Energy, humour and a (perhaps unhealthy?) dose of mayhem accompanied this year’s Iron Designer event on Friday night at Federation Square BMW Edge – one of the closing events of State of Design, Melbourne.

Igloo CD Tony Prysten, was part of the Maddison Architects team (MAD) and whist they didn’t win the event, they certainly gained the respect of the crowd.

Check out the pics here or read about the verdict.

We are happy to announce that the winner of the tour de igloo competition is Micahel (Buzz) Burrows from igloo.

This is an amazing win for a number of reasons

1) He was one of the first to enter the comp (entry 2 out of 231) way before Contador or Armstrong had played their cards

2) He cares less about riding and the tour than pretty much anyone!

It just goes to show that with a bit of google, you can be pretty much an expert in anything. Well done buzz.

Thanks to everyone who entered the comp.

Calling all graphic designers. We are looking for a talented print/brand based designer to help our team out on a few exciting projects. We have immediate freelance work but you never know, if you like us and we like you, then things might develop.

So if you bag of tricks includes more than a bit of Helvetica Bold with some thin underlines, send me a PDF of your folio and resume.

Please note that is for our Melbourne office and you need to be able to work here (Richmond).

Check out this great pics from the Paper Plane Academy a couple of weekends back. Part of the State of Design 2009 festival, igloo was very proud to supply a snappy little website.

The Growing Web and Its Growing Conscience

As it’s been a part of our lives for so long now, it’s a bit incongruous to think of internet use as going through it’s biggest period of growth worldwide, ever – but, as this amazing graph shows, that’s just what happening. And fortunately, it’s not all teenagers downloading Transformers 2. The Summer of Social Good is a great initiative which aims to use the power of social media to benefit several very worthy charities. Great idea. On a similar tip is this site , sponsored by the Toyota Prius, which looks at “How We Achieve Harmony” . It’s a worthy theme, but the wishy-washy mix of information and irritating nav let the site down a bit.

Tracking down the Twitterers

This application has a pretty simple premise – enter your location, and it will point you to other Twitter users who are nearby. They’ll also be able to locate you.  It works in real time, and, if you let it, will DM you when new users arrive in your area. Most useful on your phone, but a nice little tool nonetheless.

Written in the tarmac

Just in case things were getting a little bit dry, here’s a video which shows what happens when a professional stunt driver, two typographers and an interactive artist get together in a cold, dark warehouse.

Just discovered this classic collection of cars in the Mazda Museum on the USA Mazda site whilst doing a bit of research. I say bring back the Bongo 800 or the Cosmo Sport 110S! We are so used to seeing history and pedigree in brands such as Ford, Holden, Porsche etc its interesting to look at the design roots of the Japanese manufacturers and how European influences played a big part in the early days.

Hey! I am Melissa Blackman (Mel.B) the work experiencer this week at igloo.

The talk of the town is the new City of Melbourne logo (check out an opinion piece here), so I decided to put it under the microscope and ask the team at igloo what they thought and felt about it….

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This is Mel.B here (yes work experiencer!). Thanks to everyone at the igloo team, I have had a ball this week, and learnt heaps!

I would post a little something I made. The brief was to make an alphabet. After thinking about the brief for a while I chose to do food, people love food yeh? I do, so anyway I thought I would make it extra alphabety by making the letters out of a food starting with that letter, as well as forming the actual letter.

See if you can work out what each food is. Some are a little tricky, but I can assure you all of them are edible and for human consumption!

Oh and yes afterwards I ate most of the food, the Quiche was especially yummy!

So you may not be a fan of the whopper but one thing Burger King have done and well is innovative marketing. Often the first to embrace new media from some of the most successful viral campaigns ever the new Burker King site has become a tribute to their tasty marketing efforts over the years. From the Whopper Freakout to the Subservient Chicken, this great resource, high in originality and creativity is probably the only lo-cal thing the company has ever done.

He’s brought us laughs, endless stories, sporadic acoustic outbursts, an un-matachable knowledge of 80′s songs and song lyrics and even greater regurgitation of useless facts, mostly based around sci-fi or technology and now he is returning to his true calling. Tim Watson, aka (to me) ‘Rockstar’, has joined forces with Jono Fernandez to do what he does best – create music. Officially the second best ‘ex-door-neighbor’ you could ever have (Stevo has, and forever will, hold that title), Rockstar is the brains, and voice behind multiple number one tracks and is now turning his creative hand and voice to dance music. (or indie/electronic to be precise)

Girl vs Boy (Featuring Tim Watson) is their first ‘official’ release and is now available in the itunes store. So for the measly price of $1.69 (or $6.99 for the EP) you’ll be supporting a local talent do what they do best. And you will also be able to say “I was one of the first people to get onto these guys”. They have a heap of other tracks to back this up so expect an album soon.

What else can you do for $1.69? Can’t buy you a coffee (or even a baby chino). 1hrs carparking at the beach? Nup, 23 cents short. It’s not even enough to give the kids 30 seconds joy in one of those damn rides placed strategically out front of every supermarket on the planet. It will, however, buy you that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you know you have done something right – and you heard about it first on the gloo Its only one click away….you know you want it!