Wednesday 30 November 2011

Mo Mo Movember

Show us your mo' ho! Well, us ladies in the office won't but the manly Dave aka Dr our senior art director has taken the Movember batten for all of us at 31stHQ.

Please show your support and donate TODAY as TOMORROW the mo' will be gone.
All proceeds go towards a great cause - prostate cancer. C'mon reach into those pockets!








Monday 28 November 2011

Ho Ho Ho!

We got a little merry and celebrated the silly season together last friday at Pier restaurant, for lunch and our naughty n' nice kris kringle. We then had drinks and mini burgers at The Royal Sheaf, where hot dance moves were busted out the dance floor with some krumpin' slash MC Hammer running man.

There were lot of laughs all round and we cheered what was a H.U.G.E year at 31stHQ; lots of new staff, big new clients, the growth of our existing clients and the move to a bigger and better server. Smiles all round!

For full coverage of our day head over on our Facebook page.








Wednesday 23 November 2011

Good design in a small package

Good design can be everywhere, as creatives our eyes are open 24-7. Even simple things like grocery shopping, posting a letter or shopping for some new jeans can turn into a creative 'ding' moment or spark a thought to current briefs at 31stHQ or proactive ideas for existing clients.

We are always 'switched on' per-say.

Insert this little freebie, we picked up at Maple on King St Newtown. It's so well designed, informative and has a 'concept' which some of these freebies often lack. Promoting the suburbs in the inner city, this A6 sized brochure has a map on each suburb slice and a few pages of what's hot, where to eat, attractions and things to do. Love. Even better the cover folds out to a map of all these suburbs with a summary of each slice on reverse. Genius. Great design and initiative from the City of Sydney.

Perfect little booklet to take on ya bike, utilise the bike lanes and explore the slices of Sydney.
Pick one up and check it out.












Monday 21 November 2011

Do you QR Code?

We've been intrigued by QR Codes of late. Although, these 'complicated barcodes' have been around for years - mainly in Asia (where the smartphone market is HUGE), for some reason or other they have only infiltrated the Aussie market over the last few years.

These QR codes are popping up all over the place now in all sorts of forms from print ads, to bus shelters and at cafes. In our investigations and scanning frenzy here are a shortlist of what these pixelled beauties can do for you:

You can browse to a website.
You can bookmark a website.
You can make a phone call.
You can send a short message.
You can send an e-mail.
You can create a vCard with coordinates to add a contact to your device.
You can create a meCard to add a contact to your device.
You can create a vCalendar event to add to your calendar.
You can create Google Maps URLs.
You can create Bing Maps URLs.

Crazee-hey?! Try them out, scan a few and you may be pleasantly surprised with the results (if you are on a iphone, you will need to download a QR code reader which is free). But, first of all scan ours and LIKE us on Facebook!








Thursday 17 November 2011

30 Days of Shell - Day 2

DAY 2 OF 30
A Relaxed SummerStylish palazzo pants with nude singlet with simple pendant that adds a little sparkle


Monday 14 November 2011

Introducing Shelley

If you haven't met our newest member at 31stHQ, Shelley aka Shell-Bell aka in house fashion goddess.

Shelley has been amazing ever since day one. Joining 31stsecond as an Account Manager in a time-of-need, she was so good at managing our clients, picking up the ball n' running with it and laughing at our bad jokes - we decided we couldn't let her gee-to-the-oh. She's utterly brill and oh-so gorg too.

So in dedication of our new number one,  we're introducing 30 days of Shell. So you can appreciate her fashion as much as we do. We'll also be documenting this over on our Facebook page - don't forget to LIKE US!

DAY 1 OF 30

Thursday 10 November 2011

Made to be together... Gavin Worth

Art & homes, it's like tea & biscuits (scotch fingers or a crown please) or peanut butter & jelly - they're just made to be together.

The other day we found our ideal piece of art for the home. It's not your typical poster print or canvas, but a la sculpture. Modern and sleek of course. These wire sculptures by Gavin Worth are so simple. But it's the minimalistic quality of the bent wire and the graphic nature which appeals most to us. Love. Can someone buy us one for the office or the home?

We know the perfect spot to put it... Totes! Happy Friday y'all. Beer-it-on.






Tuesday 8 November 2011

We love a peek into how things are made

We've been contemplating these shoes, kinda croc-esce meets converse in a rubber form. But in our online shopping daze we stumbled across this vid of how these Native Shoes are made and it's remarkably pushed us over the line... ka-ching! These lovelies will be arriving soon, don't you just love online shopping.

For all our lovely email subscribers click here.
 
Factory Video from Native Shoes on Vimeo.

Monday 7 November 2011

Lunch Break with Lunch Slices

You know the saying. Take a break, have a Kit Kat. Well that ritual is rife at 31stHQ and even though it may not be a Kit Kat per say, it usually is a sweet of some sort, in the form of chocolate.

Now that summer's callin' we're trading the chocolate for a healthier n' heartier snack... a Lunch Slice. It comes in 4 flavours and tastes great all on its lonesome or with some avo and tomato or whatever tickles your fancy really! Lucky for us, we just so happened to work on this campaign over the last few months. In case you haven't spotted these in the supermarkets, look out for our work* and this flavour (it's the best one).

*31st second's creative work involved the in store activations and point of sale only.






Thursday 3 November 2011

The work of Jan Von Holleben

Beautiful art direction, harping from childhood memories with a play on perspective and proportion. His technique has been used in a few ad campaigns of late but we can see this translating into a fabulous fashion editorial or guerilla marketing campaign for a alcohol brand even some sort of flash mob photography shoot. One things for sure, we like his work A LOT.

See more of Jan Von Holleben's work here.







Wednesday 2 November 2011

The no website designer needed website builder

This is one of the most common questions we get asked, 
"how long does it take to make a website?"
along with
"how much does it cost?".

The answer is it's a case-by-case basis. There are so many factors to consider; do you need to be able to make changes yourself, do you have an online store component, do you want to integrate social media, how many pages will there be, will there be video content, do you want a blog as well... it could go on and on and on.

I stumbled across this site not long ago and I'm totally astonished by these amazing websites that YOU can create yourself. It's a choose a template, choose your font, add your images, then customise type of thing. But the templates are really well designed and you do have a great deal of control over the fonts and positioning of things.

Flavor has made website building as easy as 1-2-3. Of course, you won't be able to do everything BUT it's pretty swish, with lots of social media and blog platform integrations. It's the no web designer required build ya own website portal - looney-town?! Who would have thought. Pretty-damn-web-crazy.

Check these out.