24 gifts for you!

Over at the website of a secret club we're throwing a little gift your way every day until Christmas eve. Previous days' gifts will not be available, so you best check in 24 times if you want them all.



So far we've given away the crown of King Winter, some delicious gift wrap, a magical landscape and today you'll get a classic collage challenge, unless you read this tomorrow...

offline online advent calender

Last year around this time a secret club created a little online experience or activity every day for our advent calender playing with the idea of taking an online activity and method of delivery out of the computer, there were paper kits, collage challenges and so on.



This year, our advent calendar is running on the four Sundays leading up to Christmas - this is major thing in continental Northern Europe and this time, it's even more removed from the internet that hosts it: It's a geographical game (we love geographical games) and by following the instructions posted on the website, you will find a creation of ours in the landscape in and around Aarhus.


This was the first one, now taken offline, so the directions to it are gone, but the little house is still out there for passers by to see.

designing the other way round



After having created an interactive cover for the printing magazine AGI we had a half-page ad to play around with and decided to use it to promote a secret club, so it seemed interaction was, once again, key as we wanted the ad to be half about us and half us, if that makes sense - we wanted to advertise without stepping out of the creative realm we were advertising, so interaction it was. being pressed for time, we looked to the advent calendar we had made in December for recyclable ideas and we chose to revisit the most minimal of animations: The Thaumatrope.


a minimal bit of planning of format and communication.


Annabelle's sketches for the Thaumatrope.

What would make sense would be to have the illustrator design the image for the 'trope and the the designer do the ad, and that was how we started, but what made this design process interesting was that after initial sketches, we swapped.


Kenn baring his chest to create the thaumatrope.

Not only did we swap roles, we also pretty much swapped the order you usually make these things in, starting a rough layout in Illustrator (of course initial ideas had happened in the sketchbook) before creating the artwork for the ad as a collage, building the ad as an oversized object.


Kenn's initial Illustrator sketch next to Annabelle's finished artwork.

This is obviously a time consuming way to work, but not massively slower and the exercise of swapping thing around benefitted the ad immensely, looking through an issue of the magazine, this will surely stand out, although this is very much an attempt to promote the work we do and ultimately to get more work, we decided not to put our name on the ad. Working under the name a secret club obviously makes that decision easier, but our experience with memory work also suggests that although fewer people who will have looked at the ad will know our name, the ones that have checked out the website following the ad will have a much clearer memory of us - spoon-feeding is not good for your memory, exploration is. Furthermore, this effectively filters out the less passionate and curious members of our target audience, the ones that wouldn't be interested in working with us anyway.



See the finished ad and make the thaumatrope here. (pdf)

Advent in a secret club



Over at a secret club we've silently launched an advent calendar - updated daily (sometimes a bit delayed as this is being heavily interfered with by the newest member who'll turn one week old tomorrow.)




We've hidden the advent calendar in the story already on the site, but for those in a hurry and not up for seeking it out on foot, it's here

Spread the word and take part, email us anything you've found or made and think would fit in and you might find it behind one of those tricky numbers.




What you'll find in the calendar is a mix of interesting objects, things to make, pictures and stories. Even though we're nesting here happily with the little guy, we're hoping to include some cool little experiments there.

Enjoy.