The Engine Room: 2007

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Worry Not, We've Been Keeping Ourselves Busy...

Idle hands make light work, right?

Well, here at Team ER, we're pretty sure we could never be accused of sitting on those proverbial extremities for too long- there's a very bloody good reason why you haven't heard from us since April!

Taking the non linear approach (it's too late in the year for narrative cohesion, friends), we moved our arses, assorted computing boxes and similar into our tastefully colour coordinated new digs in the very heart of St Kilda (we've got a plasma and all those sexy third gen games platforms in here, you know!).

That's right- we're Fitzroyalty no more! You can now stalk us onsite at the Frontier Advertising super complex, at

1/30 Inkerman St.,
St Kilda, VIC 3182

or make suspect calls to one of our excitable staff on (03) 9593 9058. The fax capacitor number is (03) 9593 9086, and the email song remains the same.

Now- before we get down to the actual work, let's briefly review some of the milestones from Team ER 2007's scrapbook.

The Chef and his better (and MYOB accredited) half, The Frith, finally welcomed Archer Hoban into the world on October 2.

Thankfully, she's got Dad's singing voice and Mum's good looks, is about as cool a three month old as you could hope to meet, and provided a good excuse for the studio boys to do some long overdue baby clothes shopping on Acland St.

Whipping the ER gang into shape post-Friday night beer and X Box sessions was our very own guest Sgt Hartman, Mr Tom Lashan, whose ANS Protein site and products we've had a heavy involvement in designing.

Fady, our resident Design Management guru, clocked four stars on Metallica's 'One' on Guitar Hero III just the other night, and is still riding high following the emphatic Halo 3 thumpings he's handed out to all and sundry over the course of the year.

Multimedia Developing wunderkind Kraig had all his AutoSalon dreams come true earlier in the year with a trip to the two day chrome and ladies spectacular, and is still ruing the day he ill-advisedly consumed a stack of well-salted potato cakes and then attacked the ER Stairmaster with frightening vigour.

You can see some of his recent sterling work in the monthly Frontier Advertising newsletter!

The ER also graciously welcomed yours truly, their formerly AWOL desert bound designer at large, back into the fold in September (if only to get these updates back on track); and the band of loonies has expanded to include web ninja Dave, design messiah Oli and even SEO maniac Brad on occasion.

But enough of the jibber jabber, as Laurence Tureaud once allegedly said- the following is a retrospective of our work from 2007; we hope you enjoy your tour through what's turning out to be an ever widening and diversifying portfolio!

(See list at bottom right!)

Through our friends at Frontier, we've also had the distinct privilege of working on an exciting array of sites and promotions for THQ Games- our banner ads and videos have graced the international sites for Stuntman, Juiced 2, Bladestorm, Dynasty Warriors Gundam, Squad Command and Fatal Inertia; you can also check out our full site for Drawn to Life and the prestige 2008 release Frontlines.

Whew.

What a year, eh? Of course, there's far more coming up in '08- the ER's going to continue to expand in all sorts of crazy directions, most of which are so super top secret that we can't tell you anything about them just yet.

We [i]can[/i] tell you that we'll be winging off for a well earned Fijian stopover sometime in Feb, and that a new, fully loaded site is on the horizon, to boot.

So, until the next update, which we promise won't be anywhere as long in the offing, the Team extends to you all the compliments of the season, and implores you all to behave yourselves, just a bit, into the New Year.

Cheers,

Jones

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Too Little, Too Long

Hey sportsfans,

Mucho apologies for the lack of news updates, no real excuses for the slackness, for in between a stack of new sites we have been busy with some primo development in the templates area and CMS related technologies and other exciting revelations.

The new crop features the relaunched hoodies.com.au and the matching MySpace.

Our new Flash based CMS for fashion ecommerce sites under the banner of MerchCart is also recently live.

We've also launched a swag of new hospitality sites using the HostGear panoramic template:

Club Retro
Mac Daddy Sopranos and
George Lane Bar

We've also been developing a swanky 3D interface for an internal CD-Rom that Austereo have been using to gear up their new sales team.

Look out for more coming up in the near future for Ten Men, an MMS server for mobile video intergration and much, much more... for now- stay cool.

Chef