May Roundup

Through the keyhole Sadly this festival has come to an end, but if you enjoy independent art exhibitions and you happen to also enjoy snooping around someone else’s house, then the Dulwich Festival Artist Open House is a win win and you should diarise it for next year. Click here for the open house website. This year our friend Carl Ison has been showing off his wares. You can still see Carl’s work on his site www.boxedin.london. Carl creates 3D box frame installations that can tell a multitude of stories from the nostalgic to the narrative of today, through his photography, typography, graphic awareness and content created or supplied.

Design industry election The big news of the month (perhaps the year if you discount Kim Kardashian giving birth to a compass) was the general election. So now we've had our new government for a few weeks, what does it mean on a specific level for us as an agency and the design community in general? Check out this informative article, it will arm you with a few cheeky factlets to whip out at the pub and wow your audience. You can thank us later. See the article in Design Week

Insert Title Here <Insert witty and interesting story here> Templates, especially Word and PowerPoint, can get a bit of a bad rap for stifling creativity and creating generic design, but it’s not all bad. Most design briefs still require bespoke design with creativity, however day-to-day internal pieces can be enhanced, cleaned-up and made easier to use with simple templates. They can be designed to reflect your brand, so that consistency can be maintained from top to bottom. To find out about some of the Word and PowerPoint templates we've been creating for property to financial clients and beyond just get in touch.

Borley vs Bracknell The scene is set, the runners ready, the course is pristine. Just the starting gun and 13.1 miles separate 1,000 hopefuls from a shot at immortality. Little did the other athletes know that our very own Charlie Borley was lurking quietly confident behind the start line, with a trance like expression over her face. In the end there was blood (not so much) sweat and tears (from the other runners) as Charlie breezed across the finish line. The event was sponsored by The Pancreatic Cancer Research Group who are conducting research to help reduce the damage pancreatic cancer is causing. Visit pcrf.co.uk

Tough Mudder We’d heard about it on the grape vine, we’d seen the odd promotional email, but now our glorious leader Mr Simon Hutton has paid for the privilege to watch his son Tom partake. A sunny day in Henley and a full cooked breakfast (hate those partially cooked ones) at ‘Bills’ set him up for the challenge of watching the devotees take part in this half marathon, crossed with an muddy assault course, hybrid. All survived unscathed, but it’s not a challenge any of us are rushing to tackle… just yet!! Team building anyone?

Tour de Croydon Tomorrow will see the cycling elite descend upon Croydon. The unique Pearl Izumi Tour Series is coming into its seventh round and the competition is heating up. The South London Borough is making its series debut, hosting both the men's and women's events. So if you are a cycling nut then this is the event for you! We know our friends at Croydon BID will be getting excited! Maybe you will see us down there, cheering on Bradley Wiggins and co!

IMDATA - The intelligent mobility data index

This month we have been working with Transport Systems Catapult, on a new website for their Intelligent Mobility Data Index. In short... IMDATA.

Continuing our branding development work for this Catapult team, the site is nearing completion in time for launch before the Imagine Festival begins in just over a week's time on the 11th June. It comprises of a bespoke Wordpress theme that integrates with Catapult's Intelligent Mobility data sets.

In sorting the data into categories such as Public Transport, Personal Mobility and International Connections, and by using existing and new representative icons from the set we designed last year, the aim is to create an easy to use, simple web portal as a 'one stop shop' for Intelligent Mobility related data.

Launching later this week, the initial site will be built upon over time to provide a rich and ever-growing source of information, with a view to a possible phase 2 as the site grows in size. So watch this space!

Act for the Act

Having been cornered by a good friend from college, Simon was introduced to the political ramifications of the scrapping of the Human Rights Act (HRA). After initial investigation it became clear that there was a lot more to the HRA than the negative press you read in the tabloids. With the obvious real benefits for real people that the HRA brings, we decided to help raise awareness of the other side of the story by getting involved with the Act for the Act campaign.

In super quick time, one week from brief, we've helped create the brand and the poster campaign to promote Act for the Act and their crowd funding site: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/ActForTheAct

The campaign aims to raise money to pay for a poster campaign, across the UK transport network (tubes and train stations) telling real people’s stories of when the HRA helped them.

The campaign has attracted the attention of Stephen Fry who tweeted about Act for the Act, and comedian Simon Amstell, so since then TTP and Simon H’s twitter accounts have had a lot more notifications than usual! #actfortheact

The team worked on several approaches but the selected design was by junior designer Jack Veitch who worked with Simon and the team to develop the branding for Act for the Act, the fingerprint icon and the tag line, ‘The Human Rights Act is for everyone’. Photographer Gabrielle Motola (link) will be taking reportage style photographs of the people from real cases, and Jack’s handwriting has been used to bring even more personality to the story.

Draft posters, using existing photos, have gone down really well and have been approved and widely circulated on social media.

Act for the Act founder, journalist Fiona Bawdon said: ‘To The Point did a brilliant job of taking what was only a very short brief and turning it into reality. It is clear how much thought and creativity TTP has put into this project, and having dummy posters at this stage has really given the campaign a boost. We are still at the funding-raising stage of the campaign, but The Act for the Act logo and message have already been seen by thousands of people on social media.’

The government's manifesto included a promise to abolish the current Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights.

Hopefully our work will help to raise the profile of the positives of the HRA, and the understandable concerns being voiced. This Bill was expected to be included in May’s Queen’s speech, however it has now been announced that the government plans to consult first, before introducing new firm proposals.

We like to think that our posters may have had a small part to play in that.