Timezoneone Blog

This Sunday is Father’s Day in New Zealand.  So this weeks ‘Zoner of the Week’ goes to all the Dads at TimeZoneOne for creating so much more than just extraordinary creative, Nigel Foley, Andy Carruthers, Murray Grossmith, David McLeod (me) and Hamish McDonald. Mark Cornellison gets an honorable mention, but narrowly misses out on new socks and hankerchiefs this year, his baby is not due for another month.

Here’s a little Father’s Day entercation…

Although normal English punctuation guidelines indicate that the holiday should be spelled “Fathers’ Day” (as it is a plural possessive), common usage dictates that the ostensibly singular possessive “Father’s Day” is the preferred spelling.

In New Zealand…

the average age of fathers of new babies is 33 years.

Fathers with children aged under one year manage 42 minutes less sleep than the average of 8.5 hours.

Over a lifetime, fathers have seven fewer Father’s Days, on average, than mothers have Mother’s Days. This is because men generally start parenting later in life and women have a longer life span. So make the most of it.

More than a quarter (28 percent) of babies born in New Zealand last year were to fathers who were not themselves born in New Zealand.

In the USA…

Father’s day is celebrated on the 3rd Sunday of June (In New Zealand, it’s the 1st Sunday of September.).

there is an estimated 64.3 million Dads.

Americans spend around $11 billion on gifts for Father’s Day. This is about $7 billion less than the amount spent on Moms for Mother’s Day.

David ‘top of the fooseball ladder’ McLeod

My zoner of the week goes to our recently departed Elizabeth Davidson, who has left us temporarily to have her first baby. Best of luck Lizzy, we will miss your beautifully articulated phone voice when we call the New Zealand office, as well as your incomparable assistance with projects.

As we wave good bye to one zoner, we also welcome another.  Jackie Clark has joined us to replace Elizabeth. Jackie comes with many years experience in advertising, with a strong background in television production.  Jackie, we all look forward to working with you.  Welcome to the team!

Raewyn

My zoner of the week goes to Raewyn.  Raewyn has been a busy bee of late with numerous things on her “mental” to do’ list.

This week in the life of Raewyn consisted of a week of annual leave but as we all know annual leave doesn’t exist in the life of Mrs. Topp.  The week started off with a wonderful start with her mother coming to Chicago from the hinterland of Canterbury, New Zealand.  A few days later Raewyn celebrated her birthday in style by trouncing around her new Chicago home renovating site and making chooses on what light bulbs would be adequate in all the fixtures…..  And along with this she had time to come into the office and work until all hours of almost every night.

So hats off to Raewyn for shining the TZ1 torch….

Blogged out for now - Richard

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

So Zoner of the week must go to Richo “Duckles” McDonald and Zoner by association Lori McDonald - for taking the plunge and more importantly - for putting on a damn fine shindig for their mates! Lori and Richo are currently sunning it up on honeymoon in Mexico - so he can’t stop me posting the attached photo. Lori and Richard started off their union in perfect style (as the photo shows) but just remember all marriages are happy; it’s the living together afterward that causes all the problems. (Just jokes - congratulations again!)

The Blogizadpha (Hamish)

In a break from tradition, this weeks “Zoner of the Week” has been moved up to Monday as TimeZoneOne needs to thank a few people for making a day in Minneapolis a good time.

New to the TZ1 team is Minnesota Vikings Running Back and 2007 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, Adrian Peterson. Adrian gave up his valuable time to spend 2 hours being photographed for the 2009 U.S. Army All-American Bowl.

A complete professional, Adrian was only to happy to stand and look as tough as possible for as long as we wanted, and although he is a superstar he was also keen to share a joke, sign some autographs and then take happy snaps with the team.

The end results look great and Adrian is sure to play a huge part in the continued success of the U.S. Army All-American Bowl, and the Zoners in attendance will never forget having the opportunity to talk with him and his crushing handshake (Tatts is still wringing his hand).

Thanks Adrian, and have a great upcoming season.

The day was also made easy by long-term Zoner friends Randy Anderson and his sidekick Kenny. Randy, a genius behind the lens, has been involved in many previous TZ1 photoshoots in the USA, making life easy for the business team and creative team by producing fantastic looking imagery. Randy and Kenny’s ability to make everyone laugh also made the day fly by and took the stress levels down a few notches. Both were also available to give autographs on the day, but strangely enough there were no takers.

So a big thank you to you both, and Randy here is a gratuitous plug for your website: www.andersonstudio.com. we recommend checking it out.

Lastly a big thank you to David (3 time Zoner of the Week) and Simon who put in a huge effort concepting the 2009 U.S. Army All-American Bowl look and feel. Without their long-term contribution to making the Army look (super) strong the shoot would not have been as easy.

Stay tuned later in the week as the controversy of who gets “Zoner of the Week” will be settled once and for all with the announcement of “Zoner of the Millennium”. Yes with still 991 years of the 2000s to go this prestigious position will be added to the pantheon of previous winners.

The excitement is almost too much.

Blog Feat. Tim

I feel spoilt for choice this week as to who the best zoner is… but my choice has to go to Tim. For travelling cattle class to the other side of the world to make a presentation, and just when he thought he might actually get a holiday afterwards or even just a small break away from the computer, he decided to take a laptop at the last minute…in case of a design emergency. Some would call him silly for this oversight. But, no - word on the street is he is being worked over in Chicago right now. Bet he is glad he took the laptop now!

Blogonista - Liz

Zoner of the week, this week I am nominating KIMBO.

Why, cos she is is a mother of 3 “fiesty” red headed boys, if this isnt enough she is turning 20 x 2, shes having an 80’s party this weekend and she mentioned “totally” and “gnarly” in her invite (consecutively). Heres Kim looking relaxed after a few days away from her boys on TimeZoneSun.

Brett “the freshmaker” King

Murray nominated Nigel, for being a trooper, keeping a stiff upper lip, taking lots of drugs and struggling into work this week whilst still feeling dreadful after having his wisdom teeth removed (will he still be wise I wonder?)…

Nigel let me publish this photo on the condition I added one of my wife the Airline Hostess

Andy

Lizzie has been unable to make a post today, after yesterday’s huge effort she’s feeling a little blogged out. So David has kindly stepped in to ease her workload and ensure that we keep up the effort of blogging something everyday.

Since it is Friday, I must choose a zoner of the week. Of course, we’ve all been outstanding this week, but because I have so selflessly stayed on after quitting time on a Friday to help out a fellow zoner, this weeks zoner of the week is me, for an impressive third time.

BlogMaster McLeod on behalf on Elizabeth