Archive for the ‘Design Stuff’ Category

Send Us Your Red Rubber Bands and Win a Prize

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

In the last few weeks, we haven’t been sure what would be going on in regard to the Royal Mail strike. Worried that we might never again walk past a red rubber band-adorned pavement, we started collecting the little gems as exquisite reminders of how noticing that cute little rubbery guy could brighten up one’s day. As the collection of these elastic treasures started mounting, we started investigating a way to best economise, Ikea-style, the storage surface area that the slow wave of malleable redness was taking up. You know, that ‘Just because I have nowhere else to put it that doesn’t mean it can’t look vaguely cool’ solution. That, folks, is how we gave birth to Pepe. As you can instantly see, Pepe is a ball made up of rubber bands.

Pepe has grown into a bit of an obsession in the creative department. We have spent hours scouring pavements and drains, and have just stopped short of mugging posties (although Simon the Aussie was not too shy to help himself to a nice little stash he found on top of an unguarded trolley). With Pepe growing in leaps and bounds week by week, we have been strutting while maintaining that Atari-playing, emo-retro cool suaveness that us swanky creative types are best known for.

Here are some pictures of Pepe’s very gradual progress so far:

He began as a baby...

... and became...

... a slightly bigger baby.

It was with much horror that we have recently discovered that we have been played for fools. You see, our wonderful (grumble grumble) Customer Services team have actually been constructing there own ball of rubber band glory for the last two years. And, whilst it pains me to admit it, the CS Ball whom we shall not dignify with a name, is somewhat monstrously larger than Pepe. That was fine - we were prepared to endure the sniggering, the taunting and the name-calling. It did, however, reach a breaking point when Jade loudly pronounced for the entire office to hear, “Wow, if you look at them next to each other, it seems only fitting that Pepe orbits our [name removed out of spite] ball.” And that was the final straw.

Luckily, the Royal Mail strike is over. And with Customer Services hungrily hoarding any bands that come into our office, we are left scavenging the streets for tidbits that the Postie might have dropped on the floor. Luckily for us, we have you, oh valued and loyal reader of the blog, and this is why we implore you to help us. Similarly, as is the spirit of the IWOOT blog, that help will most certainly be rewarded.

So, without further ado, I (finally) introduce you to THE MOST RANDOM COMPETITION WE HAVE EVER RUN EVER EVER. Basically, we would like you to send us in any Red Royal Mail Rubber Bands that you might find. And, keeping the fun factor, we will be giving a sur-PRIZE to the person that sends us the 1st, 25th, 50th and 75th envelope containing a rubber band.

Send all red rubber band packages to:

Pepe, Creative Department
Unit C11 Parkhall Trading Estate
40 Martell Road
London
SE21 8EN

Make sure you include your address and phone number so we can send you your prize, should you win!

 

Competition Terms & Conditions:

• The competition closes as soon as the 75th package arrives.
• Prizes will be awarded to the 1st, 25th, 50th and 75th rubber band pakages we receive - only one package to be sent per person in the interests of keeping it fair.
• This competition is completely free to enter, no purchase is necessary.
• No cash alternative is available for the prize(s) offered.
• This competition is open to residents of the UK only.
• Employees of I Want One of Those and their immediate families and anyone professionally connected with the promotion are not eligible to enter this competition.
• The winner will be notified of their win via the e-mail address provided in their package, and under the name submitted on their entry. If a response to this notification is not received within 14 days, IWOOT reserves the right to randomly select another winner. In light of this, please ensure you submit an email address that you use regularly!
• No responsibility will be accepted for entries that are not received.
• From time to time we may include customer comments and feedback on the site, and in our catalogue and other media. By submitting your comment you are granting us permission to publish it and, if necessary, edit it for clarity and typos.

Win An iPhone Week 7

Monday, November 9th, 2009

We really do work you hard for your prizes, don’t we? If we’re not demanding that you carve a pumpkin into whatever shape, we’re pummelling your intellectual side for the meaning of life. Week 7 of our iPhone competition is no different - it’s a real interactive challenge.

Now everyone knows that you shouldn’t work with animals or children, but us progressive types here at IWOOT Towers think that’s pure bunkum. Animals in particular are a constant source of smelly, snuggly joy, and we think it’s about time we saluted our furry compadres. We’re not so keen on kids, though. Yuck, always leaving hair everywhere… Anyway, for this week’s competition we want you to dress your pets. That’s right. Dress Your Pets. In any costume you fancy, as long as it’s all your own work and your pet doesn’t mind too much. Perhaps something along the lines of this:

Aw. Get going, pet-lovers! If you haven’t got your own furry (or scaley or feathery) friend to dress up, then simply borrow a friend’s or approach wild animals - not the big ones, mind. We’re thinking pigeons, maybe a squirrel. No polecats or herons, you’ll lose a finger.

Make sure you take a photo, and then submit it to our Facebook wall by Monday November 16th. The most inventive, innovative, funny or plain interesting entry will win, and we’re hoping that this will throw up some of our most bizarre entries yet… it’s down to you, folks.

Competition Terms & Conditions:

• Closing Date For this competition is 10AM on Monday 16th November 2009.
• Sadly, you can only enter this competition once. (You can’t fool us, you know!)
• This competition is completely free to enter, no purchase is necessary.
• No cash alternative is available for the prize(s) offered.
• This competition is open to residents of the UK only.
• Employees of I Want One of Those and their immediate families and anyone professionally connected with the promotion are not eligible to enter this competition
• The winner will be chosen by the IWOOT team.
• The winner will be notified of their win via Facebook, and under the name submitted on their entry. If a response to this notification is not received within 14 days, IWOOT reserves the right to randomly select another winner. In light of this, please ensure you submit an email address that you use regularly!
• No responsibility will be accepted for entries that are not received.
• From time to time we may include customer comments and feedback on the site, and in our catalogue and other media. By submitting your comment you are granting us permission to publish it and, if necessary, edit it for clarity and typos.

Link Mugs - Lifesaver

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Tea, as we all know, is conducive to working life. For most of us, it’s impossible to even consider looking at our inbox without having first slurped a nice glug of warming brown gold - it’s something of a modern-day elixir. But, office etiquette being as it is, it’s not always the easiest thing in the world to successfully bring four steaming mugs of the stuff over to the desk at once (for colleagues, obviously, drinking four mugs of tea in one go is clearly insane).

Countless times have we witnessed DinoWoot’s astonishing proficiency in this area. Seriously, if he could apply that kind of poise and balance to the rest of his body he’d be vaulting a horse in 2012. I, myself, am a little more timid when it comes to multiple-beverage-carriage. Since a few ill-advised multi-pint carries in my student days, I know better than to try and get around it by slipping a G&T in my pocket. It doesn’t work, it just makes your pocket smell like a posh tramp. So I’m putting these bad boys on my Christmas list:

link-mugs_2

Mugs! That link up! Amazing! No more spilt tea!

Thanks to Geeky Gadgets for the spot. They’re designed by Jonathan Aspinall, who makes all sorts of clever stuff. Maybe he can make us a tea.

And The Winner Is… (Week 5)

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

This week has undoubtedly been the toughest to judge, and we actually feel a bit sorry for some of the stronger entries that haven’t won. In all seriousness - ta a bunch for getting involved and making our Halloween that little bit spookier.

We’re sure you’ll agree, though, that the winning entry is very innovative, great fun and totally in the spirit of the whole competition. So congratulations go to Mark Ritchie for his guillotine entry. Well flipping done Mark!

 

 

mark-ritchie1

The photo quality isn’t terrific, but the idea is so good that we couldn’t resist making it the winner. There’s attention to detail, evidence of huge effort and, binding it all together, the slightly scary idea of pumpkin society evolving so much that they employ a judicial system and operate the death penalty. Lovely.

As we said, there were some superb entries (and a few that were pilfered from Google Image - tut tut!), the best of which are below. Once again, well done everyone, what a great week!

Darren Rye

Denis Rush

Debie Deane

Don’t forget to have a look at this week’s competition - simply tell us the meaning of life in one Tweet. Easy-peasy.

Win An iPhone Week 5

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Last week, you made us laugh no end with your hilarious (and, as always, occasionally bizarre) jokes, but this week we want a totally different effect - we want you to scare us to death (well, maybe not to death… maybe into a light coma will do) by carving the scariest pumpkin you possibly can in an effort to get your hands on one of our iPhones. As usual, thought and effort will triumph, so think about making your pumpkin the most innovative, interesting and original pumpkin you can!

We made an example over the weekend:

 

 Yes, it's sitting on top of my toilet. It was the darkest room in the house.

Works better in the dark.

Surprisingly chirpy, isn’t it? As always, there are a few housekeeping issues to make sure your entries are valid, but they’re not too taxing - you must take a photo of your pumpkin creation and post it on our Facebook wall (in a similar way to our MS Paint and Desktop Sculpture competitions), and you must submit it before 10AM on Monday November 2nd. All the other terms and conditions are below.

I’m now desperately trying to think of a pumpkin/Halloween-related pun to sign off with… Ghoul Luck? Let’s go with that.

Competition Terms & Conditions:

• Closing Date For this competition is 10AM on Monday 2nd November 2009.
• Sadly, you can only enter this competition once. (You can’t fool us, you know!)
• This competition is completely free to enter, no purchase is necessary.
• No cash alternative is available for the prize(s) offered.
• This competition is open to residents of the UK only.
• Employees of I Want One of Those and their immediate families and anyone professionally connected with the promotion are not eligible to enter this competition
• The winner will be chosen by the IWOOT team.
• The winner will be notified of their win via the Facebook name submitted on the entry. If a response to this notification is not received within 14 days, IWOOT reserves the right to randomly select another winner. In light of this, please ensure you submit an email address that you use regularly!
• No responsibility will be accepted for entries that are not received.
• From time to time we may include customer comments and feedback on the site, and in our catalogue and other media. By submitting your comment you are granting us permission to publish it and, if necessary, edit it for clarity and typos.

And The Winner Is… (Week 3)

Monday, October 19th, 2009

This week’s MS Paint competition provided us here at IWOOT Towers with much amusement - we’ve spent ages trawling through the entries and deliberating at length whose was the most impressive, interesting or downright amazing, and we’ve finally come to a decision.

Without further ado, we’re pleased to announce that Andrew Taylor is this week’s winner of our iPhone Competition, for his entry below:

Andrew Taylor

We though that Andrew’s entry, though not the most technically impressive, showed the most thought, the most attention to detail and the most fun. Any fans of The IT Crowd (luckily that includes us) will immediately see how crafty this picture is, but we were more impressed by the way Andrew managed to sneak in plethora of IWOOT products and how he drew our blog staff. It’s a little bit scary that it ended up being quite so accurate, actually. We suspect new office security measures could be in order. Nonetheless, we’ve printed it out and stuck it on the wall.

There were so many worthy entries that it’d take forever to mention them all, but we’ve put a few of our favourites below. If you want to check out the whole lot, then visit the photo gallery on our Facebook page while listening to this music.

Sas Taylor

Richard Readley

Ingram Wilcox

For details of this week’s competition, follow the link.

Ross Kemp… Folded

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Is this the world’s best high-concept blog? I certainly think so. Like all the best internet phenomena, Kempfolds is wilfully and gleefully pointless, interactive and hilarious. It is, as you might imagine, a collection of photos of ex-Eastenders hard-man and erstwhile armed forces reporter Ross Kemp that have been strategically folded to achieve a mildly amusing result. Maybe it’s by virtue of Kemp’s near-circular face, but almost every single Kempfold is a work of quiet genius. Whether he’s oddly contorted so he looks like a baby or apparently shouting without a mouth, these photos have brightened many a mood.

Here are a few favourites:

kemp1

kemp2

kemp3

The best thing about this is that, as long as Ross Kemp continues to be photographed, the concept is potentially very open-ended. There is a surprisingly low amount of Kempfolds in circulation at the moment (currently standing at 326 sent in), but the concept itself is ripe for the big leagues of viral stupidity. One wonders whether or not Mr Kemp himself knows about the whole thing, and what his reaction might be. The makers have stated, sadly, that there is to be a final, ultimate Kempfold at some stage. I for one hope it’s not for a long time yet.

Check out the Kempfolds collection here.

The 15 Worst Surf Tattoos EVER

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

We all love the irremovable permanence of a graffiti’d body part, now don’t we? The reminder of a past lover, a simple declaration of love for one’s mum, or the classic ‘love and hate on the knuckles’ design… they’re all mint. We’re joking of course - many tattoos are amazingly intricate, artistically impressive and a neat compliment to the show-off in your circle of friends. Surfers in particular have more cause than most to make their bodies into living murals, what with being half-naked all the time, so if anyone’s going to take care over their tattoo, you’d think it woule be these guys. However, some surfers are not blessed with sound artistic judgement and choose to do things like THIS to themselves:

Shocking.

It gets worse:

Good grief.

So next time you’re thinking about irreversibly (well, not without having a face-off with a prop from ‘Goldfinger’) doodling on your body, have a look at this list to make sure you’re not going to look like you’ve just been kicked off the Bulldog Bash.

Thanks to Transworld for compiling this bizarre gallery, and to KieranWoot for the spot.

And The Winner Is… (Week 2)

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Another smashing week of inventive competition entries took our Facebook wall by storm but, rules being such as they are, we had to pick one entry as the best. We were overwhelmed by how interesting and bizarre some of your Desktop Sculptures were (seriously - some of you might need some help). The range of items included in some of the sculptures went from raw chickens to live puppies to blu-tack to cans of energy drink and most things in-between, but we picked a winner that we thought totally understood the brief and made a sculpture that was as impressive as it was inventive.

 

So without further ado, we offer our unending congratulations to…

Jeanie Hughes! Here’s her winning entry:

jeanie-hughes

We thought Jeanie’s entry was funny and cute, but there’s some cheeky little details that make it even more endearing - the “IWOOT.COM” men, the use of only office-based equipment, the playground scenario and the whole vibe of escaping work for a few minutes - very impressive!

This was a really difficult one to call, and there a few that we’d like to congratulate too for their inventiveness and skill:

Daffyd Turner:

 daffyd-turner

Isadora King:

isadora-king

and Colin Howson:

colin-howson

Well done all, but special congrats to Jeanie Hughes.

Don’t forget to enter this week’s iPhone comp too - it’s up to you to draw the best possible picture you can using the humble tool of MS Paint. Full details are here, and you can check on everyone else’s progress over at our Facebook wall. Good luck!

Win An iPhone Week 3

Monday, October 12th, 2009

We were, again, very impressed with the sheer volume and quality of entries for our iPhone competition, and the Desktop Sculptures you submitted were, on the whole, barmy and brilliant. This week, we’re taking the competition back to the very inception of computer-aided artwork - we want you to make the best possible picture you can using Microsoft Paint. Yes, we’ve all wasted time drawing rabbits and buses and whatnot using the user-friendly interface but, as always, only the most creative, interesting, fun or though-provoking drawings will be in with a shot of winning! So open up the Start menu, go to accessories, click ‘Paint’ and go mad!

This is what I knocked up in about five minutes. Obviously, you should make more effort than that:

Yours has to be better than this sorry excuse for creativity.

If you’re a Mac user, shove a PC-using colleague aside and get creative! Though you may be at a slight disadvantage, what with all the backwards-learning you’ll have to do… Honestly, as long as it’s better than the above, you’ll be in with a shot. Submit it to our Facebook wall before 10 AM on Monday October 19th, as per usual. The only other rule is that you have to squeeze the word “IWOOT” in the bottom corner, just so we know you’re not pilfering from other sources. Not that we think you’d do that…

Competition Terms & Conditions:

• Closing Date For this competition is 10AM on Monday 19th October 2009.
• Sadly, you can only enter this competition once. (You can’t fool us, you know!)
• This competition is completely free to enter, no purchase is necessary.
• No cash alternative is available for the prize(s) offered.
• This competition is open to residents of the UK only.
• Employees of I Want One of Those and their immediate families and anyone professionally connected with the promotion are not eligible to enter this competition
• The winner will be chosen by the IWOOT team.
• The winner will be notified of their win via the Facebook name submitted on the entry. If a response to this notification is not received within 14 days, IWOOT reserves the right to randomly select another winner. In light of this, please ensure you submit an email address that you use regularly!
• No responsibility will be accepted for entries that are not received.
• From time to time we may include customer comments and feedback on the site, and in our catalogue and other media. By submitting your comment you are granting us permission to publish it and, if necessary, edit it for clarity and typos.