Timezoneone Blog

With more than seven years worth of successful brand building and marketing success in America, TimeZoneOne has decided we’ve got so good at it (nothing like giving yourself a good old pat on the back every now and then), we’re going to start adding some of our own brands to the client roster.

One of these brands to launch in the next 12 months will be a range of New Zealand inspired and designed apparel. It’s too early to reveal all yet. But needless to say once our North American friends learn to embrace the ever evolving world of Merino yarns and uniquely New Zealand tran-seasonal designs that make up the bulk of most kiwi women wardrobes we’re certain they’ll wonder how they ever lived without them before.

In line with the New Zealand’s edge of the world positioning on the world map, our fashion tends to have an edgy, funky look that give our garments a very distinctive, highly creative style.

Check out this link to be introduced to some of New Zealand’s most interesting fashion designers.

http://www.fashionz.co.nz/

Raewyn Topp – Professional shopper and clothes crazy kiwi

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Although I usually work out of our Chicago office, I’ve had the pleasure of basing myself out of our New Zealand headquarters (the HomeZone©) in Christchurch for the last month, enjoying a Southern Hemisphere summer.

It’s been great spending time with the creative team developing new branding campaigns for TimeZoneOne and our clients, noshing on sausage rolls and downing endless cups of tea with one and all.

I’ve caught up on the local gossip, endured christenings and first birthday parties and no doubt run up numerous traffic convictions trying to avoid the newly dedicated bus lanes that seem to pop up from no where on my daily commute out to the countryside.

As I tap away on my keyboard admiring my newly tanned hands, and look out on a hot Canterbury day it’s difficult to picture Chicago and Denver two feet deep in snow and the team there wrapped up in their winter woollies.

It’s with mixed emotions that I head back to the good ‘ol US of A on Friday.  I’m sad to be leaving what for me will always be home, but also looking forward to be being back in the land of opportunity and kicking ass on all TimeZoneOne’s new ventures for 2010.

Raewyn Topp – A kiwi girl at heart with American sized ambition.

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The māori language doesn’t quite have as many speakers worldwide as English, so it can often be difficult to find children’s books and resources in the māori language, often they are only available to teachers through the Ministry of Education or, due to the economics of scale, they are expensive. Even the city libraries don’t have a lot to offer, the māori children’s books only take up a shelf and a half – even with the other pacific island languages mixed up in there aswell. So I often make my own puzzles, flash cards, wall charts and other entercational resources for my toddler. Below is a poster I made showing the parts of the body in māori – admittedly, it’s not done in a visual language that my 2-year-old will understand, but the main thing is it looks cool.

David McLeod

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The ‘Long Jon Zone-Arrs’ Pirate Mini-Golf team have retained their Ronald McDonald Mini-Golf Champion status for the winter, with a little help from mother nature – The event was unfortunately rained off and is unlikely to be held again until next summer. The team were ready and well rehearsed in the art of putt-putt, victory looked certain, but the Mini-Golf gods must have decided that the other teams needed more time to practice I guess.

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The interweb is a simple place, full of simple joys. By now, everyone in internet world is well aware of the simply joy that the word ‘FAIL‘, placed on the right image, can bring. Another equally successful (and stupid) phrase, made famous by the Cookie Monster, is “Om nom nom“. When “Om nom nom” is placed on just the right image – with little angry eyes and sometime teeth, it can create what internet scholars refer to as a WIN. Of course there’s a dedicated website to Om nom nom.

Below, the Toronto Raptor gets his om nom nom on with a cheerleader (PGR).

And here’s a great animation, not sure how to describe it, I don’t think it’s advertising anything, I think it’s just some cool people doing cool things.

 David ‘Om nom nom’ McLeod

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With valentine’s day over and every one back to the relatively unromantic reality of everyday life, here’s a wee invention that may improve relations at home. Everybody squeezes the toothpaste tube from the top, (EVERYBODY*, don’t you dare lie to me) and then swears that they don’t and blames their spouse for the resulting inefficiencies of toothpaste procurement, the result being either individual tubes or individual lives. Well not anymore, designer Dominic Wilcox has the perfect creative solution. This is so simple that I just don’t understand why it isn’t the standard issue in toothpaste tubes.

Check out more of Dominic Wilcox’s ideas here including a genetically modified egg that doesn’t require an egg cup – not sure what the chicken would look like though.

David ‘*not me though’ McLeod

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Everything you have ever wanted to know about kiwis and trying to understand why we do what we do is on this blog Kiwianarama. It works similar to Diggnation in the fact you can rate articles you like. It is wikipedia for all things ‘kiwi’.Here is one of my personal favorites…the kiwi sausage sizzle. This is a typical scene you will find any given weekend in New Zealand. Here are the loosely abided by rules:

• A Sausage Sizzle must be positioned between 10 & 20 feet from, and upwind of, the store front door of either a Warehouse, a Bunnings or a Mitre10 Mega.
• Any tomato sauce provided must contain black bits, taste of candy & be served in unmarked, 4L plastic bottles.
• Bread must be at least a day old, white, and cost less than 10c loaf. Each slice should also be manually stressed the night before, so that it breaks apart evenly as soon as it’s wrapped around it’s designated sausage.
• Entertainment may only be provided in the form of either a) an 80s ghetto blaster playing dub/reggae, or b) an old man blowing a harmonica.
• Child labour is compulsory.
• Signs and banners should be designed in Microsoft Word, with ample Clip Art, then printed at home and sellotaped together.
• Sausages must contain no more than 5% meat or (preferably) meat by-products, from inorganic, factory-farmed pigs only.

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Generally speaking a barcode is an achingly boring series of black & white lines taking up precious branded real estate on a product. Now we don’t have to think of them that way. It’s like music to a designers ears! I have recently created some barcodes made from lavender for an essential oil company and also some from grape vines for a wine label which I thought were pretty cool and they passed the scan test to check they were readable. Here are some great examples of what you can dream up these days from a company called Vanity Barcodes.The Bissland Blogger  

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