The buds of may

We've found a Jem of a Designer...
Jem is a creative designer in love with what he does. He’s got layout and typography skills on one hand, and strong illustration and icon prowess on the other. His warm friendly personality and excellent manner with clients make him a welcome addition to the team. In his days PM (pre-mortgage), Jem played guitar and sang in various bands that seemed to implode just as they acheived any success. He can still be found occasionally weeping over his redundant 1962 Fender Jaguar and musing on what could have been.

...And a Char-ming Project Manager
After obtaining her BA in Graphic Design, Charlie started in this area and then moved across to Account Management. Whilst she is our newest team member, she has a positive approach and looks to make things happen. She'll be working closely with Katie and supporting our team. Previously Charlie has worked as a Studio and Project Manager for a fashion company where she managed budgets and timings as well as the upkeep of the studio. When not at work, you’ll often find her running along the banks of the Thames dodging tourists’ photos!

Cloudy with a chance of...

As the creative industry slowly (and slightly reluctantly) moves over to software rental via Adobe’s all conquering Creative Cloud, terms such as 'global cloud failure' can only serve to make us even more nervous! Last week their entire system was offline for 24 hours. Whilst we were able to work around this, many others would have been more affected. Whilst it’s in Adobe’s interest to ensure this doesn’t happen again, it does raise the issue that relying TOO much on the cloud does have its drawbacks. Read more - BBC News

The beauty of brand guidelines
Released through Unit Editions, Manuals 1 - Design and Identity Guidelines is a beautiful collection of 20 design manuals produced from the 1960s to early 1980s (considered to be the golden era of identity design don't you know). The book includes manuals created for institutions and corporations such as NASA, Lufthansa and British Steel. The manuals have been lovingly photographed and displayed over 432 pages. Despite the slightly hefty £75 price tag, this will surely be a welcome addition to our bookshelves. Go on, let your "brand geek" out - United Editions

The Client Factor

Clients, don’t you just love ‘em. The Drum has launched an anonymous survey to rate the top 100 clients across the UK - judging things such as financial management, communications, appreciation and creative direction. We'll be voting for all of our (obviously!). Cast your vote - The Drum

The Pre-Cat-aelites
Everything is better with cats, right? Russian artist Svetlana Petrova certainly thinks so (as does our Account Manager, Katie), as she's been adding images of her ginger cat Zarathustra to famous works of art. As is the way with the internet and cats, she's become somewhat of an internet sensation.
Check them out - BBC News 

Unkinected

Microsoft and their slightly beleaguered Xbox One console haven’t been doing so well over the months since their big launch. Despite great sales so far, their competitor Sony has been increasing their lead by significant amounts. Although Microsoft bought some great new ideas to the table - with their device being aimed as an 'all in one’ media device, with their Kinect sensor able to read movement and voice controls to an amazing degree, it also added significantly to the price. They’ve now decided to drop Kinect from the device, bringing the cost down to the same as their rival the PS4. But is it too little too late? And does the loss of Kinect render this as just another games console rather than the next big thing in the living room? Read more - The Verge

What's in a name...
Shakespeare clearly hadn't considered brand merging when this was written, as the recent merger between Carphone Warehouse and Dixons proves - Dixons Carphone. We're left thinking, along with many people, why didn't they take this as an opportunity to rename and develop something that encompasses their new offering - rather than butting up two names and hoping for the best! With naming and brand building a huge part of our offer as a Design Consultancy (have we ever mentioned that?) this seems a real oversight, we've done it for many clients in the past, from unique names such as as Pevara and to does-what-it-says-on-the-tin names like Newsprinters. Design Week seem to share the same views as us - Design Week

Easy prey
With house prices soaring so high they're with the Gods, more and more people are stuck in the rent cycle. So when contracts end it can often be time to get on the house hunt again, a daunting task with such an expanse of the city at our feet but the team at Rentonomy have a nifty little widget that allows you to search London by various catagories, and then shows you your best options. None of us are moving, we just thought it was a neat little piece of digital design. Start the hunt - Rentonomy 

The Y-Front Phenomena

And finally… A cautious tale of brand, identity and the importance of user research. And underpants. An American firm ‘RJ Metrics’ recently fell foul of the ‘Y-Front’ phenomena, but discovered that this is a curiously British fixation. Still, in these days of global spanning social media, ridicule from any quarter is worth paying attention to. Read it for yourself - RJ Metrics

Imagine that

The Transport Systems Catapult (TSC) is one of seven Catapults around the UK, bringing together a network of world-leading centres created to pioneer innovation in a variety of sectors. The TSC’s area of innovation focuses around how we can move people and goods seamlessly around the UK and the globe, as well the positive economic impact the projects can have on the country. It’s a sector the TSC refer to as Intelligent Mobility, as it encompasses everything they’re trying to achieve.

Transport Systems and Intelligent Mobility are so broad, with an estimated global value of £900bn by 2025, covering everything from driverless pods (yes, KITT will become a reality) to electronic tickets and a cycle drag lift that will hoist you up that painful hill!

It’s safe to say our work with the TSC has been as varied as the projects they’re helping to develop. It all started with the Imagine Festival, with the branding and website for the event, which starts on the 9th of June and aims to introduce people to the TSC and inspire people to start talking about Intelligent Mobility.

The Festival led into the creation of the IM campaign, a campaign designed to bring the topic of Intelligent Mobility to the fore of the Transport Systems Catapult. It aims to communicate its future importance, encourage debate and inspire people to be involved. Its distinctive look reflects the dynamism of the topic, whilst sitting nicely with the main TSC brand, which underpins the campaign across all materials.

Once the campaign was in place it was rolled out across a broad suite of materials. The largest, not only in terms of scale, were the graphics for the all singing and dancing “Imovation Centre”. No, that’s not a typo! We managed to persuade the powers that be to change the name from Innovation to Imovation to truly promote IM. The Centre is open to the public and will serve as a place for people to not only work on projects with the help of the TSC, but to also discover Intelligent Mobility and how they might be able to get involved.

The centre will also feature the IM animation we worked on, introducing people to Intelligent Mobility.

Other materials include a set of cards named the Insight Toolkit. Each card explores one of 21 themes within Intelligent Mobility, such as how it can help the elderly or make people happier on their daily commute (that’d be a first!). And an A5 booklet that explains the current projects and market value of Intelligent Mobility, folding out to an A1 poster featuring the IM graphic used in the Imovation Centre.

David Reid, head of communications at the Transport Systems Catapult, said:

"tothepoint have created an innovative campaign across a variety of media that is helping us to communicate the heart of our business - intelligent mobility - in an engaging way that captures the imagination and makes a relatively complex concept easy to understand."

These are just a few of the projects we’ve been working on and are continuing to work on. If we wrote about them all, this post would rival a Game of Thrones novel. However if you would like to hear more about this work then do drop us a line or even better, pop down to the Imovation Centre to see how we’ve helped to bring Intelligent Mobility to life.

You can see photo's here of the Imovation Centre in action

You can also watch a video here of Vince Cable as he opens the Centre

Loving every drop

We met Anglian Water on our stand at the PR Show last year, where they spotted our promotional showreel. They said they’d get in touch when some work came through, and as you can see they were true to their word.

Anglian Water is the largest water and water recycling company in the UK, and with such a big company comes big ideas; as they champion their Love Every Drop brand, which aims to put water at the heart of a whole new way of thinking.

It was an exciting project to be involved with, as water plays such an integral part to our daily lives, and is often taken for granted. The animation introduces the challenges we face and will be played at the seminars and workshops Anglian Water are hosting, bringing together people from various sectors to form a hub of innovation and inspire solutions to the issues we face, and raise awareness of water’s importance.

The animation needed to communicate the campaign’s goals and share Anglian’s passion for finding solutions. We started by creating a look and feel based on the Love Every Drop brand along with some initial storyboard ideas, which we then developed closely with the client to ensure they were conveying everything they felt was important.

The script grew to encompass the subjects covered in all five events – from agriculture and climate change to renewables and big data. Once the script was agreed, we created initial animatics to help demonstrate the pace and various aspects of the final piece.

‘Working with tothepoint has been a very positive experience from start to finish and we are very pleased with the final product which has been well received by our audience’
– Carol Primett, Events Manager at Anglian Water.

The final animated piece can be viewed below and made its debut at the Water Industry Innovation conference this month. The animation is playing at all five Anglian Water seminars, and has also found a home on their ‘Love Every Drop’ Youtube channel.