Art Deco Social Media

As a bit of a rookie to Art Deco, I have had an awesome time sifting, searching and wondering through the many Art Deco enthusiast groups on the world wide web. See the tips below on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Reddit, for some Art Deco social time;

- Instagram 
You won't find old fogies posting black & whites but more young-ins and enthusiasts seeing and snapping daily Art Deco architecture and gorgeous art deco items. Check it out - amazing photography coupled with gorgeous art deco style.

Tech Tip - Popular hashtags are #artdeco #artdecoarchitecture #artdecodesign #vintagedeco

- Facebook
There are many Art Deco pages that post about their wares they are selling. But take a walk through all the 'groups' on Facebook. It is less about selling stuff and more about sharing the art deco love. I have found a few local groups in New Zealand but I am sure wherever you are from there might be a local shin-dig just for you! Best Napier NZ group is 'Napier - Art Deco, History, Heritage and People'.  

Tech Tip - in your Facebook search bar type Art Deco and click the magnifying glass symbol. Click 
the 'More' button and select 'groups'. Voila you have a lot of Art Deco groups to join!

- Pinterest

Prepare to get lost amongst pins and boards and not notice the time go by. To get started just search art deco and many pins will come up. From there delve into their boards and profiles and get following. Every time you follow an art deco board, their updates will pop up in your home screen. Easy updates and search. Just gorgeous stuff in there! Not really used to connect with people, rather to like and re-pin inspirational images of Art Deco. Great source :)

Tech Tip - Click my Pinterest board link on my side bar to go to Pinterest as your starting point. ---->

- Reddit

This is a strange one. The Reddit group on Art Deco is not updated often with interesting stuff and reddit on a whole is not for the faint hearted. However I simply love the conversation around Art Deco found on this platform. For example the below answer was a reply relating to someones Project on Art Deco 'What is your favourite part of Art Deco?'. Best answer hands down is below;

"[–]ZombieOmNom 10 points 1 year ago 

Aesthetically it's attractive in a timeless, tasteful way. It can be difficult to pull off and requires total coordination of decor, and when it is done well the effect is astonishing. It has a classical, nostalgic quality, in that it represents an archaic imagination of the future, from a time when the future seemed as exciting as it does today. It arrived at a time of cultural shift into consumer culture, where individualism was touted as the new model of economic progress. It flourished as a progression of the very beautiful art nouveau. It represented cultural and civic pride in fashionable architecture, being the style of choice for many important buildings such as power stations, train stations, sky scrapers and cinemas, and was largely the last publicly applauded architectural and artistic movement before the controversially ill-fated brutalism. It was tremendously influential on the way our environment eventually came to be; it spawned present day modernism, minimalism, and most other "modern" styles. To this day it has near universal appeal, and has become iconic.

Thanks ZombieOmNom! 

So there you go! These are just some alternatives than the classic 'type into Google' method of exploring Art Deco. I like to think of this as gracefully dragging Art Deco kicking and screaming into the 2015 techy world.

People all around the globe are living breathing Art Deco on a daily basis so get social darlin'! 

Enjoy :) Regards, Kiwi Dee xx

Vintage 1930's City in New Zealand

You may think it unlikely and odd that in little ole NZ, the country sometimes forgotten off the world map, that there is a random as vintage 1930s city. Some think NZ is only full of sheep or grassy green meadows and hobbits...

Walking through Napier (in New Zealand) and overhearing Mexican and German accents I wonder how they managed to find themselves exploring just a small wee dot on the map. Considering we are well off the beaten track and lets face it a little frontier-ish (you will look out of place if you don't have jandals on, and ditch the blazer, you will not fit in at all). Cruise ships and NZ Tourism must be making some impact.

One thing that I really did notice when I came back from a Europe backpacking trip was how new New Zealand was. I was a bit of a classics nut at school so I always wanted to head to the more  history rich places of the world and soak it all in. It never occurred to me Kiwi's were still building our main infrastructure where other world cities are light years ahead. I was quite shocked about having to learn the metro system in just about every major city I went to in Europe - Wellington and Auckland are still developing a rail system. I guess we don't really have the population to really justify massive metro systems.

Imagine if New Zealand was populated and built at the Ancient Roman time! Ha imagine that! A Colosseum in Taupo and hippodrome in Christchurch. Oh dear! The mind is wandering :)

I guess what I am trying to make sense of, is that we do have interesting things happening in NZ and having a fully Art Deco city smack bang in the middle of it is pretty cool. The natural disaster of the 1931 earthquake was an awesome excuse to create a bit of a 'Phoenix from the ashes' and ensuring Hawkes Bay could rebuild in an even more modern and stylistic way. Because NZ is still so young and in comparison it occurred quite early in the history of making NZ, therefore had the opportunity to create a unique art capital of the world (exaggerating a bit?)! Although there are a few too many businesses or rest homes that are run/overrun by old fogies - it is fast becoming a awesome lifestyle to be in the bay.

Quite a unique place if I may say. Vintage baby!

Cheers,
Kiwi Dee xx

P.S. Kiwis are so frontier-ish that whenever I type in Jandals it keeps autocorrecting me to sandals, vandals or pandals!!

Extra PS. I realize New Zealand has the word 'new' in the word...

Art Deco in a Nutshell

History in words can be over whelming or just downright boring. So I thought why not make an Art Deco worldle - nice, quick and easy. Get the gist :) See below..

Love it :)

If you want to make a worldle yourself go to worldle.net

Cheers

Kiwi Dee xx

P.S. I love the word ziggurats. I was in a musical called Young Frankenstein (awesome funny show!) and one of the characters was named Ziggy and the girls that danced with him were called Ziggets. Also our robot vacuum cleaner is called Ziggy (Ziggy StarHousedust). Ahh 'Z' words. Tehe Ziggurats

Local Guide to Survive Napier Art Deco Weekend

Me and my gorgeous friend at Art Deco Weekend 2014

Every February, a happy mob of dressed up 1930s hooligans converge on New Zealand's Art Deco Capital for a weekend of splendour and party.

Follow the below as a simple insiders guide to surviving such a weekend.

• If it is a scorcher (i.e. hot sunny Hawkes Bay day) you will need a parasol (women), hat (men) and a good lathering of sun block.

• Have a Art Deco getup. You well and truly feel out of place if you are not dressed up for the weekend. If you are doing a last minute costume - ladies find some long pearls, a non figure hugging dress (dropped waist) and a head band (put on horizontally not vertically), gentlemen - find some trousers, suspenders and a light button up shirt. Shoes? Well I am a kiwi girl at heart and am most comfortable in jandals but ladies wear a low heels and men in dress shoes. Voila! 

• Have a weekend plan and then a Plan B in case of bad weather

• Book ahead for accommodation and special events because blimey it gets busy! Consider renting a house in Napier or go further a field and book accommodation in Havelock North and combine going to see wineries at that time.

• A local favourite is to watch the war birds (vintage fighter planes) do their aerobatics show. Find out what time they are flying and find a spot on Marine Parade for the perfect watching spot.

• Take snacks and water. Yes there are stalls there on the weekend but it is always good to have a muesli bar and some water on hand to munch on to keep your energy up!

Well there you have it. Simple :) Any more advice my friends?

Have a jolly good time!

Cheers,

Kiwi dee xxx

Napier Art Deco Video 1980's Goodness

A friend of mine shared the below video on Facebook and I thought it was too good not to share on here.

Have a good wee giggle at the amazing 80s haircuts and fashion, plus the awkward pauses for effect in the video. But looking past that and the somewhat horrible music.. there is some good facts in there about Napier Art Deco!



Ahh just love the oldness goodness of it! It is a smidgeon long... I will hunt round for a more up to date, faster vid!

Hope you are having an awesome end to 2014!

Cheers,

Kiwi Dee xx

Top 5 Art Deco Buildings in Napier

If you are a cruise shipper, backpacker, day tripper, or even a local in Napier, New Zealand then if you go to these 5 buildings you will get a good sense of the architecture and feel of Art Deco Napier.

Stop faffing around with those boring brochures and get all you need from here!
Note - 4 of the buildings are walkable but the Tobacco building in Ahuriri is a ride away.

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1. National Tobacco Company 1933

Address: 1 Ossian St, Ahuriri, Napier 4110, New Zealand

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2. Municipal Theatre 1937

Our Theatre an ultimate site link

Address: 119 Tennyson St, Napier South, Napier 4110, New Zealand

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3. The Telegraph Building 1933

Address: 49 Tennyson Street Napier, New Zealand

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4. Hawkes Bay Museum and Art Gallery 1937
 

Address: Corner of Herschell and Browning Street Napier NZ

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5. ASB Building 1932

Address: 100 Hastings Street Napier, NZ

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This is the closest you will get to living in The Great Gatsby time. If you are fortunate to visit during Art Deco weekend in February it is an amazing site!

Hope you enjoy the beautiful city of Napier.

Kiwidee over and out! xx

My App in the App Store

I set a goal for myself; To see if I could get an app to the iTunes Appstore by the end of 2013.

Well it happened! I will reveal all in this post. I paid next to nothing (although a lot in time), without in depth coding and all by myself. How? Well I will share with you my secrets!

Why?
Well why not!? I've always had a hankering to see if I could get an app to the app store, a bit of a personal challenge and a boasting point I suppose! "Why Yes, I do have an app in the app store and its not half bad :)."

What? 
Since I had no skills coding and programming the amount of functions needed to be cut down. I quickly realized having a simple content based app was the way to go.  With all my reading, many said to keep it simple as the user wasn't interested in trudging through all your 'cool' ideas and pages.

Having a look at my immediate whereabouts (Napier, New Zealand) I decided a info app on Art Deco and top things to do in Sunny Napier is a good start. I started 20 Buildings to write about/images. I soon cut this down to top 5 as it takes a LONG time to generate your own quality content. I added top 5 things to do in Napier and voila! I had a Top10 App.

How?
Elance? ODesk? TeaminIndia? Developer contacts? NO WAY (although I'd like to explore these options). I went down the DIY road. DYOR People!!! After a few stop starts, I settled on AppArchitect. It was basic as it was still in its beta phase. So I adapted my app to fit into what was available at the time on the web based platform builder. The first go at getting into the app store (Version 1) saw my half hearted effort get there... Yeah nah, didn't go well (a little embarrassed of it actually!) Also it was uploaded under the developer Applique - That's what AppArchitect was originally named. It had to be by default Free also.

After thinking - should I just leave it or spruce it up? After seeing they were going to release the actual binary code (the files that you upload into iTunes connect so you could have it under your name in iTunes), I got my mojo back for it and Version 2 went much better. I thought of it in the new IOS 7 design and adapted what I'd done so far into a Xero inspired 'beautiful' user interface. The content was done so all I had to do was design around it, the fun job! So I toddled away at that for a while then saw they were releasing the binary code. Jumped on that bandwagon (several emails and tweets later as they were a bit slow responding) got my binary code.

I must say, it was a bit of a rigmarole trying to get iTunes connect to accept the binary code file - although AppArchitect supplied a lot of the info that you needed to change things in order to get to the App store. Actually, considering they were in Beta mode they were moderately helpful!
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End Result: TA DA!

Napier Top10 Traveller edition is here!

Use the app & throw the map

Quality tips for the traveler & not boring info.

Features? Instant location of iconic sites, easy simple info, affordable and mobile, local tips, share where you are with friends.

For travelers of all types, cruise ship peeps, backpackers, do-ers, day trippers or 3 day visitors, even locals

Napier, NZ: This is the closest you will get to living in The Great Gatsby time. Experience Napier

View in iTunes here!

 

The most condensed brochure you will find in Napier city

Designed by KiwiDee

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It was definitely a journey.
Onto the next project!

Dee xx