Timezoneone Blog

Can you pass the third grade? Do you know your North Dakota from your North Carolina? How well would you do naming all the states of the United States of America?

With this game, you have a few minutes to drag the names of the US states and drop them in the right places on the map. The TimeZoneOne team have clients all around the USA so I am sure we will all deliver big scores! 

Click on the link below to play the game but be warned, it is very addictive!

http://www.pibmug.com/files/map_test.swf

Nigel Scores 40

Known best for it’s Hobbits, New Zealand’s creative industry is an extremely diverse sector which currently contributes around 3.1% of the country’s GDP. Along with film making and screen production, industries include music, fashion, textiles, television, digital content and our favorite, design (to name a few).

NZ’s sporting achievements are well known worldwide and are backed up by a nation of new thinking and fresh ideas. An America’s Cup win in 1995 highlighted the country not only as a sporting nation but also as one of design and innovation with the revolutionary Virtual Eye 3D animated graphics that accompanied the television coverage. Over the years New Zealand has also become one of the world’s leading locations for super yacht construction, leading in naval architecture and interior design. Award winning vessels such as Fitzroy Yachts ‘ Salperton (which recently won Best Sailing Yacht in the 30-44 meter class at the World Super Yacht Awards ) have become the standard for high performance technology.

Captain Matt Sparrow

Today I prepare my first TimeZoneOne blog. On the same day in ‘69 Neil Armstrong hopped out of the Eagle landing craft and became the first man to set foot on the moon. That was a bit cooler than blog writing.Cooler still is Virgin Galactic ’s attempts to get us all up there (well, low orbit anyway), and this bold thinking is apparently being embraced by New Zealanders. According to Carolyn Wincer (head of astronaut sales for Virgin Galactic) ‘Along with the Republic of Ireland, we (New Zealand) have the highest proportion of Virgin Galactic astronauts per head of population in the world’ . Nice.

Bring on the TZ1 staff outing to low orbit…

Matt ‘Space Pom’ Herivel

Hi sweeties, 

On Monday, in a parallel TimeZoneOne universe, some immensely exciting and emotional news rang around the world as our very, very close friends Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt welcomed their two newest bundles of joy. The babies, Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline, were born one minute apart and are fraternal twins. Even though an $11 million photo deal has already taken place for the first pic of the twins, TimeZoneOne has a pxt of the twins (see below) which Ang sent us earlier and, although we haven’t cleared it with her, I’m sure she’ll be fine with sharing it with our special TimeZoneOne friends & family…. 

Enjoy.

LYE 

 Sooo cute, their likeness to their parents is uncanny!

At TimeZoneOne we love being global and now we can officially call our blog global. We have regular visitors from almost every other time zone. This is where last month’s 694 visitors came from…

And here’s an overview of all the visitors since we started tracking statistics in mid-April…

This week is the 4th of July and for the New Zealanders among us who might not know much about this American holiday I have gathered a little information from the great Wikipedia (below). As for all you Americans ‘Happy Independence Day’ from all of us here in New Zealand.

4th of July:
In the United States, Independence Day (commonly known as the Fourth of July) is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, picnics, baseball games, and various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States, but is often also viewed as simply a summer festival, apart from its patriotic overtones.

And to get you in the spirit here is one of the better 4th of July fireworks displays:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeFi3SDi_n8

Alaina

The night started off with a hustle, bustle and flurry of getting a free drink from the bar and then rushing to get a good seat. This zoner by-passed the beer queue, a sacrifice that was rewarded with a seat with a view and the ability to drive home.

The first Christchurch Pecha Kucha Night was a hit bringing together a range of artists from many disciplines (fine artists, designers, architects, sound artists, photographers and chiefs). Each artist/designer showed 20 slides of their work, each of which was shown for 20 seconds — giving a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds. The speed-racer pace forced the artist to summarize his/her work in what often resulted in comic styling.

Pecha Kucha started in Tokyo, Japan in 2003 and has since spread to more than 120 cities, including London, San Francisco, Seattle, Rotterdam, Shanghai and Berlin.

This zoner’s highlight would have to be news of a fabulous new sport about to sweep our nation and the world - Chess-Boxing , the exhausting physical and mental sport was a knock out with the audience.

Chess Boxing merges two contradicting sports of opposite disciplines, pushing their athletes to the limit, mentally as well as physically. Six lightning rounds of speed chess alternate with five rounds of boxing. In a maximum of eleven rounds, the decision will come either through K.O. or check mate. Although we did not get to see a round in progress the slides shown demanded instant awe and respect (along with side splitting laughter) for these crazy athletes.

The next Christchurch Pecha Kucha Night is planned for late July, with this zoner planning to be a regular Pecha Kucha attendee (perhaps having taken up a new sport).

And the award we have all been waiting for….this weeks zoner of the week award is a tie going to our own maybe baby ‘Mini Murray’ who having decided to brave the Christchurch frost 2 weeks early, considerately put their grand entrance on hold so Murray could come in to work and do spectacular Crocs and Jibbitz artwork, meeting his deadline and making the design world a better place.

Mini Murray we appreciate your timing and are all looking forward to your arrival.

The second winner, Tim who seeing an opportunity to ‘make it better’ reconstructed our presentation page format so that Timezoneone designs in the future will be presented bigger and better.

Maria

Congratulations to everybody involved in the SAIC Boxed & Beautiful student recruitment package! We just won a GOLD MEDAL in the annual CASE Circle
of Excellence awards.

CASE Circle of Excellence Awards recognizes outstanding efforts in institutional advancement. This international awards program provides an opportunity to showcase innovative, exciting, and effective programs and projects.

We received a GOLD MEDAL in the Visual Design in Print category.

This is further recognition of the outstanding work that comes from our creative team in New Zealand.

We have won an EFFIE Award and CASE Award – for different pieces of work – in the space of a month.

GREAT WORK TEAM!

The Blogizadpha - Hamish

Traveling in the U.S.A is nothing new for the TZ1 Business team, however for this New Zealand zoner it is a truly unique experience. So sitting here at Sydney airport, waiting to mosey on back (something I learnt to do in the U.S) to the creative hub, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on what has been an interesting time.

First off, it was a real shame my luggage was lost somewhere in the void which is LAX. It put a dampener on my first couple of days as I stressed out over having lost everything I had bought with me. My t-shirt collection would never been the same and the small matter of 50 odd cricket shirts for the TZ1 Fenders Cricket Team lost was enough to send the Chicago office into despair. I won’t mention airlines, but thankfully I was re-UNITED with my luggage with 2 days left of my trip. Luckily Boulder, Colorado had plenty of shopping to offer and I made it through the week without offending too many noses.

Pretzels! Why, why, why! Of all the things to be offered on an airplane they give you the one thing that tastes like cardboard, and are bound to leave you dehydrated if you don’t partake in the beverage service. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I love flying the friendly skies as much as anyone else, but one tip… eat before you get on the plane, and then spend the time on the plane worrying if your luggage made it, better yet carry-on, but note you will have to make a mad dash to the front of the queue to ensure you get overhead baggage space as it is almost as valuable as gold. Well enough of the moaning (sorry if I have bored anyone), and on to the highlights…

Boulder , home of Crocs and Mork and Mindy . It was my second visit to Colorado, and this time I got the chance to have a walk around and take in the sights. Having now done that I can say Boulder is alot like Christchurch, and because of that I felt right at home. This Zoner could easily live and enjoy life there as it is a friendly, easy-going place. For anyone planning a trip to the USA, Boulder would be a great addition.

Chicago, as ol’ blue eyes Sinatra would say - my kind of town. Again this city was like a home away from home for me. Having lived in the big smoke before (Sydney), I am used to big cities and don’t find them intimidating. I probably did too much work and not enough sight-seeing while I was there (entirely my fault) but from what I did see it is one of the truly great world cities and one I would like to visit again (hint, hint, Zoner Business Team!) For anyone visiting I would recommend skipping Sears Towers and instead visit the Hancock Observatory , walk the magnificent mile, get down to the lake side, and visit Navy Pier . This is only a small part of a huge city but alot of fun.

All in all I had a great time and would do it again a million time over, but I am looking forward to getting home, sleeping in my own bed, and seeing the team in NZ.

So thanks to the Business Team for having me and I see you back there again soon (hint, hint, hint!)

Homeward Bound Blogger Tim.

P.S. To everyone in the creative studio… Australian Customs confiscated all the American candy I was bringing back, so sorry no Baby Ruths, Reeces Pieces, or Twinkies this time.

Today was such a busy day, one where everything seems to go wrong, the computer runs slow, photoshop is crashing and indesign doesn’t like me.

So busy as such that we missed the “Ronald McDonald House” wine tasting fundraiser and I couldnt really be bothered writing a blog entry for today, but its 10:30pm and im still pretty sober for a thursday so this got me all philysophical, thinking about design and happiness.

One of my favorite heros of the modern design world would have to be Stephan Sagmeister, not for his graphic style but the way he approaches design. He has given many talks on design and happiness , so this is my tribute post to him (also Dean Poole from Alt Group).

On my travels through the interweb I found a few things that are free, unique and well design/created that made me smile. Aaaaw. Like this dog made from trash on the streets of NY.

And these guys from a group called improv everywhere , check out the missions section for some great stuff that guerilla marketers will be snapping up before you know it.

Some more felluhs doing great things pixelator and abstractor.

Brett “the freshmaker” King