Bye Bye Blogger Blogger Bye Bye

With the launch of our new website complete with news and blog posts, this will be our last post here on Blogger. Check out our work across branding, print, digital and workspace environments on our new website at www.tothepoint.co.uk.

To enquire about working with us or to just get in touch, visit our contact page or give us a call on 0207 378 6999. And if you're in our neck of the woods pop in for a cup of tea and a chat (and a biscuit if you are lucky).

From now on if you want to read our news and what we get up to, click here: www.tothepoint.co.uk/news 

It’s time for us to blog off!

Peace. Out.

Slippery When Wet

Last month we unveiled the new logo for the Oxford City Royal Regatta…and this month we have the official poster to go with it! Don’t say we never treat you!

The poster is suitably themed for the event, taking inspiration from posters of old. The design will be used on various formats across the event…we were all hoping for a few tea towels but will have to make do with a few drinks on the day!

If you are a rowing fanatic, then why not pop down for an enjoyable day out and a glimpse at our posters up close and personal. More information on the event can be found here.

June Round Up

Delightful Diana

Diana Vasilescu has joined our account management team, and is settling in well as she brings a wealth of experience from working across marketing and branding services.
Graduating with a BA in advertising in 2010, she dived straight into a fast-paced environment early on and after completing her internship in an ad agency, she became more involved in project managing a variety of through the line campaigns with a strong focus in the FMCG sector.

She later took on a much bigger challenge and moved across the pond, where she discovered her passion for branding and strategy, developing engaging brand stories and delivering projects for the property and interior design sectors. At to the point, Diana is working closely with Charlie and Will, handling day to day client liaising, as well as untangling all the strategic knots that help bring a brand to life. When she’s not running from one client meeting to another, she enjoys getting all the wrong answers at pub quizzes and finding the right answer to the eternal question “What are we having for lunch today?”. Your challenge is to guess where she is from when you get to speak with her.

Tour de Croydon 

Last month the men’s Pearl Izumi Tour Series and the women’s Matrix Fitness Grand Prix Series came to Croydon showcasing the best in world cycling. The big news however was the talent that was the Croydon BID/Pearl Izumi bike team, consisting of Matthew Sims Croydon BID, Georgina Dawkins Croydon BID, Tony Middleton AIG, Steve Avery Home Office, Simon Schutte Home Office and our very own Simon Hutton. The conditions were not ideal but that didn’t stop our valiant heroes from tearing round the circuit. They raised money for The Mayor of Croydon's chosen charity: http://www.croydoncommitment.org.uk/About-Us. Congrats to the winners - The Met police or MPCC to their cycling friends.

Jeff Koons at Newport St Gallery

Escaping the thunderstorms, Brexit, football, and the general sense of impending doom last Saturday, James did something that most Londoners struggle to do at the weekend and went to an art gallery.

The recently renovated Newport St Gallery in London opened its doors a little while ago to house exhibitions of work picked from Damian Hirst’s art collection. The first exhibition was a collection of works from the celebrated abstract painter John Hoyland. Hoyland has now been replaced by Jeff Koons, showcasing works from 1979 to 2014.

If you’re not familiar with the work of Koons, it’s quite likely that you’ve seen his giant stainless steel balloon sculptures, one of which defies all sense of proportion in the second room of the gallery. The gallery website quotes Norman Rosenthal describing Koon’s work as “manifestations of a joyful acceptance of American culture” which rings true when perusing the otherwise seemingly unconnected objects on display, from vintage hoovers, a celebration of basketball (and balls) and a giant sculpture made from PlayDoh.

Jeff Koons' work will be on display at Newport St until 16 October, and admission is free. A perfect place to spend a rainy afternoon in London. Just be wary if you’re taking the kids, you might want to cover their eyes as things get a bit saucy in room 3.

A day in the lakes

As a practice for his full Ironman in August this year, our MD's son, Tom, took on the Half Ironman in Ullswater last weekend. Not for the faint-hearted, it involves a 2k swim, a hilly 48 mile cycle and a 13 mile fell run. An extra competitive edge was added by roping his brother Sam and other mates into entering the event as 2 relay teams.

Tom finished 36th out of 199 competitors, completing it in 5 hr 14m and shaving over 90 mins off his previous time when he competed in the same event 2 years ago. All the results can be found here: http://www.trihard.co.uk/results/a-day-in-the-lakes-results. So for now the training continues in preparation for the Ironman in Copenhagen - so double the distance plus a bit - a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile cycle and a marathon - back to back. This is all done in the memory of his brother Charlie and to continue supporting the amazing work of the RNLI. 

If you want to find out more about the event, his training or even want to join him on a weekend cycle, you can follow his blog at http://challengecharlieironman.tumblr.com and obviously we are still hoping to raise more money for the RNLI.  You can donate at uk.virginmoneygiving.com/SomeoneSpecial/teamhutton

w.w.we're nearly there!

For those of you who have got this far in our enews, we'd like to offer you a sneak peak of our new website here. We're really excited and almost ready to announce it to the world but with all the different browsers and versions out there we need a bit of time to test and ensure we're happy to shout about it next month... Or maybe earlier... We'd love to hear what you think, good or bad, and hope you enjoy what we've been crafting for our 25th year in business.

Special K

We are very excited to be working with the nice people at recruitment consultants Kinsella Legal. They came to us looking to refresh their brand identity and revamp their website. Kinsella is a boutique legal recruitment agency based out of Holborn. They focus on building strong relationships with both clients and applicants, attributing their success to date on the personality of their people. The current identity and support materials of the organisation, led by Siobhan Kinsella, were already packed full of visual personality which makes them stand out in a sector that is normally very dry and corporate but imagery was starting to take over from message.

The aim of the refresh was to keep the fun, colourful and elegant aspects of their visual language but refine elements and move the look on with a more contemporary feel. The colour band with its distinctive colour palette was an important element of the identity toolkit that they wanted to retain but they were happy for us to evolve the logotype and even look at a more icon based representation for the brand.

The selected logo and support toolkit still conveys the vibrant personality of the business but with a clever twist of typography we have created an iconic K that integrates a rotated L to represent the K and L of Kinsella Legal. This simple typographic icon becomes a standalone element that can be used across various media but will be ideal for digital, from animations to the website favicon.

We have also introduced colour variations of the logo that have been taken from the colour band to introduce flexibility and create a stronger link between the two for enhanced brand recognition. We are looking forward to applying the new brand toolkit across all of Kinsella’s materials, especially their website where we can really start bringing their brand to life.

This is just the beginning of the relationship but we wanted to show off this shiny new identity and tell you to watch this space, and theirs!

And the winner is….

Congratulations to EFG Asset Management who earlier this month won the best marketing campaign award for their discretionary materials created by yours truly! 

The award ceremony soiree was held by WealthBriefing, who provide news, features and information for the wealth management and private banking industries.

The ‘award-winning campaign’ (got a nice ring to it, don’t you think?!) is the ongoing project we’re working on with the team at EFGAM called In8. See our original story here.

Last year we created a clear and unique campaign for the team with a fresh approach to asset management design using iconography and infographics to help inform and engage their audience. 

The materials went down well when we presented them to the key stakeholders at EFGAM and the designs now successfully cover their discretionary materials worldwide. The guys over at WealthBriefing obviously like them too;

“It was the highly systemised content programme of this entry, with its high visual impact and commitment to return on investment that impressed judges.”

We’re currently working on a wider range of publications and documents for their general services marketing, evolving the visual toolkit but still keeping all materials clear and consistent with the In8 campaign brand. As always with the team at EFG Asset Management, the materials are disciplined by nature, flexible by design.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat...

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Earlier this month we were approached to help lend a creative hand to the Oxford City Royal Regatta. We were tasked with creating a special logo to celebrate the regatta's 175th year.


We are currently working on the poster that will work not only as a point of information but also will be used for merchandising. We are taking art deco classical rowing and boating posters as inspiration, so watch out for our June e-news.


To find out more about the regatta you'll have to check their website here for details but the event starts on 20th August.


CSP Merger

You may remember that towards the end of last year we launched CSP’s website www.cspretail.com.

 

This month they’ve announced their strategic alliance with Staunton Whiteman to become a leading integrated property advisory firm in the out-of-town retail sector. With such a landmark change, both firms are shouting from the rooftops, and their websites, to announce the new partnership. We were on hand to ensure all went smoothly with a pop up window, logo and content update timed to go live with the announcement to the press. Take a look at their updated site and read about their new merger at www.cspretail.com/investments.

Not So Silent Witness

In last months enews we introduced the new brand identity we have been working on for Witness Mountain. One enjoyable Friday evening we were fortunate enough to be treated to a wine tasting session with Eva, the owner of Witness Mountain. We sampled various wines from the Somlo wine region in Hungary. Opinion was divided on the outright winner, with some people leaning to the stronger and more full bodied whites as opposed to the smoother, crisper whites.

It was also interesting to hear more of the history of the region, the growers and everything in between. Keep your eyes open for more from Witness Mountain as we work on their marketing materials. Egészségére!  

Cut Me Some Slack

Picture the scene; a dingy university library in Nottingham, one evening (well, most evenings) in the mid 90’s. Whilst other students are down the pub a small handful are crouched around computer screens chatting online. Nothing special about chat-rooms I hear you say, but remember this is before most people had email, when the only means of chatting with anyone was to queue outside a phone box so you could tell your Mum you were still alive before your 10p ran out.

Fast forward to a more civilised time, today, when things couldn’t be more different. Nowadays there’s a ton of different ways to communicate online. SMS, Snapchat, Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, Viber… the list goes on. And who uses email nowadays anyway?

We recently came into contact with one of the new services that grabbed our attention. Started in 2013, as the next brain child of Flickr entrepreneur Stewart Butterfield. Slack is described as a ‘cloud-based team collaboration tool’ and is one of those techy ideas taking over the world from seemingly nowhere.

At first glance, you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s just a re-packaged chat room of olden times. So how has this seemingly old tech reared up to be one of the new toys that all the kids wants to play with?

It’s power is in community. Becoming popular more with businesses than individuals, Slack offers a team or company a handy personalised, cloud based messaging service that’s great for organising teams and topics. So individuals no longer have to trawl their inbox for that titbit of information someone sent them the other week, it’ll be right in front of them in a neat little categorised box.

Slack is also heavily customisable. Where it gets especially exciting is opening up this to ‘the internet of everything'. Hook up Slack to your smart fridge and even your central heating at home. It’s not just an old school chat room, it’s your new inbox and even your own personal assistant. We're excited!

There’s Been A MURDER

At the Natural History Museum no less!!!! There is no need to fear, however, as the culprit was identified and apprehended by 150 amateur investigators...As you may have guessed this is not fact, but indeed a work of fiction. One of our designers, Lizzie went to the Crime Scene Live event at the Natural History Museum (NHM). The premise was this…a body and bloodied clothes had been found within the grounds of the NHM and it was up to the rookies to solve the murder. Here is Lizzie's account of a most enjoyable evening.

On arrival each member of the ‘investigation’ team were handed their white jumpsuit and rather fashionable blue plastic shoe covers. The group was split into three and sent to separate areas of the museum. The first room was the evidence room which contained case files and witness statements taken when the body was originally found. After taking down copious amounts of notes and looking at photographs intensively for any hidden clues, we were then taken to the entomology room (by far my favourite). Here we were given a talk from a scientist that uses his knowledge of insects to help the police force with real life crime scenes. It was then up to us to identity the type of fly found on the body, which can help determine time of death. This room also included timing live maggots to see how fast they can wriggle over a certain distance! Last but not least was the fingerprinting room. Police officers from the Met spoke briefly about fingerprint identification techniques and then let us loose with powder and magnifying glasses! The last piece of evidence here tied the whole murder together and allowed us to correctly identify the suspect!

For those interested or obsessed with detective shows (like Lizzie) we can highly recommend this…especially as you get to keep the forensic gear after!

Explore with Crossways new website

Hot off the press, we’d like to announce the launch of our new website for Crossways Business Park in Kent. 

We originally designed the site for Land Securities who used to own the Business Park. Caxtons now manage the site and we were asked to re-vamp the website to bring it up to date and add functionality for tenants. The new website required an online directory of tenants and services, including an interactive map that worked as well on mobiles as it would on desktop computers.  

Rather than ‘re-inventing-the-wheel’ we focused on Google’s Map API combined with a back-end put together in Wordpress. Our own custom built Google Maps plug-in meant we could apply our own bespoke styling and functionality. This included a fresh overlay showing all the units and services in the park, alongside a filtered directory listing, allowing users to locate tenants by name and by area as well as locate local amenities.

After a group training session here at ttp headquarters, our client was off and quickly uploaded all the info they needed with minimum fuss. And of course we remained on hand for the occasional query or photoshop expertise.

The site is now live and you can view it at : www.crosswayskent.com

Volcanic Appellation

We have recently been joined in the studio by Eva Cartwright, owner of the Somlo wine shop in Hungary where visitors can sample over 160 wines from Somlo-hill. We've sampled 6 of these so far but as we are now helping with her identity and branding for promotion of these wines in the UK we should be able to fit in a few more.

We started with the naming and although 'Somlo Wines' locates the vineyards and shop we felt some of the other background information would capture more interest from potential customers in the UK. The name Witness Mountains caught our eye. Eva told us the story of the mountains of Hungary, or volcanoes as they were, witnessing the sea that surrounded them receding to form what is now the Mediterranean. This environmental change on a huge scale is not only clearly visible from aerial views but it left a very fertile land that is perfect for growing wine.

The Romans discovered the true potential of this land and many of the vineyards have evolved from their original vines. The nature of the volcanic and sediment rich soil, the Terroir, gives the wines their unique flavour and the opportunity for the UK market to try something different. Eva's current hashtag #govolcanic is likely to be retained to sign off the story but we discussed the opportunity of asking customers to look at her wine from a 'different perspective' in a very conventional market. This became one steer for the development of the logo.

The selected approach is a simple typographic play on the strapline 'different perspectives', and also fits well with Eva's request for something modern and functional. We see this flip of words becoming part of the visual language of the brand across all marketing materials.

This is just the start of our relationship with Eva and Witness Mountain Wines while she looks to crack the English market and gain recognition for her wide selection of Hungarian Volcanic wines over here. Obviously this means that we will still need to play guinea pig and have the wines tested on us! It’s a hard job but someone has to do it. To find out more about Witness Mountain Wines you can view the current shop site at somloi.hu.

McCoys - Fully Flavoured

Our new full-flavour website for McCoy's Crisps has now launched! It’s the second of our websites for KP Snacks and you can check it out at www.mccoys.co.uk.

On hitting the homepage, you might be forgiven for thinking ‘what the snack’ has this got to do with crisps?! Working with McCoy’s ad agency WCRS, we implemented a social aggregation tool to enable them to feed key content from their various social feeds; Twitter, Facebook….etc. This helps to keep the homepage content fresh and ever changing, but more importantly keeps content in-line with the launch of McCoy's new campaign which is all about the FLAVOUR. In short, a snappy homepage reflecting the noise created by WCRS’s 'above-the-line' activities.

And it really is all about the FLAVOUR. Keen to move on from being portrayed as the crisp of choice for the UK’s pub culture, the new direction for McCoy's is about the vibrant taste and flavours. So with that in mind, as with our website for KP Nuts, colour is key and especially so with the new drive behind McCoy's.

If you’ve seen our website for KP Nuts, the layout may look familiar. That’s down to our Wordpress multi-site approach, keeping things consistent across the KP Snacks range, as well as economising on the technology behind the build. Content is managed by the KP Snacks teams.

Anyway enough of the technical stuff, flavour is calling and we are off for a packet of salt and malt vinegar!

April round up

The Yorkshire sculpture park 

On a recent trip back to the Northern Wastes, our resident Yorkshireman James decided to take his family on a cultural tour (or did they take him?) starting with the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. For those of you who don’t know, the YSP is actually an art college nestled in the grounds of a stately home just South of Wakefield. 

Rolling fields and public bridleways surrounding the park give way to a strange combination of cows, ramblers, and Henry Moore sculptures. In the gardens themselves permanent (and some temporary) installations can be found, from the likes of Hepworth, Gormley and other local artists or resident students.

What’s particularly special at the moment is an installation by the New York artist Kaws. Playing on the familiar theme of pop-culture and cartoons (especially by the likes of Disney) Kaws’ tongue-in-cheek pieces mimic familiar forms and characters with a sinister twist. Always recognisable by his signature crosses for eyes and balloon like skull & crossbones heads, the figurines might remind you of the kind of cute vinyl figurines often seen in designery gift or skate shops… however these are super-sized. A trek across the valley to the Longside Gallery reveals more colourful sculptures (ranging from large to humungous) and some canvasses that hark back to Kaws’ graffiti roots. 

So if you’re in the area before the 12th June the YSP is well worth a visit. If you don’t make it in time, go anyway as there’s plenty of permanent works on display for a great afternoon out. It’s not all ‘grim oop North’.

Bradford Industrial Museum

Continuing the Yorkshire theme, the next stop on James’ Northern jaunt was Bradford Industrial Museum. Moorside Mills, just on the outskirts of Bradford isn’t quite as imposing as the more famous Salts Mill in Shipley but packs in several floors of steam engines, vintage vehicles and milling machinery. Amongst all this is a large room full of vintage printing presses surrounding the museum’s very own operational printing gallery; a representation of a victorian printing office.
The mind boggles when you take in the ingenuity behind the original Linotype and Monotype machines, not to mention the old Heidelberg presses of various shapes and sizes collecting dust. If you’re lucky enough to visit at the right time on a Wednesday (James wasn’t) then you could take part in the printing workshop and have a go at letterpress printing yourself. If you get inky enough you might be given a souvenir bookmark to take home. So should you find yourself heading towards Bradford on a rainy day with nothing to do, give the Photography Museum a miss and go here instead. 

Capturing the Capital on Camera.

Whether you’re capturing the hustle and bustle of busy central squares or snapping stylish shots of iconic Thames-side landmarks, London’s photographic opportunities are endless. For quite a while now, our senior designer Sarah has been looking for a way to push her keen amateur photography skills to the next level… she found it last week in the form of an evening photography class just around the corner from our London Bridge studio in Borough. Here are Sarah's thoughts on her night by the river.

I met my tutor Nigel in the National Theatre one freezing night recently and, following a brief intro, set off along the Southbank with camera and tripod in hand. There were about 10 of us in total, all with a decent understanding of aperture, ISO and focal ranges, and all with a keen desire to improve our skills behind the lens.

As the evening progressed we walked along the banks of the Thames, stopping along the way by London’s famous bridges to capture the views on camera. From the stark, utilitarian beauty of Blackfriar’s Bridge to the vibrant illuminations of London Bridge, we listened as Nigel shared his knowledge and took shots we’d never have dreamed of before.

The final challenge; Tower Bridge. “It’s like Kate Moss…,” he said, “You can’t take a bad shot of this bridge!” ...and he was right.

Charlie the pot head

Our account manager Charlie was throwing some shapes this month, not on the dance floor but with clay on a pottery course over at Stepney City Farm! Charlie had high hopes dreaming of jugs and salad bowls, however what came out of the kiln was rather smaller and simpler…! As with most creative processes it was a labour of love and time.

Any Colour?

The logo is in its most basic form when used as black and white or reversed out of black but with colour being the core offer of the business the potential for a variety of ways of using it and texture is enormous. We are already exploring these with the team through the use of moodboards and research, which included a trip to the Retail Show 2016.

The scope of the project is also growing. The brand is now ready to be developed across promotional materials, their own product range and a retail website, which is already progressing with our digital team. We’re also working closely with Sean and Skyler on the signage and interiors for their first 4,000+ sq ft colour studio in Wandsworth - currently an empty shell across two floors of a great corner plot - a truly amazing canvas!

This, and the visual below of vinyl graphics for their new studio frontage while fitout commences, is only a sneak preview ahead of what is to come. We’ll bring you more after we have explored the opportunities of colour, texture and style as we develop all the brand touch points for the Skyler London brand over the coming months.

You can see the logo and some of the work we did for the Sean Hanna Salons here.

Seismic photography

This month we have been working with our long term client Seabird Exploration on their latest Annual Report, whilst also setting the style for their 2016 quarterlies.

Seabird’s primary focus is the collection of seismic data obtained from the seabed, so beyond some interesting chart data, we are constantly looking at how we can bring their service offer to life, and nothing serves this better than great original photography that captures life on the ocean waves, and on land.

The main job of the Report will always be to communicate the performance of the company so a lot of time is spent working out how the content and story flows through the document in the lead up to the figures. Stats and facts are pulled out in a modular grid system with a backdrop of small and large imagery to add pace. The overall effect is to create a document that doubles up as an engaging brochure to promote the business and communicate the work undertaken by the crews on the ships and the shore based teams.

Before the project began we had the opportunity to brief photographers on the style and images we were looking for, covering various vessels across the world. Seabird have always seen the value in good design and imagery and now have some dynamic shots to add to their ever growing image archive.

March Round Up

High five for High Touch

We're currently working with Croydon Bid on their re-election ballot and have been immersing ourselves in the feedback from their recent workshops. For Croydon, there are a lot of areas to address to increase footfall, not least the disruption that will be caused over the next few years following the huge investment in developments that are well under way. Helpful advice and clear communication will be key for the BID, as well as fighting the fight for SME's as they adapt to change. Overarching all this will be the need to be true advocates of the vision for Croydon. For the retailers, they need to look at how they will retain loyalty and build new relationships. In one area, the loyalty/offer card scheme we branded, 'Checkout Croydon', was challenged by some as only rewarding existing customers rather than growing the business, but given the current changes and drop in footfall, the flip side is that it helps to retain customers. What is interesting for us, and the challenge for them, is all the different ways that brands try to build loyalty and it certainly requires more than a loyalty card in your consumers pocket. This recent article from Contagious contributor Tim Wade of Smith+Co caught our eye and has some useful and clear insights into this essential part of building relationships with your customers. You can read the article here.

A Chain Reaction

On 10th March, in the company of clients Sean Hanna and Skyler McDonald, our MD visited the Retail Design Expo and Retail Digital Signage Expo at Olympia. A great show that was getting the right reactions. The progress that technology has made was evident in all areas but it was the creative use of older technologies and different ways of using lighting and textured materials that caught his eye. With a few interiors projects in the pipeline and in progress, it was a great opportunity to discuss how some of our ideas could be brought to life by a few of the exhibitors. Read the full blog and see some of the suppliers that impressed us here.

In a pickle about social

This month our wall of type for Twitter UK featured heavily in ‘Week In Week Out’ BBC documentary ‘The Savage World of Social Media’. Robbie Savage found out how far people will go in risking their lives for a like or a tweet. Twitter was the only platform to respond to questions but filmmakers seemed to spend more time getting artistic shots of the wall than mopping the fevered brow of Twitter Head of Policy, Nick Pickles. Our iphone filming of this section on tv is here or for better quality the full documentary can be seen on iplayer here. The Twitter piece is 24 minutes in.

Alexander Calder

You’ve only got this weekend left to be inspired by some of the great works of Alexander Calder at Tate Modern. Well worth a view to see how he was inspired by the works of Mondrian, Picasso, and we thought a bit or Miró and Matisse, and brought his ideas to life in his 'performing' sculptures. The wire sculptures of people and circus performers were the most fascinating, with the added dimension of shadows. The later sculptures although interesting lacked the dynamism of movement. Due to their fragile nature and age you have to rely on the small video screens to see how they performed in the past. A few photos were managed until we were stopped by security - such a shame that galleries aren’t more open to allowing photography for their promotion by visitors on social media.

April First

We love a good wind up and obviously today is the day for wind ups, or at least it was until midday. We hope you haven’t been fooled too many times but we’d love to hear of any good ones that caught you out. We went back through some of the ones that stood out for us but our personal favourite is this one from the BBC - a classic. We will be posting any more we find to our facebook page so take a look here.

Flipping February

Flipping for Silver

Like every year, pancake day crêped up on us (see what we did there). The atmosphere was tense as the tothepoint pancake racing team strode with purpose into the arena. Slicing through the crowds, like lemon through sugar, into the competitors enclosure, the smell of pancakes hung thick in the cool February air. There were thrills, spills and of course more than one pancake went astray.

The crack team of Will O’Byrne, Charlie Borley, Sarah Long and Lizzie Unwin stormed the heats and earned a spot in the final flip off. Sadly we were not able to secure gold and claim the prize, but with this being our 25th anniversary, our silver place was the right outcome.

Thanks to Better Bankside for putting on yet another splendid pancake race. We will be back next year for gold (or failing that another golden pancake)!

Apple FBI face-off

It’s been hard to avoid the news of Apple’s wrangle with the FBI this month, but it’s all ‘kicking off’ in the tech world over the other side of the pond.

To cut a long story short, the FBI in the U.S have found themselves in the possession of an iPhone used by the perpetrators of the San Bernardino shootings  in December. Naturally, they want to get access to the phone and it’s contents.

Simple right? Just ask Apple to unlock the thing? …not quite. Apple pride themselves on the security installed in their handsets. Ever since the introduction of the finger-print sensor, they’ve been adamant that not even they have access to a customer’s information. In an age of mass surveillance, where more and more people are permanently connected to the internet via a tiny computer in their pocket, the public would be worried if they thought all their private info was up for grabs.

Combine this with the information released by Edward Snowdon and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange over recent years, and the world is a much more paranoid place than it used to be and for good reason. Not worried? Check out this doomsaying article about the hazards of having a webcam and imagine what the [please insert your choice of government agency name here] would do if they could.

Back to Apple. They physically can’t unlock an iPhone. To do so would mean writing a bespoke version of the operating system and installing it on the handset, thus creating a ‘back-door’. To do that would set a dangerous precedent, and open a ‘pandora’s box’ that can’t be closed: open season for surveillance agencies could mean an end to the relative privacy that we enjoy today.

We’ve been interested in this area ever since we designed and built the website for the great guys at www.cybersecuritychallenge.org.uk. With their programme to identify, inspire and enable more citizens to become cyber security professionals, hopefully we’ll be a little more secure in the not too distant future.

To get more of the low-down, check out these articles:

BBC NEWS - Apple vs the FBI - a plain English guide

WIRED - Apple’s FBI battle is complicated 

QuantuMDX 

It’s good to see one of our clients getting the recognition that they deserve. This month QuantuMDX have received high praise for the strides they have made through their pioneering handheld DNA technology. This clever tech will help clinicians around the world to address global challenges by providing fast diagnosis of diseases, such as malaria, for just a few pounds. 

The appliance of bioscience and biotechnology are known as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” due to the extraordinary impact they are having on global society and the economy, especially in the fields of medicine, agriculture and energy. Government Minister George Freeman made a visit to the Labs in the North East to show his support, which means there have been a few good shots of the logo we designed for them in the papers and on social media!

The art of contemplation

Tucked away amongst the rafts of books in the Foyles flagship store on Charing Cross Road is The Gallery. The space is currently curated and managed by Futurecity to help celebrate the work they’re doing in cultural placemaking (in other words, regenerating public areas across the UK). On first glance it might be overlooked by some, but the work of Peter Newman in particular caught the eye of our MD, who was instantly filled with romantic daydreams of enjoying the “Skystation” on a blue sky day in a quiet nook of London (chance would be a fine thing!).

“After days of looking at screens, surrounded by digital and physical chatter, it was very therapeutic to escape and enjoy a few minutes lying on the Skystation sculpture looking up at the fish eye skyscape image. Then taking a wander around this vast bookstore it almost felt that I was stepping back in time as I watched people, and some eccentric characters, browse the many beautiful books on display.”

Playing for the win…

You may remember earlier this year we began working with concussion management specialists Return2Play. We are pleased to say that R2P have been confirmed as a finalist for “Best New Concept” at this year's Sports Technology Awards, a celebration of the most exciting and innovative organisations in global sport. The company, which launched just last year, are nominated alongside sports technology giants Hawk-Eye and BT, so they’re already keeping good company.

Return2Play have developed a system to help rugby clubs and players - from school teams to professionals - comply with new safety guidelines for the treatment of suspected concussion, monitoring players' recovery and helping them to return to play safely and efficiently.

"Being nominated in this category, alongside some heavyweight names in the field of technological innovation in sport, is real proof of the value of what we are doing. It's important that we all think about how to use technology, not just to change the way in which we play and watch sport, but also to ensure the health and safety of athletes at every level of the game." said Nick Somers, CEO and Co-founder of Return2Play.

After an initial strategic discussion over a pint of Doombar with our MD, R2P realised the importance of establishing a strong identity from the start to ensure they built recognition while promoting the service. We quickly got to grips with the business and brought their vision to life with a striking identity that works across all media, including icons for apps.

R2P have also been getting some national press coverage! Fingers crossed they win, but the nomination alone is a huge achievement!