The giant Expresso Ads coffee cup being cut from a styrofoam block

Facing the cameras and pitching your ideas to the ‘Dragons’ must be quite an unnerving experience, particularly if you haven’t practised your presentation or if you’re unsure of your figures.
However, the business people and entrepreneurs that appear on the programme face even bigger challenges in getting their businesses up and running. Sometimes that challenge is just getting themselves and an oversized 3D prop to the Dragons’ Den studio.

Ciara Crossan from WeddingDates.ie, having made an appearance on Dragons’ Den herself, recommended our company to Diarmaid Twomey, the man behind Expresso Ads. He contacted us last November enquiring about producing a disposable coffee cup for his appearance on the prime-time TV show. His idea is to provide an innovative advertising platform for companies to advertise on disposable coffee cups and lids. Our idea was to “WOW” the potential investors with a giant takeaway cup that would make a strong visual statement.

The giant Expresso Ads coffee cup sitting in the snow ready to make it's journey to the Dragons' Den

We settled on a cup 5′ high with everything going to schedule, the wrapper had been printed and fitted to the polystyrene foam cup and was ready for delivery when snow, ice and freezing temperatures swept over Ireland, bringing the country to a virtual halt.

The programme was set to be recorded one Friday at the beginning of December, so Diarmaid planned to travel from Cork and collect the cup on the Thursday for his early morning recording slot the following day. However, treacherous road conditions and the closure of the M1 motorway meant that he would be unable to make the journey in time – this called for Plan B. The best solution we could find was to put the cup on the train in Dundalk and send it Dublin, where Diarmaid could collect it. So we slipped and skidded our way to the train station and got the packaged coffee cup onto the platform. Only to discover that it wouldn’t fit… aarghh! More phone calls ensued until Plan C was formed.

Diarmaid managed to delay his recording slot to late morning, but “no later than 12″.
We arranged for our courier to deliver the package early the following morning. We met him that evening and loaded the Expresso cup prop into the van. In the meantime, Diarmaid had arrived in Dublin and everything was set, only to receive a call later that night saying that the recording session was being postponed at the eleventh hour.

Diarmaid Twomey with Dragon investors Bobby Kerr and Norah Casey and the giant Expresso Ads display prop

This is only an example of one day in which the weather, people and unforeseen situations seem to conspire against our budding entrepreneur.

Diarmaid did finally get his day in the Dragons’ Den to pitch his novel concept to Bobby Kerr, Sean Gallagher, Niall O’Farrell, Gavin Duffy and Norah Casey. Although stressful, it would be no worse than some other days he had experienced trying to get there.
We wish Diarmaid and the Expresso Ads team every success with their new venture. If you are following in Diarmaid’s footsteps in the Dragons’ Den, why not speak to us and we’ll create a prop that will make you look the part?

A giant Azor5 razor prop created in styrofoam

“It started with a simple tweet…”
That is precisely how this story starts, if anybody still doubts the power of social media.
Will King, the founder of The King of Shaves company, was a guest speaker at the Content is King Conference held in the RDS in November of last year. He had enquired about a hashtag sign that we had created for the event, but  rather than trying to pack a bulky 3D sign, we sent a customised version to him.
Tweets were sent to and fro until we got a message asking if we could create a giant razor prop for the UK launch of their new razor system, the Azor 5.

The answer was “yes”, even though we had a short lead time. Drawings, finishes, razor samples and other details were passed backwards and  forwards by email and post (after all, there is only a certain amount you can communicate in a 140 characters) but it wasn’t long before the 4′ (1.2m) long razor prop was put into production.

The super-sized Azor 5 razor prop almost ready for delivery.

Using the actual engineering drawing for the razor, we cut the front and side profiles out of a solid block of Styrofoam. We then used a series of hand tools to carve and craft the contoured shape, using images and an actual razor sample as a reference during its production. After several other processes, the prop was wrapped in a vinyl that replicated the markings and logos on the original shaver.
The Azor 5 replica was now ready to be packed into the original Styrofoam block so that it could be shipped to England. The lightweight block was an ideal packaging material as it fitted the razor prop perfectly to prevent it from getting damaged.

We used an overnight courier service to ensure that the giant replica arrived on time for the launch event held in London’s Purl cocktail bar for the invited press and media.
Judging by the pictures taken on the night of the event, it looks like the launch party went very successfully.

Mr Will King, at the UK launch of the Azor5 razor system with our giant razor prop

If you still doubt the power of social media, why not follow Will on twitter to see how he’s winning the shaver wars against Gillette and Wilkinson?
If you want a look that’s shaved to perfection, try the Azor 5. But, if you want a point-of-sale or launch prop that’s been shaped to perfection, please drop me an email or give me a call.

Image credit to kingofshaves.com

St. Patrick's Festival press launch 2011

‘Brilliant,’ by Roddy Doyle is a fun and uplifting story about banishing the depression over Dublin and getting the city’s funny bone back. This short story is very appropriate for the times we live in and was used as the inspiration for the Parade to honour Dublin’s designation as UNESCO City of Literature.  Community groups, theatre companies and street artists from around the country will be interpreting different chapters of the story in the St. Patrick’s Day parade to be held on the streets of Dublin city.
The St. Patrick’s Festival runs from the 16th to the 20th of March, with a wide variety of events that are there to be enjoyed.

What a 'Brilliant' book

Working with the teams at Fleishman Hillard and St. Patrick’s Festival, we created this giant book prop. We designed it so that it could free-stand and be easy to handle. It also had to allow ‘characters’ to emerge from the pages of the book. Using expanded polystyrene foam gave us the flexibility to do this: we created a window cut-out to allow the performers to pass through.
The colourful characters and happy kids seem to be enjoying the whole experience, but isn’t that what you get when you open a brilliant book?

Have any characters jumped out from the pages of a book that you’ve read?

Shaking a paint tin with a loose lid ?

I haven’t met a person yet who hasn’t made a mistake, whether in business, or on a personal level.
Some mistakes are ones that were extremely embarrassing, and you wished the ground had swallowed you up. Others involved following a hunch, convinced that you were right but for one reason or another, it didn’t work out.
You try, you fail, but ultimately you learn, and put it down to experience. Apparently, if you don’t learn, you are on the path to stupidity, insanity or politics, or maybe all three.
However, wiser men than me don’t appear to escape the odd mistake. Some of the world’s greatest minds, such as Oscar Wilde (“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes”) and James Joyce (“Mistakes are the portals of discovery”), have obviously had their fair share.

A polystyrene profile with the wrong hand down

So, you may ask, why would a business blog about their mistakes? Well, the professional answer to this question would be that we are doing this to show our readers that we are a growing, developing business, which is learning to adapt to new situations on a daily basis. In actual fact, we just have two funny stories to tell.
The first occurred when one of the team emerged from the workshop dripping in green paint. He’d failed to notice that the lid wasn’t on the tin properly, gave it a shake, and well, you can see the consequences in the top image. But until you make the mistake, it is difficult to learn: my past ‘experience’ with a mayonnaise jar ensures that a thumb is on the lid before shaking any bottle, jar or tin.

My recent ‘mistake’ was on a slightly larger scale. We were asked to create a giant silhouette for Universal Graphics and sculptor Marc Kelly. We had to make 2 cuts into block of foam that was 8′ high x 4′ deep x 4′ wide. The first cut was a side profile, and then we had to rotate the polystyrene block through 90° to cut the front profile. Yes, you guess it, I had a 50% chance of rotating it in the right direction, but it ended up being 100% wrong.

Thomas A. Edison, the inventor of the electric light bulb, once wrote, “Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.” Then, should we consider ourselves lucky that we have made so few mistakes to date? Or is this an omen to what could be in the future? *ponders*

So, here are some of our mistakes which we’ve learned from. To further our education, why not share some of your “experiences” (mistakes!) below? The most enlightening comment will win their name in foam, error-free!

An unconventional Stage setup for The 2010 Irish Web Awards

I think that we do quirky, unusual and eye-catching quite well with the 3D designs and props that we create for the marketing and advertising industries.
But yes, you can always learn more. You can improve systems and fine-tune techniques, but sometimes you need to step further away, take a wider view, and maybe do things that are a little different from the norm. We were given this opportunity quite recently.

We supplied signage, props and give-aways to the 2010 Irish Web Awards. The event was held in the historic Mansion House in Dublin City and was sponsored again this year by Realex Payments. The ceremony has grown significantly in stature, both in the number of awards being made: 28 industry categories, and in the number of people attending: 500+.

Lisa Domican and Vinny Coyne. Joint winners of Best Mobile Application

As award ceremonies go, it is informal, but it certainly has its own unique style. The stage had the look of a 70′s living room with a social media twist: instead of having the ubiquitous flying duck wall ornaments, we had three fat twitter birds. The assembling crowd were greeted by the sounds of a traditional brass band followed by compère Rick O’Shea, of  2fm fame, who seemed to enjoy firing items at the crowd, using a gun of all things.
We were pleased to see an emotional Lisa Domican collect a replica iPhone prop that we had created for the Best Mobile Application category; she was a joint winner alongside Vinny Coyne. But we were a little bemused when two members of the audience volunteered to try to fit on a morph suit each.
You just wouldn’t know what to expect next… an Ice Cream van serving 99′s to those who went outside and, for those who stayed indoors, a sweet cart loaded with jars of bon-bons, fudge, chocolate mice etc and some delicious cupcakes. These were some of the surprises that were provided but, apparently we missed out on the giant game of  Snakes & Ladders, because it didn’t arrive on time.
If you need to be convinced of how quirky and different the Irish Web Awards really are, take a look at the video and see for yourself. Keep an eye out for our giant Styrofoam ‘W’s and ‘Toxic Bank’ prop.
But do let us know if you have been to another awards event that was a little different from the ‘norm’.

Images by Ryan Whalley
Video by Present Tense Productions

Facebook Places logo

There’s an app for this and an app for that, in our house there’s even a napp, my wife not quite hearing “an app” from a quick-talking friend.
An app, or application, is a program designed to run on your mobile device, usually a mobile phone. With most modern phones having GPS capabilities, some of the more popular apps available are location-based services. These apps help you to discover places, whether it be coffee shops, museums or landmarks. They’re a game that rewards and challenges you to experience new things, and then they let you share them with your friends through social networks like Twitter.
There are a number of different apps available that are trying to establish themselves in this sector, but Facebook, with over 150 million users who regularly check for updates and news through their mobile phone, are set to dominate this lucrative advertising market. ‘Places’ is the name of the Facebook location service that is available to people in the USA, the UK, and Australia. ‘Places’ is not yet available here, so we decided we should locate some interesting ‘Places’ around Ireland ourselves.

Exploring the grounds of Trinity College Dublin with our Facebook Places prop

We started our journey in Dublin, using only our feet, a polystyrene ‘Places’ prop and a point-and-click camera. We didn’t use any high-tech navigation devices to help us to identify any landmarks and other places of interest on our travels through the city, although we did employ GPS, (Going Places Sightseers) .
Being ‘Going Places Sightseers’ from Ireland, we had a good idea where to visit and the quickest way to get there, as we are reasonably familiar with Dublin. However, we passed many tourists carrying travel books and maps who could find this geo-location service very useful for finding landmarks, entertainment venues and for places to eat & drink. These location-based services will have advantages for both the venue owner, and the visitor. The owner of an outlet could offer visitors a special discount, or have an offer for regular customers; the tourist can benefit from being able to read about these incentives and reviews of the destination.

Fred Caballero at Adtech London with one our small Facebook 'Places' props

To see some of the ‘Places’ we visited on our travels around some Dublin landmarks, have a look at the photographs in our Facebook Album. You can also see some of our smaller ‘Places’ props being used at Adtech, a conference that was held London and was kindly photographed by Fred Caballero of Channelship.ie

To receive one of the mini ‘Places’ props, please suggest a location or landmark that you think should be marked, and we will select the best suggestions. The only condition we attach is that you photograph the prop in the location and post it to our Facebook page.
So, what ‘Places’ are you going to?

The delorentos on stage at Oxegen 2010.

Yeah! Rock ‘n’ roll.
The county of Louth may be small, but we do have The Tidiest Town in Ireland, the unluckiest GAA County Football Team, and it’s home to the world-famous The Corrs, our own home-grown rock band.
Well, we are now following in their footsteps… not quite, but our 3D polystyrene signs are getting onto the stages at some world-famous venues.

Earlier in the year, Ronan from the delorentos contacted us to create their name in giant letters. They were to be used as a backdrop whilst the delorentos were on stage for their set at Oxegen, at Punchestown Racecourse, Co. Kildare.
This was a brilliant idea, as they would have the space on-stage for a super-sized sign, they could be seen from the crowd, and they’d be lightweight and easy to handle.
This picture, taken by Gavan Drohan, shows that the idea definitely worked.

Polystyrene letters crowd surfing at the Electric Picnic 2010

The word must have got out, as we were then contacted by The Frames to create their name in polystyrene foam. Their name is shorter so the letters got taller: 6′ 8″ tall, to be exact.
They were cut, painted, packed and sent to Stradbally, Co. Laois to join the band on the main stage at the Electric Picnic, on part of their Twentieth Anniversary Tour.
The gig, by all accounts, was a great success, helped by the fact that the band sent the lightweight letters out to ‘surf’ the crowd. This was a truly original idea and one that went down well with the audience; it also guaranteed that they wouldn’t get the letters back! A Facebook group has even been set up to try to find the missing letters.
However, I doubt that the band were too worried once everybody was having a good time. Isn’t that the whole point of rock ‘n’ roll… baby?

Update: 16/9/10
The video shows the giant styrofoam letters ‘surfing’ the crowd in true Rock ‘n’ Roll style.

Video via mccdamo.

The famous Facebook logo in 3D Styrofoam

It has taken a little while but we finally have a page on Facebook.

The staff at Channelship, a web agency based in Dublin and London, made a video with ideas how we could use social media to market our company. They have helped us to realise that the projects that we work on are very visual and that Facebook, would be a good platform to share them with you.
We will be able to show you more of the items that we have created, keep you informed on what we are doing, tell you of any competitions that we are running and you can let us know what you think of them.

A 3D version of the Facebook 'Like' icon

So, to encourage you to ‘Like’ our page on Facebook we want to give-away 5 ‘Like’ thumbs up, the same as the one in the picture, for the best comment on:
What would you would ‘Like’ to see made from polystyrene or what is the best thing we have already made?
Please leave a comment below or on our Facebook page.

I have to thank the crew at Webtogether.ie for the help they have given us so far and for the work they are doing to integrate this website with Facebook. Look out for the familiar Facebook icons on the site very soon.

UPDATE
We now have our social media icons at the top of each page and in the footer. We also have a Facebook feed in the panel on the right, letting you see what’s happening on our Facebook page. We still have our 3D ‘Thumbs Up’ to give away to people who leave a comment saying what they’d ‘Like’ to see.

So please leave a comment and we’ll ‘Like’ you for it. 

Doing research on an effective aerial for the new iFoam4

With the imminent launch of the latest Apple iPhone4 onto the Irish market and amidst rumours of poor reception and phone calls being dropped, we thought we would instigate our own study before we released our new iFoam4 mobile phone prop.
We made a decision to forgo the engineering experimentation in our R&D workshops and jump straight into the field work development. The results have proven to be a little muddy but we put this down to the recent heavy rain; we expect things to improve when the weather picks up.
Our test phone, however, performed very well in these conditions, as it acted as a wind-break and as an umbrella. This disproves the myth that the iFoam can’t multi-task.

The key issues that users of the new iPhone 4 are complaining about are: that they are dropping calls when they hold the phone a certain way, and that they have poor network reception.

We continue to improve the iFart reception on the iFoam4

We believe that our new mobile cellphone will operate faultlessly, but we will offer our customers an instructional DVD called “Get a Grip”, showing users how they can effectively hold their phone and get accustomed to a new iFoam user experience.
Secondly, we will offer an external antenna that is capable of receiving all kinds of radio waves, television transmissions and satellite signals. This cost effective add-on will be called the iFart (iFoam Aerial-Antenna).
Tests indicate that our external aerial is proving to be very receptive, much better than putting the phone into a rubber case. We even managed to pick up an extra-terrestrial message from E.T.’s mum. She wanted to thank Elliot for looking after E.T., and to tell him that he got home OK.

If you have any suggestions on what other messages the ifart might pick up, please leave a comment and we will investigate it further, with the best comment receiving a prize made from styrofoam.

(Lower image by Lifestyle photography Dundalk)

Update:
We have discovered that the name iFart is already being used. Yes, as you would probably guess it’s an iphone app that makes ‘sounds for the ultimate in poop gas realism’. Ah well, back to the drawing board.