Moo

Come and say hello at dConstruct

Some of the MOO Crew are heading down to Brighton tomorrow, for dConstruct. It’s a one day conference - with a great line up - which we’re all looking forward to.

Speakers aside, it’s a very sociable conference - and we’re looking forward to meeting new people there too. If you spot any of us, do come and say hello - and give us a card, if you have one!

We’ve seen a few orders whizzing through in the last few weeks, which we’d like to see in real life.

Like these MiniCards, by cole h, for the new app he’s working on

And these Business Cards, by builtbydave

We’ve also spotted these great shots by people a little further afield. Sadly, I’m not sure we’ll get to see these in person, but they definitely worth a look here:

Great photography and products make for great cards, by raisinsawdust

These cards are super-happy-cute, by Chisa

And more great cards via Wordle, this time by echo4ngel

And last but not least - I love these kind of shots. This one is by El Buen Matador

Going Postal

For those of you that don’t know, Postcrossing is an ongoing project that helps people to exchange postcards with other people all over the world. At the time of writing, 1,362,464 postcards have been sent to 189 different countries. In case you’re not sure - that’s a lot of postcards.

Iain, our ever-cheerful (suspiciously, cheerful, some might say) project manager has had an extra little spring in his step recently - and it turns out it’s not just the new coffee machine. He’s signed up to Postcrossing himself and has had whale of a time sending out postcards to different people across the globe.

Even better, he’s been receiving postcards in return. And when you think about it, what’s not to like? When I get home I get bills, scary letters in brown envelopes and junk mail on the doormat. He gets nice postcards from potential new friends.

Something else he’s also enjoying is getting the right postcard to match the recipients interest. Some people request ‘a photo of your local area’ or ’send me something related to your hobby’ - a keen photographer this is music to his ears. He’s been making MOO Postcards with his own images, and is already thinking about photos for his next batch.

If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, check out Postcrossing too - make some MOO Postcards, and tell ‘em we sent you!

Flipping out

We’ve seen lots of online chatter about flipbooks in the last year or so - people using video footage, pulling out key frames and making new school versions of the stick-men adventures from the old days.

Nicky - one of our awesome developers - spotted this blog post about creating your own flip books, recently. Using a combination of After effects and Photoshop, Alphonse has set up templates to help you make flipbooks of your own. If you check out the videos, you’ll see they work really well.

Now, is it just me, or do they look roughly Business Card sized? As Nicky says, adapting this to the Business Card format, and printing on Green Stock (which is slightly ‘flippier’) could be perfect. Bind the book nicely at one edge, put back in the nice little holder, and bingo - what a cute memento for newly weds, or a great little keepsake for new parents. Alternatively, as someone suggested in the comments, what a cool, hands-on way to show new people your video work… No cables required.

Top MOO Tip: Bulk discounts

Just incase you don’t subscribe to the newsletter - or something awful’s happened, preventing you from reading the latest issue - I thought I should let you know we’re now doing bulk discounts for Business Cards and Postcards.

While many of you love the fact that Business Cards come in short runs of 50 cards, some of the networking junkies among you were pleading for bigger packs. Ever happy to oblige, we’ve launched a special bulk 200 pack, which saves 20% off the cost of 4 separate 50s. Even better, they’re delivered in a swanky box, (made and printed at an FSC certified supplier) and come with the free 50 pack holder included. Nice.

We’ve also introduced a bulk pack for Postcards. Save over 15% when you buy one pack of 60 cards, rather than three packs of 20! We did this as we see so many packs of wedding invites and baby announcements go through, we thought you could do with a little help. Twenty isn’t always enough, and a bulk pack saves you time and money, just when you could probably use it. The photo above shows one such pack, of an unbelievably cute baby, photographed by Andy Mosse.

So there you have it; discounted bulk packs, because big is beautiful.

The pick of the pocket creatives

As we’ve mentioned before in this blog, seeing the amazing images people put on their MOO products is half the fun of this job. There’s such a wealth of creativity out there, it blows us away. Of course there’s beautiful photography, but sometimes its the *things* that are photographed that are the key.

Look at these for example, beautiful photos of finely crafted jewellery, by Redcrow.

And these Postcards by Natasha Newton, showing an ink drawing - and one of her paintings.

These cute MiniCards show off kunklebaby’s crafting skills:

While LushLampwork uses Text MiniCards as swing-tags, to go with the beautiful glass beads she makes.

These show off a talent I’m not sure I’d even heard of in this sense, smocking, by tinctory. If you’re curious, take a look at the set, it’s incredible.

While Abigail Percy, an old MOO friend uses MOO Business Cards to show off her gorgeous hand-made jewellery.

In the meantime, the MOO office crafting skills are coming together slowly, but I think it’ll take a few of us quite a while to get to these standards… what about you?

MOO is in the mood to Celebr-8/8/8

I think you’ll all agree today is a pretty special day around the world. Firstly, today is the opening ceremony of The Olympics, which we currently have playing on the big screen over at MOO Studios.

(I think that was the bit with the clever ‘painting through dance’ scene)

Secondly, and we think more importantly, today is this year’s 24 hours of Flickr. This is that one day of the year where Flickr users are asked to capture their day with just one photo, and share it with the whole Flickr community.

This year Flickr asked us to get involved by creating unique Flickr 888 Postcard packs, and of course, we said yes! We love Flickr, we love photos and we love Postcards, so it didn’t really take much thinking about.

In honour of these packs which will be available for sale in late September, we wanted to showcase some of our favourite packs of MOO Postcards that you have made over the past few months and added to our Flickr Pool.

Beautiful illustration Postcards by Linzie Hunter

Colourful design Postcards by Yaelfran

Some lovely photography Postcards by lorilea

And if you are spending the weekend glued to your tv screens, at least take a photo of your living room to add to the 24 hours of Flickr group

MOO knows where it’s at: Silicon Roundabout

I’m guessing if you drop by the blog now and again, you’ll know just how glamorous life is at MOO. Well, I say glamorous, there are times when we’re not even allowed a chair, let alone a roof over our heads…

Poor dev team… They’re lucky it wasn’t raining.

We are allowed pie though, it’s true -

To be honest, its more toast ‘n’ Marmite than champagne and canapés. But what’s the one thing that makes us more glamorous than most? Well, it’s gotta be the fact we work practically *on* a roundabout.

MOO’s friend Matt Jones, of Dopplr took this photo, so you can see just how beautiful it really is.

Of course we’re not the only ones that work in such a spectacular location, we count Dopplr themselves as neighbours, along with Last F.M, Schultze and Webb and tinker.it.

In fact, so marvellous is our location, two articles have been written about it in the same day! This one, by the FT and this one, by the Evening Standard. It’s no longer merely ‘Old Street Roundabout’, but ‘Silicon Roundabout’! We’ve hit the big time!

Read all about it, as they say..

(Thanks to Matt Biddulph for the photo)

Unleashing the MOO potential

Just when we thought summer was never going to arrive, MOO HQ is slowly melting in the London sunshine. While our brains are frying, here’s some inspiration from people with just a bit more energy than we have right now. Some great shots of people using MOO’s to their fullest potential…

Mini flyers! And yes, Mini in every sense of the word. Flickr user, dlopez8a has created these with Business Cards to promote a Mini Cooper social, in South Carolina.

oh_gosh has also used Business Cards, but this time for invitations to a private party. She used Wordle to create these - which seems to be more popular by the second! (If you’ve not tried it, you should give it a go).

These Text MiniCards were spotted in Canada, decorating favours for a baby shower. It’s a complicated line of credit, but, praguelondon posted this photo on Flickr - and it was actually taken by her friend Melanie.

Willeke & Bertrand have been busy creating beautiful things, and then wrapping them - each package perfectly sealed with a little MOO Sticker

While another crafter, jek in the box took this beautiful shot of her work, all tagged with MiniCards and ready for sale.

And last but by no means least, look at these cool MiniCards, Postcards and badge sets! designbyclaire made them for an exhibition, and they look fantastic!

Parties, pies… Quiet please!

Nobody shout. It’s Friday, and really, who doesn’t need a little peace and quiet on a Friday? ESPECIALLY AFTER OUR PARTY! Ouch. We had fun! And from the great photos we’ve seen, so did you. Thanks to everyone for coming along last night, it was fantastic to see so many of you. After a hectic last-minute change of venue, we were all a little worried. But you can’t keep a good MOOster down, and everyone made it there – and made it great.

We had Stickers, as modelled by the ever handsome MOO interns, Jake and Angel. They’re photographed here by Alicia, but please, all future model bookings should come via me…

We had balloons, as beautifully shot by _sarchi

Postman Pat came along too - Alex took this photo. Pat was delivering MOO orders, placed by party people earlier this week.

There were bowler hats, like this one, modelled by Meg Pickard, and shot by Richard.

Some of which were cunningly customised-on-the-go, like this one, shot by tommyajohansson

Each bowler hat had a sticker inside - if you found a black and white cat, you won a prize! If you found the stray ginger cat, then the boobie prize was yours… Well, we say boobie prize, but really, who wouldn’t want a signed photo of Iain, our lovely project manager? On reflection, maybe the lovely lady who won it…

We had food - or so I hear. Look at these people! ‘Twas gone in a flash! This photo is by Annie Mole

and this, of the aftermath by M.J.S.

It was pretty hot inside, so lots of people headed for the ouside space - and partied from light:

(photo by symphonic knot)

‘Till dark

(photo by AnnieMole)

In a nutshell? A fun time was has by all…

(photo by _sarchi)

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And a tiny PS: look what happened today… the lunch company totally got our order wrong. We were supposed to have 29 pies for lunch, and we got…

Sixty! Sixty pies. Which makes a very happy MOO Crew:

(Thanks to blackbeltjones for the photo of Richard.)

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Thanks again for coming - and have a great weekend!

New party venue!

They said it couldn’t happen, they tried to cancel it, but the MOO Party Is STILL happening this Thursday night at a NEW VENUE!

Yes, just 2 days before our brilliantly planned party, The Ambassador (our previous venue) decided to cancel it. Luckily, you can’t keep the MOO Crew down when it comes to a drink with friends, so the our new venue is The Vibe Bar, Brick Lane.

If you’re not sure where that is, you’re in for a treat. It’s a great venue, easily reached from Liverpool Street tube and rail station. Follow the signs when you get to the venue, and we’ll see you there! And Don’t get side-tracked by a curry on the way, save it for afters, ok?

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Sheesh! What a palava. See, non-Londoners, this is the chaos that ensues when the sun finally does come out…