Myspace, SmugMug and Photobox, integrated Paypal into our payment options, plus new Effects like Panography, Puzzle, and Advanced Editing tools like Curves, Levels, and the Clone tool.

But it wasn’t just a lot of traffic and releases! The year was happily punctuated with awards and award shows and press mentions and publications! In June we won the Stevie Award and Webby Award, and were listed as one of TIME Magazine’s 50 Best Websites of 2008 and Facebook for Dummies‘ 10 greatest Facebook apps. In July we were mentioned in Macworld and were International Design Magazine’s 54th Annual Design Review “Best In Show” for the Interactive category! In August we were an OMMA Awards Finalist, September brought the 2008 Web Marketing Association’s Web Award, October the TIS 100 and W3 Silver Award, and November the Pixel Award for the Geek Category.

Not too shabby!

Big news here at Picnik World HQ, where on Friday, our crack team of server specialists sat holed up in their Top Secret Server Lair high above the rooftops of downtown Seattle, their thumbs a mere blur on the Official Picnik Tally Counter, as on January 2, for the first time ever, we had one million visits in one day!

Happy New Year, Picnikers! Now that it’s about 2pm on the Pacific Coast, most of you should have recovered from last night’s revelries and be ready to start Picniking all those photos you took. Well, let us help make even the tamest soirée look like your own private Times Square (even if Ryan Seacrest couldn’t make it) with our new New Years shapes!

Picnik’s gift generator has gotten a massage to make it even easier to give your favorite someone the gift of Premium awesomeness for a whole year! Perfect for everyone on your list, click here and you’re guaranteed to have your gift code before Christmas! In fact, you’re guaranteed to have your gift code before you can say “Well that was easy!” Either email the happy news to your happy recipient, or print out a custom card for a little extra physicality.

For just $24.95, the gift of photo-editing awesomeness to your friends, family, teachers, in-laws, and secret crush gives them access to all of Picnik Premium’s features and content for a whole year. Not to mention, it’s light on packing materials!

Collage is officially out and about! Our absolutely-the-most-requested-feature ever, Collage has been in Premium Preview since the end of August and as a quick Flickr search will tell you, it’s been very well-received and has become even better with your feedback!

And now that the Premium Preview Period has ended and Collage is now available to all our users, we’ve added even more Collage Goodness with improved patterns and more more fancy-pants layouts!

New for the American campaign season is our snazzy new collection of campaign buttons! Whether Republican, Democrat, or Picnopublicrat, we’ve probably got a button you can wear with pride!

Top tip: Use with our amazing new Collage feature (now in Premium Preview!), add some text, and use to promote your next political cage match!

Why settle for just having hilarious cats on your t-shirt\mug\canvas prints? Wouldn’t your awesome Picniked photo be so much better? We think so! Picnik has partnered-up with the clever QOOP (cue-oop!), allowing you to shoot your creation straight to QOOP and direct to your new mouse pad. You ask, “Dude, where and how?!?” Under the Save&Share tab you’ll see Print Photo… then all the cool QOOP options. Clicking one of their options (prints, postcards, key chains, disks, calendars, more, more) will deliver you to QOOP with your current open picture (and your Photo History… coming soon!).

Not one to rest on any single project at a time, we also decided to go international in a big way becoming PhotoBox.com’s new killer photo-editor. Completing their picture (sorry) with storage, sharing, publishing and lots of other photo-coolness. If you’re just about anywhere in Europe, you’ve got to have heard of these sharp guys: Photobox.fr in France, Photobox.de in Germany and Photobox.co.uk. Picnik runs in those languages too, but you already knew that. Finally, hold on to your hat\hut\chapeau\capello for their coming releases all across Europe!

Given the fanatical font geekery here at Picnik World HQ, we’re thrilled to finally announce that we’ve unveiled our brand new and exclusive offering of 15 fonts from FontShop®, available only to Premium Picnikers. This collection of typefaces from the FontFont® library was hand-picked just for our users and represents an incredible selection of truly professional, quality fonts. In fact, if you want to use these fonts without the incredibly affordable Picnik Premium membership, you’ll be paying thousands of dollars. No joke, they’re that awesome.

So, without further ado, here’s the list:

FF DIN – Cool, crisp, minimal. Albert Jan-Pool’s skillful reworking of the official traffic type of Germany (DIN stands for Deutsches Institut für Normung, or “German Institute for Standardisation”) will work in any setting, and has been used on ABC’s World News With Charles Gibson, MTV Latin America, JetBlue Airways, and Adidas.

FF Meta – Erik Spiekermann’s humanist typeface is considered by many to be groundbreaking, and the most influential sans serif of the digital age. Designed to be readable and sturdy on a small scale (it was intended for Deutsche Bundespost, to be easily legible on postage stamp scale) and in large letters (or on a mail truck), it can be used for a look that’s both modern and approachable, as has the Stockholm Metro, Imperial College London, Environment Agency of England and Wales, and I.D. Magazine.

FF Meta Serif – It took three years and three designers to create this sturdy serif companion to Spiekermann’s FF Meta. Ideal for a classic look or longer passages of text.

FF Tartine Script – This natural, flowing script drawn by Parisian font designer Xavier Dupré is at home on both greeting cards and cans of gourmet soup.

FF Erikrighthand – The handwriting of Dutch designer Erik van Blokland is bold and legible and yours to pretend ownership of!

FF Pepe – Give your images a vintage, personal touch with the elegant award-winning script by Spanish designer Pepe Gimeno.

FF Brokenscript – Get in touch with your inner Berliner with Just van Rossum’s interpretation of old German type. Known as a “textura blackletter”, FontShoppers might affectionately call it “heavy metal”.

FF Market – H. A. Simon’s script is the kind of casual freestyle lettering you’d see price-pointing produce or refrigerator markdowns.

FF Providence Sans – The basic print letters of a child are often the most human and legible. Drawn with youthful care by Guy Jeffrey Nelson.

FF Oxide – The letters found on shipping containers, warehouse walls, and military munitions can now be found on your pics, thanks to celebrated New York designer Christian Schwartz.

FF Cocon – Curvaceous and organic, the type of Dutch designer Evert Bloemsma has become synonymous with “Web 2.0″.

FF Marker – Legit graffiti can’t be made with a font, but Thomas Marecki’s typeface from FF Tag Team gets you pretty darn close.

FF Confidential – Just van Rossum’s deliciously damaged homage to industrial typography, FF Confidential is good for advertising, displays, or flyers for anarchist organisations.

So check them all out, and let us know what you think!