As you all know, we’ve been ‘Going Yellow’ to raise money for Rowcroft Hospice. Reaching our 2nd donation target of £400 meant that our Creative Director Paul (Jim was back in London – blast!), had to undertake TASK 2: ‘Banana & Custard’ -The Yellow Gunge forfeit! Turn up your speakers and enjoy! Thank you for donating, we’re still taking donations… http://www.justgiving.co.uk/dnagoyellow.

You can find out more on our dedicated GO YELLOW page.

Check our dedicated ‘Go Yellow‘ blog page to find out what we’ll be getting up to in order to raise money for Rowcroft Hospice…
Make sure you vote and DONATE to make it happen!!!! Please Donate here for a good cause: http://www.justgiving.co.uk/dnagoyellow

It’s nearly that time again… Stay tuned for more info about what us lot at DNA Advertising are getting up to as we raise money for Rowcroft Hospice on their ‘Go Yellow’ day!

Check out the Rowcroft Hospice Go Yellow page

Well the somewhat unexciting answer is he is celebrating yet another year of Mr Matt and as such we’ve had to grant him the day off.

Now… same question, different answer… Matt, it seems has been dancing his way around the globe, posting his videos online and becoming an Online Phenomenon since 1995!

His first video racked up 20 Million views and multiple parodies making him officially more interesting than our Matt! If you still haven’t seen ‘Where the hell is Matt?’ then, watch this:

For more on ‘The Online Phenomenon’ that is Matt, check out his website ‘Where the hell is Matt’ here.

or, Listen to Matt explain his journey in his own words.

P.S. Happy birthday Matt!

Bit of Friday fun.
It’s Jim’s birthday tomorrow, so here’s a little ‘pre-construction’ of what we think he’ll be up to… (sorry Katie, but we couldn’t see him dance alone!)…

It is a sad time at DNA, as one of our dear friends and colleagues is heading for pastures new. A very wise software development company in Plymouth has snapped up our senior programmer, Chris Keeley, giving him the chance to apply his know-how to some rather juicy middleware. They’ve also kindly increased his salary and reduced his daily commute from two hours to ten mins. Nice.

As you can see though, it wasn’t an easy decision for our very own Chris Keeley…

The many faces of Mr Chris Keeley

Of course we’ll miss him, but it’s a fantastic opportunity so we all wish him the very best of luck.

Thanks for all you’ve done for our digital marketing and web development Christoff… and for helping us select your replacement (a man we’ll be introducing here very soon)!!

Good luck and see you soon!

Congratulations to Katie for passing her driving test first time!! As you can see from the ‘artist’s impression’ above – she’s very happy. As for the rest of us… vigilance!

It’s the culmination of nearly a year’s work – the new Princess Yachts International suite of brochures have been unveiled at the Southampton International Boat Show. It has involved hard work from the team (and many late nights), to get this prestigious project delivered for the show and thankfully, the feedback we’ve had from Princess Yachts and their distributors has been exceptional. This year, we’ve extended the suite by including an electronic brochure, presented on DVD, which has also been equally well received.  The icing on the cake for Paul, Simon, Vicki and Matt, was to be taken out into the Solent on a Princess V48 at the Boat Show. Of course, it’s absolutely essential to the design process to experience how the the boat handles and manoeuvres first hand…(That’s what we tell Princess anyway). Now it’s back to the office to start the whole process all over again!

Richard H's rendition of the Locomotion has the 2 X Factor judges in rapture

If anyone out there is in a creative job but hasn’t read Paul Arden’s: ‘It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be’, I’d recommend getting hold of a copy. Among other things, Mr Arden talks about awards in the creative industry being a bit of a paradox. Being creative means being innovative and doing something new, but award winners are generally picked by consensus within a group of people who invariably pick something they feel comfortable with – often something familiar and, therefore, not that creative! It’s an interesting point.

A cynic would say that creative awards achieve two things – they satisfy egos and they win work. We don’t do them. We don’t have egos and we’re awesome at winning work.

Joke.

Read More >>

Thanks to everyone who came to the DNA Summer BBQ a while ago. Thankfully the good weather we booked arrived on schedule, so we could enjoy the festivities against the gorgeous backdrop of the Torbay coastline. Thanks also to the Boat House for putting on such a great spread. For anyone who didn’t get their special DNA BBQ apron, don’t be afraid to ask for one – we still have some in reserve! Next stop – fishing competition. Watch this space!

Yes that’s right, as part of our ‘Go Yellow Day’ for Rowcroft Hospice and in a bid to get some last minute donations, resident Iron Man (Jon) was sponsored to travel home by public transport sporting his full outfit. With last minute donations coming in and hitting our online target of £200, there was no getting out of it. Thank you to everyone for their support and enjoy the pictures! Remember, you can still donate at www.justgiving.com/dnaadvertising.

The Yellow themed fun continues here at DNA! Go Yellow for Rowcroft Hospice – Make the madness count, and make a donation – www.justgiving.com/dnaadvertising

Charity and hard work are going hand-in hand here at DNA today as ‘Go Yellow for Rowcroft Hospice day’ gets into full swing. Keep an eye on the blog for more photos throughout the day! And don’t forget to donate – http://www.justgiving.com/dnaadvertising

To support Rowcroft Hospice’s “Go Yellow” campaign, DNA are asking friends, clients and suppliers to sponsor the team to wear various ridiculous yellow outfits during our very own Yellow Day – Friday 3rd April! We will let you know how we get on and put pictures here on our blog. So if you’d like to see the team transformed into an array of yellow themed characters ranging from Ali G to a chicken, but more importantly contribute to a worthy cause, please dig deep and donate a little something if you can. Whatever we receive in donations, DNA will top up.

Please go to http://www.justgiving.com/dnaadvertising and support Rowcroft Hospice. Thank you.

We are pleased to announce that Vicki Arman has joined our Client services team as a Project Manager. Vicki has come onboard to help support Sarah and Katie following our recent new business wins, and to ensure that as we grow we can continue to offer our clients great customer service. She’s been here just over a week and is settling in already.  So please join us in wishing Vicki all the very best for her career with DNA, we’re sure that she’s going to do a great job!

Maintaining DNA’s commitment to supporting local Arts and Design, Jon from our design team and Sarah from client services headed down to South Devon College to talk to the students on the Design/Media Arts Diploma course. Supported by DNA case studies, the hour presentation focused on the best practices when creating or responding to a brief, the most successful methods of creative thinking and how to best liaise with clients. Jon and Sarah also gave constructive critiques on the students most recent body of work and wish them all every success in the their future careers. (For a small fee they are also available for private hire and children’s parties!). Any questions?

As part of our ongoing drive to reduce our paper usage and to pass on some festive merriment we’ve produced a web based, simple flash based animation with some festive fun interactivity.

We hope you’ll enjoy dressing ‘Frostie the Throw-man” up and chucking him around, click to play!

http://www.dnaadvertising.co.uk/xmas2008

Merry Christmas!
The DNA Team.

We have recently strengthened our 3D design capability by teaming up with Marcus Horsfall. Marcus has ten years experience in the design and production of custom-built exhibition stands and point of sale displays and enabled us to increase our impact in Monaco for Devonport. Over the course of his career Marcus has brought a combination of creative flair, eye for detail and advanced design and visualisation skills to a wide range of UK and international clients. Marcus’ experience takes our existing exhibition design skills to a new level and will enable us to manage larger exhibition, POS and retail design projects from initial concepts right through to production and installation. He is a valuable addition to our creative team and we are delighted to welcome him on board.

All of our projects are now coordinated through our central client services team of Sarah Znideric and Katie Hickmott. By channelling all of our projects through a central team, we can manage resources more effectively, making sure every project is delivered on time and on brief. This does not mean you can’t talk to our creative team though. We are firm believers in cutting out the middle man where it makes sense to do so and often our designers will talk directly to you. So if Paul, Matt, Jonathan, Debs or John are putting some ideas together for you, don’t be afraid to ask them questions.

EuroBOSS is an event like no other, allowing ex-Formula one cars to be thrashed around prestigious circuits across Europe, it cannot fail to be entertaining. With a recent EuroBOSS event taking place at the Ascari RaceResort in Spain, there could be no better time to drop by for a visit, and Paul and Simon were lucky enough to get an invitation. With Klaas Zwart – the owner and proprietor of Ascari itself- coming first in the race, there was much to celebrate. The informal visit allowed DNA to lend their support and talk about future projects, while enjoying the glorious views and amazing entertainment the event and the resort have to offer. The guys even got a passenger ride in a Radical! If you would like to find out more about EuroBOSS check out the website at www.eurobossf1.com. For more details on the AscariRaceResort visit www.ascari.net.