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!