Friends of Jumbla,

In what is an extraordinary time we hope you are all safe and doing well. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as of Monday the 16th of March 2020 all Jumbla staff are now working from home.

London - one of the most well-known and visited cities in the world. It’s synonymous with history, weather, architecture and the urban fox.

So what better way to capture the spirit of London than with a short piece created and conceptualised by our UK-based team.

As we dive headlong into the silly season, we’ve wrestled the Wacom tablet away from designer Richard Shilling to get his take on two Christmas ads doing the rounds on Australian TV.

First up is the battle of retail behemoths Myer and Stockland.

Each has a markedly different approach to the form and content of their ads, and the results are equally divergent.

More on that shortly. First cab off the rank - what makes a good Christmas ad in the Australian market?

If you’ve walked past a television or seen a meme any time in the past 20 years, you probably know the English town of Slough (rhymes with ‘cow’) as the dreary suburban backdrop to BBC cult classic The Office.

Former PepsiCo senior design manager Kieran Madden has joined Jumbla Studios as head of creative.

Between the months of November and April, Darwin enters its 'tropical summer' phase. To celebrate the unique natural phenomenon and drive tourism during the shoulder season,  the NT government commissioned internationally-renowned artist Bruce Munro to install a series of light sculptures around around the city.

Many of our clients sit in marketing teams tasked with creating content that’ll increase engagement, brand awareness or sell a new product. Jumbla’s UK Head of Production Laura Breaden went to the Festival of Marketing (FoM) to hear industry insiders’ predictions around upcoming trends in marketing, to find out what’s working - and more importantly, what isn’t.

Here’s  her cheatsheet from the day.

Life as a salesman was antithetical to the career Cornel Swoboda appeared destined to pursue.

Yet there he was, another fresh-faced 20 year old donning a suit and tie to work a generic job while questioning his place in the world.

In early October, game audio composers, studios and devs gathered at the Arcade - Melbourne’s collaborative workspace for game developers - to discuss creating sonic landscapes and ‘breaking in’ to the industry. Jumbla’s in-house composer and sound designer, Sean Crowley, went along. Here’s what he found out.

It’s a tale as old as time.

An embattled Hollywood executive scrambles to find a property that’s guaranteed to make his studio bank. He  reaches deep into his studio’s archives, holds aloft a beloved classic from the 90s and cries, “this’ll do it! Nostalgia always sells!”

Illustrator Rachel Gyan understands how daunting it can be to embark on an animation career by relying on YouTube tutorials and blogs.

New and innovative forms of technology can be tricky to explain.

Two years ago, RoyalPay came to Jumbla to help launch one of Australia’s first payment platforms for WeChat and AliPay. One stunning explainer video and $2 billion worth of transactions later, they’re back again -- this time, to promote a new individualised Australian e-wallet solution for cross-continental transactions, powered by a neobank. (For those of us not in the know, a neobank is a solely digitally operated bank, not associated to any traditional banks.)

Anyone who had a parent scold them for ‘wasting’ time gaming when they were younger should be feeling pretty smug right now.

When Envato co-founder Collis Ta’eed asked for help launching  an app aimed at helping women build their own business, there was no way we could say no.

Billed as Australia's number one Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament, the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM)) is among the top fixtures on the domestic esports calendar.