These are a few of our favourite things

There are lots of weird and wonderful things scattered around the studio, so when we were tagged by Lauren in her ’Things in my pencil case’ post we thought we’d respond with a post of our own. Rather than a pencil case we took a rummage through Claire’s drawers (snigger!) to see what we could find. Once we threw away the Cadbury Boost wrappers, we discovered a few of Claire’s necessities along with some of our favourite and most used items here at Parade:

• String - Or ‘Bakers twine’ to use the correct name, is always coming in handy. It gives the perfect finishing touch to gifts and definitely nails that ‘brown paper packages tied up with string’ postal look that we all wish still existed on our deliveries.
  
  
• Diet Coke - You’ll never go a day in the studio without seeing a can of Diet Coke (even better if it’s in a glass bottle). If the bottle is cool enough it makes it onto our shelf of fame.
  
  
• Bold sunglasses - We don’t know where they come from, but there’s a few pairs of these cheap, colourful sunglasses knocking ‘round the office - pretty handy for a hangover though. And to look super cool of course.
  
  
• Doughnut sticky notes - These serve as a nicely themed reminder for Doughnut Wednesdays!
  
  
• Chewing Gum - This one’s pretty self explanatory.
  
  
• Parade Design stamp - Alongside the string this adds a lovely personal touch to just about anything. Everyone loves to stamp, right?
  
  
• Washi tape - The invention of Washi tape has been a valuable one, you can write on it, see through it and they come in so many different designs it’s impossible to choose just one.
  
  
• Ink Pad - So the stamp isn’t invisible.
  
  
• Parade business cards - They’re pretty much scattered around the office.
  
  
• Fine liners - You can’t have a day without them, they’re great for getting perfect neat lines which work really well when scanning in too. We like these Staedtler triplus fine liners and they don’t smudge.
  
  
• Children’s toys - Not sure if this little guy has a name. There’s lots of little toys and clues around the studio to work out Claire has children. Either that or she’s never quite grown up.
  
  
• Type Trumps - We love fun little design games like Type Trumps and Design Tarot cards by Supergraph & The Design Kids. They’re great for giving your eyes a break from the computer screen and are geeky and fun.
  
  
• Nail Varnish - Vibrant nails glancing across the mouse and keyboard? Yes please.
  
  
• Notebooks - Vital for jotting down ideas and other information, such as to do lists, celebrity dinner party guest lists and drawing people with interesting features.
  
  
• Pantone Formula Guide - Its rare that we’d go a day without using this baby. Essential for showing clients true colour representation of how their print jobs will turn out. Also good for spending half an hour debating which navy to choose.