Look back at September

September was a huge month for Hebe. We agreed two new projects with two completely different yet equally interesting brands (that we are announcing this week) and had our best ever month on the blog. Here we take a quick look at some of the best bits of September.

Harvey Nichols were definitely on it during September: We hit Vogue Fashion Night Out, The Harvey Nichols x Land Rover Fashion Show and went to see the ace ICS at Harvey Nichols Freshers Event at Leeds University. This month promises to be just as busy as Leeds Fashion calendar kicks into over-drive during October.

Our Week in Pics posts included things like our visits to Hyper Island Manchester, Abbey House Museum, Nigel Martyn & Sky Sports, Leeds Festival and Stockholm!

Speaking of Stockholm, we also blogged about our recent trip there in 24 Hours in Stockholm along with the new Hebe Hits Stockholm Photo Gallery. 

Shang Ting told us how Bubble Tea Will Change Your World and we also previewed the cool new collection from our friends at Kitschen Sink, who also featured in the recent Leeds in Barcelona project.

One of the most read blog posts of September was my review of the 2011 LEP Summit. I dont think one post has resulted in so many DMs and emails. I think we said what a lot of people were thinking (something we are quite good at lol)  

I also posted our first 'Hebe Hit List' post where we speak about the people and brands we want to work with in the next year. First up was the brilliant Corey Latif Williams.

We hope you enjoyed checking in with us during September, it was nice to smash our record number of monthly visits on this blog and combined with more then 500,000 views on LOL! Leeds Online and 9,000,000+ on UK Observing Diary shows that people seem to be interested in what we are talking / shooting / filming about :)

We have some really cool stuff planned for October. Lots of events, annoucements about new Hebe projects and much more, so check in when you can and say "hello".

The Hebe Week In Pics

Found this! Shang Ting in 2008 in Barcelona, coolhunted for a magazine!Our boys I Call Shotgun performing for Harvey Nichols at the Leeds Freshers FairWorking the crowd in the Sunshine, weird watching the band without a beer ;)Half of I Call Shot Gun, Iain and Josh!World Curry Festival @ Victoria Gardens Bit of Catwalk action @ Leeds Bradford Airport! Shang Ting and i take in some culture @ Kirkstall AbbeyAbbey House has an amazing old street inside!STP looks superimposed into this photo! Now switch to the moon!Ello, ello, ello!Old school Shang TingLove this. Team Hebe vote pint! And as always, Lee's new shizzle! Hats this time round!

The Hebe Week In Pics

Two of our favourite cities combined: A Barcelona bar in Manchester!Interviewing Hyper Island student and fashion designer Dom!Shang Ting in the Hyper School, ManchesterMitch, ready for his close up @ Hyper IslandSo awesome to check in with the students and find out what they have been up to in the past 5 monthsTeam Heebs loving the street art in ManchesterLee likes to think he is like the F1 presenter with his iPad :)Shang Ting and I hit the Harvey Nichols X Land Rover fashion showMy favourite dress!Shang Ting's favourite (so angelic!)Dinner on the HN Fourth FloorFull after the second course!But we fit in dessert ;)Shang-Ting Jordan Swedish people eat weird stuff :s

Far East Feature: Bubble Tea will change your world

When I heard Bubbleology, the original Taiwanese bubble tea was coming to Leeds for one day, I was so super excited I shivered and drooled for 2 days (stroke?). Bubble tea, also called pearl tea, is a traditional Taiwanese drink that became very popular in Asia in the 80s, and now world wide. An innovative drink combined with beverages and desserts.

"Having a cuppa." is such an important thing in British culture, in Asia, tea is also in our daily lifes, our bones, our blood, and our history. In Chinese culture, we create poems for good teas, we have wars fighting for them, we can say sorry, thank you, or good bye with the gesture of making a cup of tea, we need them in weddings, graduations, any occasion.

If you ever get to go to Taiwan, you will find little tea shops in every corner. In there, you get to customize your own favorite teas, from what kind of tea, warmth, how much sugar, to what do you want to add in there, including bubbles, jello, or even aloe vera and so on.

That's why when I went to Victoria Quarter last Saturday, and had my first drink of bubble tea for the last 15 months, I was so happy I could kick someone in the face(?). The Bubbleology's bubble tea is exactly how I remembered, the taste, the bubble, even the machine that packaged the cup! 

So if you're in London, you are very lucky as you can just pop into their shops. If you're in the North like me, join my prayers for them to expand here in the very near future. All hail Bubble Tea!

24 hours in Stockholm

Stockholm is one of the coolest cities in the world, and is home to a number of our friends and collaborators. Lee and I headed over in August 2011 to start planning for a big creative clash between cool kids from the UK and Sweden.

We've added a new gallery charting our 24 hour trip.

We also took the opportunity to hook up with our buddies at Hyper Island, and to spend a few hours planning our next bit of work with them, which we will announce this week! They're in a temporary space at the minute, whilst their HQ is being updated, and it was a bit of a mission to find our way to the inner sanctum. It was well worth the effort though, and seriously inspiring to be immersed in the buzz of awesomeness emanating from crowds of digibods, all sharing ideas about ways to solve problems handed down to them by the likes of Google, Nokia and Oxfam. A talk was underway as we left and the last thing I saw were projected words, thrown onto the wall in front of 200 students: "disruption doesn't ask permission".

Team Léve did us the full tour of Stockholm city, and we did our own bit of disruptive thinking over a few beers. The agenda (once we'd got over Marcus's new face friend - beards seem to be having a major revival in Sweden right now) was all about our Creative Encounter between our networks from Stockholm, Leeds and Manchester. More to follow on this one very soon... we'll give you a moment of two to get strapped in first!