After a brief hiatus, I was given the opportunity to work with Siemens Financial Services once again on a new project in conjunction with the Carbon Trust. This Energy Efficiency Financing scheme has made £550 million available to organisations to finance investments in green equipment.
So it was necessary to produce different pieces of collateral to explain the scheme and the funding arrangements available for consumers and for resellers. This also included the lease agreements and guides to go with them. And just for kicks, the work had to respect both Siemens and Carbon Trust’s corporate styles without stepping too far over the boundaries of what would be acceptable to each company’s corporate guardians.
- I think we got a fair balance in the end…
The work is ongoing and so far well received with numerous postal mailings, html email campaigns, web banner advertising, pull-up displays and soon, a range of press ads.
Sometimes it is necessary to pitch for work that might lose, and sometimes it’s worth reminding people that you can do interesting conceptual work proactively. This is one of those jobs… It was for a big insurance company preparing to do a campaign on the dangers of a big freeze and the possible damage.
These concepts never saw the light of day but they guaranteed the real job that we would end up doing.
I like their simplicity and direct messaging and just wanted to share! 
When IGD asked us to come up with a design for their Glitter Ball end of year event, I knew it was a chance to do something a little more interesting than a “pretty” menu. After a bit of a brainstorm I had 3 event themes planned and worked these into visuals
I really wanted something memorable so I came up with invites that all had things that moved or popped up or out to grab people’s attention.
At the presentation the Movie theme was an instant hit and we ran with it. Adding big old style searchlights and a red carpet outside the event. Even the auction got some movie love (see the title:-)
The event was sold out and I hope everyone got a close up!
After designing the Unique Culture id, the next job was the visual identity for on e of their consumer facing companies.
It was to be an online store selling unique Japanese gifts and crafts. I really wanted to create something memorable fun and interesting which could be used in as many different applications as possible. Unfortunately even though I think this concept would have worked very well, the client decided we should do something very much more corporate.
I still like this one more…
A while ago I was asked to design a logo for a Japanese holding company that would eventually be the umbrella organisation for a few Japanese stores. Once the name was decided I set about creating something that would be pretty, and delicate and slightly unusual. They actually asked for a fusion of cultures – I thought that could be messy and ungainly so I decided to fuse the words in the company name instead – but kept it legible!
After a could of false starts I got to what you see here and it was approved immediately.
even with the missing letter
We had been working for a company called Wallingford which made software for the global water industry . We had been doing their press ads for a long time when we were asked to design a new brochure.
We had to design a cover the would stand out from the relatively static looking brochures in the engineering industry – it had to be interesting but still plausible within the context of a serious, professional and reputable global company.
It turned out that some pages would have a lot of content some would have very little so we went for a light look with a lot of white space. To stop it looking to bland and empty we took elements from the software map views and used them as design elements where they were relevant.
Part way through the project Wallingford was bought by MWH Soft, an American company in the same field. We had to incorporate a swift redesign of the cover to add the MWH Soft branding and add in the new logos.
We were asked to create some posters as part of a Government crack-down on uninsured drivers. One of the problems the insurers have is that when people phone through their details, they sometimes make mistakes with the car registration numbers. If the registration number is misunderstood or misheard, that car is not insured and therefore illegal.
To get around this the government and insurers were trying to convince the people on the phones to confirm the car registrations using the phonetic alphabet.
click to enlarge
There were 2 main issues:
1. to get people to open the mailing and read it and
2. to make sure they are aware of the phonetic alphabet.
We decided to go for a mailer that would fold out from an A4 teaser into an A1 poster and grab their attention while having the information prominent on 1 side.
Hopefully this’ll help customers avoid any unexpected fines!
We were recently asked to redesign the website for LNG (liquefied natural gas) importer South Hook Gas. The objective was to have a cleaner, sharper design which was based on a CMS system that the client could update and maintain themselves. Read more
A short but great bit of news, I was asked to contribute an icon for the QT inspector application that would be used on the Symbian mobile platform for development. It was a competitive pitch with a lot of other people throwing designs in.
The brief was design a logo the got across the “inspector” message while keeping with the style of Nokia’s “Anna” UI guidelines.
Well I won the pitch and the logo is on a bunch of devices right now… Maybe one day you’ll see it on a phone but if not, here it is…
