Last month Rachel Holmes and I were invited by London design agency JWT to help with the ‘Be a Calpol Star’ competition and finalise an image for the FSDU and Header cards we had designed at White Creative.

Whilst recently trawling through the internet for pictures that show sophisticated products photographed in a cool way for a moodboard I stumbled across some ads for Aston Martin that I found quite humorous. Strikingly though I instantly thought that it wasn’t the kind of advertisement that Aston Martin would normally run. Even with my knowledge of cars (which is lower than a snakes stomach) they seemed off brand. I always think that ads for Aston Martin look serious, moody and sexy like this…

Information graphics seems to be going from strength to strength and in my research to find better and better examples of this I came across a website that shows this very effectively.

Here at White we are all doing our bit to save the planet by changing the way we work. Recycling, saving energy and reducing our carbon footprint is important to us all.

Switching off our macs at the end of the day and not just putting them to sleep, turning off lights in rooms when we leave them and only filling the kettle with the amount of water needed when making a hot drink are easy ways to save energy.

Will Cabury’s advertising remain the same in coming years since the take over by Kraft?

From the seductive Flake commericals, eccentric fruit n’ nut and the modern day Gorilla and drums… Something that’s always been very british in our humour or outlook may be watered down in the future… who knows.

The iconic Andy Warhol is currently exhibiting in Southampton. This is an exciting development in the cultural growth of our city. It’s timing is welcome and very much in line with the refurbished Guildhall Square, and the long awaited and freshly christened Cultural Quarter.

We’re very excited to be working on a new campaign for Thames Water this month. After a successful pitch presentation we met with the Thames Water team to understand their new brief and get our creative team working on the campaign concepts.

In my view one of the most inspirational and influential designers of the 20th century was Saul Bass. Most people are familiar with his work but don’t know the name! As well as superb corporate identity and poster design he famously collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Otto Preminger and Martin Scorsese on animated film title sequences.

Over the last week I’ve had typography fever after using it on a piece of work. I keep thinking about little typography projects I want to set myself. I have already started creating a personal piece for home, which I will get printed onto canvas.

Recently, I have been very interested in creative illustrative posters, mainly movie posters shown in a new and imaginative way.

Long gone are the days when the straightforward role of TV ads were to sell a product or communicate a company’s brand image. Today, as well as incorporating those elements, it has also become increasingly important to entertain and amuse us.

“I have this thing I’d like you to go to…” Oh ok, what’s this going to be? Networking?! …Doesn’t quite sound like my sort of thing but having faced my fears, exorcised those first date jitters and thrown myself into a room full of strangers I can honestly say that I quite enjoyed the experience…

About a year ago I came across the work of Si Scott, a UK based Artist/Designer. I was drawn to his work after seeing a cup & saucer with one of his designs on www.clickforart.com/BuyArt/SiScott/lovebirdscupandsaucer. I love the flowing intricate detail of the hand drawn images and I am amazed how much detail, time and effort that goes into them.

Although I personally prefer Murphy’s Irish Stout (it never seems to be in many pubs, but like the drink, I’m not bitter…HONEST!), I often enjoy a lovely pint of Guinness. So to celebrate St Patrick’s Day I thought it may be nice to delve into the archives of the phenomenally successful campaigns for the famous stout.

A while ago I wrote a piece on typography, it was an overview on all aspects of type but afterwards I thought about writing a more focused piece on specific areas.

Part two I wanted to focus a little on fonts used for the web. Many people have tackled this subject in length but I wanted to share a few short, simple lessons I have learned.

Having just entered my fourth decade, I know, I know!… I still affectionately look back at the 80′s being locked away in dark rooms making ready for print bromides, creating visuals using pantone marker pens, lighter fluid and white gouache! A good friend of mine said to me “you’ll do all this on a Apple computer one day”. I laughed and said “yeah right”, back then I thought computers were for a different breed and you could never replace the skill of a pencil with a ‘mouse’!!

Being a self confessed cupcake lover I have the pleasure to work with ‘The Cupcake Company’ based in Kensington, London.

In keeping with the theme of the week, ‘the Kiss’ seems an apt painting to re-visit and appreciate… Gustav Klimt has always been a huge inspiration throughout my personal studies and contributed greatly to my love of art and design.

One of the many tasks and responsibilities of a designer is to ensure colour consistency across all mediums. From the initial approval and excitement of a new corporate identity project and after many revisions and tweaks everyone is loving the use of Pantone blue 285. Fantastic achievement, pop the champagne corks!

OK time for a confession, when I first started out designing I never liked type, yes I know, I admit it. I never understood why designers could talk for hours and hours about a nice typeface. I Thought even the most hardened Star Trek fan looks down on a ‘font geeks’. I’m glad to say that now, that has changed, and for good reason. It is now one of my favourite subjects, but shared by few.