Being from primarily a print background myself, I found the software easy to get the hang of as it’s very similar to InDesign. Within an hour it was possible to create a simple site, and although not reinventing the wheel in terms of web possibilities, the outcome worked surprisingly well. There were however issues embedding a blog, although apparently this is being looked into by Adobe.

I don’t think the release of Muse spells the beginning of the end for Dreamweaver and the careers of programmers, Muse just makes it far easier for designers not familiar with code to create engaging, usable websites. Although the criticism it’s faced is probably a little harsh, it’s definitely worth a try, especially as it’s free until they release it next year!

Last week I was pleasantly surprised on my bus journey home as we passed the current regeneration of New Street Station. Art! And good art at that! It turns out Network Rail, Regenerated and UnLtd have teamed up to commission local artists and young people to create work to adorn the walls of a potentially grey and dull corner of the city. It’s called Hill Street Art Project and consists of six 24′ x 8′ panels, based on ideas of regeneration, reflection and movement. In addition to artists Zoot, Remi/Rough, Sola, Juice 126 and Julian Kimmings, young people from King Edward VI Sheldon Heath Academy were chosen to work on the project, which will be up for two years.

It’s good to see businesses – and especially the work of Regenerated – investing in local artists and young people to get involved in commissions, giving them great opportunities for the future. Not only that, it makes the city look a much more vibrant place!

Images courtesy of the Hill Street Art Project.

ISO allows a company to follow set processes and procedures, minimizing the risk of error and we feel it’s been beneficial for our company in many ways. We’re giving our clients the consistent approach across the board and we’re making sure they receive quality service.

ISO helps us achieve:

- a customer focused organisation
- leadership
- the involvement of people
- ensuring a process approach
- a systematic approach to management
- a factual approach to decision making
- mutually beneficial supplier relations
- continuous improvement

Why it is beneficial:

- Higher customer satisfaction  through delivery of products that consistently meet customer requirements
- Improved stakeholder relationships – including staff, customers and suppliers
- Legal compliance – by understanding how statutory and regulatory requirements impact on the organisation and its your customers
- Improved risk management through greater consistency and traceability of products and services
- Proven business credentials through independent verification against recognized standards

Well done to the Big Cat team on gaining such a highly regarded accreditation.

Big Cat have taken a great pleasure in getting involved in this project and have worked hard alongside other partners to deliver strong results for Biddle & Webb.

Our initial job was to create a headline brand/logo that could be separated between the 2 main segments of the company; auctioneers & valuers and general sale.

Each brand has been given unique colours to help them stand out from each other.

Whilst the design team were busy re-branding Biddle & Webb, Big Cat’s Marketing and Communications department concentrated on developing the strategy of the company, improving customer experience and raising the level of service it provides when compared to its competitors.

Keep your eyes peeled to find out more about our work with Biddle and Webb in future blogs.

Old brand

Auctioneers and Values brand

General Sale brand

Recently arriving in New York for it’s third year was the 99% Conference. Run by Scott Belsky, founder of Behance, the conference focuses not on the generation of ideas, but their execution. Whether it’s personal projects hidden away in your sketchbook or the stack of notes following a brainstorm, one of the hardest parts of any project is the process of realising an idea’s potential that you knew it had in the beginning. How many times have you looked back over half-baked ideas and wondered why they fizzled out or never even got started?

Every year at the conference, industry leaders and young entrepreneurs share their knowledge and experience of their own working processes. Past highlights have included marketing guru Seth Godin, Pentagram Partner, Michael Beirut, and Creative Director at Google Creative Labs, Ji Lee. Speakers are varied, coming from all backgrounds of expertise and there are loads of talks available to watch here. I recommend anyone watch them, they’re informative and inspiring, and not just for those in the creative industries!

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) have worked with Big Cat since 2009 and since then have changed their advert designs on a quarterly basis. This time, they wanted a longer running campaign with a view to continuing elements of the style throughout all of their literature in the near future.

So without delay, we invited their guys to get together with our guys for a good old fashioned thought shower. Although RoSPA is a design client, we pulled in our marketing and PR team to help the project get the best result, a truly 360 approach meaning there were all sorts of ideas floating around the room from different viewpoints. It was a great success and Big Cat Design produced three new ad campaign ideas to present to the RoSPA team. They loved all three designs and we were told it was a difficult decision to make. In the end they chose one with the plan to use elements of the other campaign ideas further along the line.

Campaign 1:
Simple and effective, clean imagery, set subjects colours for ease of differentiating, simple consistent and recognisable styling throughout all adverts

Campaign 2:
Testimonial to take centre stage, all about the views of people who have used RoSPA and found it helpful, again using colours to differentiate subjects, simple consistent styling.

Campaign 3:
Based on some posters produced by Tom Eckersley some years ago, we wanted to show how far RoSPA had come, and introduced the strapline ‘The Home of Safety since 1917’.

We look forward to seeing the first adverts in May’s OS&H magazine, SHP, Safety Express and other H&S publications.

One I noticed straight away is ‘Walkers’ (crisps), called ‘Lay’s’ in The Netherlands which was Smiths previously. It seems strange to me, seeing the same logo with a different name.

‘Lynx’ (deodorant) and ‘axe’ are the same brand too. The packaging is identical, just with a different name for The Netherlands market.

The ice cream brand in England called Wall’s is known as Ola in The Netherlands, again otherwise identical.

Galaxy (chocolate) is Dove in The Netherlands, perhaps this one is because you have a soap of that name – although we have the soap too.

‘Fairy liquid’ is ‘Dreft’ in other countries. The packaging looks really similar and the logo has the same typeface too.

I’m looking forward to discovering even more of these examples during my stay and trying to find out the reasons for the differences too.

We were successful in winning the pitch with the idea to recreate a recent innovation from their own offices in the form of an “ideas room”. This is a relaxing area where staff can hold meetings, brainstorming sessions or just escape from the office environment. There are comfy sofas, a giant keyboard and colourful decor.

In addition to recreating what they already had, we took the idea further by adding wall graphics and foam statues to bring the space to life. The NHS were overjoyed with the stand and went on to have a very successful event.

Below are a few photos of the space.

After taking a few shots, RoSPA decided on their favourite one but with a few alterations in mind.

This is where Photoshop came in. RoSPA had requested that the front pillars and windows were to be removed from the shot. At first this might sound like an easy job but as the image was a flat photo it was bit more complicated than originally thought. If we were to remove the pillars it would leave a large blank space in the image.

This job took a lot of time, care and attention to get right so thought it would be great to show off the results.

From-this....

...to this.

What is your role at Big Cat Group?

My role at Big Cat Group is Head of Studio. I manage an exciting team of designers, who all have very different skills and specialties. It involves briefing, scheduling, and making sure things get done. They’re a great bunch though so I have it easy most days. I also manage the day-to-day work for the design team’s largest client RoSPA, who Big Cat have worked with since I started in January 2009. It’s a lot of juggling and chasing around after suppliers but very exciting and everyday is different, I really enjoy having the two main elements to my role, it shakes it up a bit. I like the fact that I can take the brief in person and see it through to final stage.

How did you get into Design?

Actually, I am quite old school in that respect, I did an apprenticeship! I never thought about Graphic Design as a career to start, I always wanted to teach Secondary school but I never thought I’d be confident enough to stand up in front of a bunch of 15yr olds (remembering naughty and cheeky how I was at that age). Plus I hated the authority aspect of school through adolescence so probably would have sympathised with them rather than ‘told them off’ when they were cheeky. So I went to college and managed to persuade them to let me do my A-levels hoping that something would spark an interest along the way.

Then I met people who worked in the Creative industry. The way they talked about it made it sound really exciting – not your normal 9-5, I had held an interest in art from a very young age so I went to a Careers Centre and there was a job advertised for a junior designer apprentice. I went for it and I got it. It was great because I was learning from experienced designers and creatives whilst most people were at UNI, so I was able to get my second design job at 19yrs old and I stayed at that one for 8years and was promoted to a more senior level quite quickly after I was able to demonstrate my flair for anything process! I decided Studio management was the path I wanted, I preferred the pressure of managing resources, work and deadlines to the pressure of getting the creative right. I was taken on at Big Cat in Jan 2009 and it was a massive change from my previous role, which was mainly managing design for the Financial Services, but I quickly settled back into the swing of things and really enjoy my work and the people here.

What are you working on at the moment?

We are in the final stages of a project for arts centre, The Drum in Aston. We were employed as consultants to take them from being just a community based arts centre to stand out to Business and corporate organisations, and sell their spaces more effectively.

It’s been really interesting and challenging (two of my favourite words), part of the project was to give the place a face-lift, we worked with a creative and a designer to create the moodboards and concept behind the visuals. The client loved them and it’s now complete. To see the before and after photos is a great moral boost for the team and something we will be shouting about a lot to clients – new and existing. Look out for the blog on our site if you want to see what it all looks like.

What is your favourite ad campaign at the moment?

HMMMMMM! This is a difficult one as I don’t watch TV much. I do however love the Boots campaign. They have an ad out about colds and it’s basically highlighting the fact that women just get on with it but men don’t – I have to say – in my experience, that is so true!! I love it when people point out the obvious in a funny way – that way even though they are stereotyping, they can put it down to simple humour! I can just imagine the conversations between couples when that one comes on… probably a few lighthearted and heated discussions going on – but at least they are talking about it. That to me makes a great ad.

What is your favourite thing about Birmingham?

I could say something really arty – like the art and the sculptures but I’m sorry – it’s the shopping facilities. Simple! I actually do love the architecture of the bullring and Selfridges though, at night if you look down towards St Martins, the textures of the new glass and ‘disc’ covered buildings all seem to ‘just work’ with the old cathedral, it’s nice to look at and wonder how they did that. Also we had our Big Cat 10th Birthday party in the penthouse of the Rotunda, and it’s actually quite amazing to look at Birmingham at night. I am certain that there are many more breathtaking sites around the world, but it makes it special when it’s your home town I think! You go to NYC Empire State Building and Paris Eiffel Tower expecting to be blown away, and when you arrive you may have built it up so much that it’s not as good as you imagined (which happened to me in Egypt) but when something takes you off-guard, it’s even better and I found Birmingham at night from the height of the Rotunda really did that to me. Very unexpected.

In terms of the refurbishment, we focussed on the Seminar Room, Frontiers Café, the entrance and reception, establishing key areas in need of reviving. We found a lot of what The Drum already had was of an excellent standard. Besides new carpet and hi-tech seminar facilities, it just needed a little colour, better use of the brand, and more attention paid to the presentation of the art.

We relocated the paintings and sculptures to more prominent areas, and researched African, Caribbean and Asian art, with particular focus on the use of patterns and colour. This helped us finalise a new colour set which worked with their existing brand colours, but which could also be used to identify each of the key areas. Patterns were created and used throughout the building in keeping with the theme, along with huge quotes from iconic members of the black community, for example, Chris Gardner and Claudia Jones.

The refurbishment has already been well received by The Drum, and we’re now awaiting the feedback from the public. Take a look at the photos and let us know what you think!

Business Suite before the refurbisment

Business Suite after

Business Suite: cabaret style

Before and after views of the Café

This blog is all about the lesser known sites, some of which are not as familiar as sites such as Creative Review.

1. Lipsum

This is a great tool to generate dummy copy and can be used for scamping and deciding on the right word count you need before you get the actual copy.

2. Juggle

Juggle has great resources in terms of logos. If you are ever struggling to find a logo, this site is a must.

3. Fontstruct

Free to use, this site allows you to create your own font/typeface. The only problem is that it can be restrictive in terms of leading and kerning, but is still a great tool to use for projects.

4. Behance

Add your own personal portfolio for all to see. The beauty of behance is that it’s not your usual portfolio site. You can network through it and search each portfolio by section i.e. typography.

5. Ads of the world

A Great research tool. You can see all sorts of adverts from around the world. Brilliant for university projects when searching for inspiration.

6. Kuler

Create your own colour themes, or use preset themes to help enhance any project.

7. Big Cartel

A site that provides you with your own independent store. You can sell all of your art on here.

8. Superbrands

The biggest and best brands are on this great site. Read about brand history and relevance within today’s society.

9. Brands of the world

A mixture of big brand logos and logos uploaded by the ‘everyday person’.

10. Creative bits

Have your logos critiqued using this link which is within brands of the worlds site.

If you have any more useful links please add them to this blog, it would be great to hear your thoughts.

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/january/starbucks-new-logo

Last year Starbucks launched its first UK coffee shop to feature a new, boutique design in London. The aim of this significant move was to make the branch different to all its other branches, inturn moving away from the ‘chain look’ coffee shops which litter our high streets.

Does Starbucks need a name on its products?

There are many brands like Starbucks that can now demonstrate immediate brand recognition. I’ve added some examples below which I think you’ll find interesting.

Mars

The Mars typeface connected with its iconic colours of Red Gold and Black can now be used with other words not just the name brand. This was shown throughout the 2010 football world cup. The ‘Believe’ campaign was used across all it’s branding from TV adverts down to chocolate bars. Mars even bought out a limited edition kit in which consumers could make their own names up.

Mars Brand

Believe campaign

Make your own Mars bar

I’ve added two more interesting pieces to look at, both of which are some of the biggest brands around today. Can you figure out what they are?

Iconic 3 stripes

Can you spot the surfer?

In today’s society do you need text within branding or is just an image sufficient?

I imagine the Midland’s lack of street art is more of a tolerance issue rather than a lack of talent, especially judging by the Birmingham-based artists currently on display at The Herbert Gallery in Coventry. The gallery is the current home for a touring exhibition entitled “Street Art: Contemporary prints from the V&A” running until Jan 16, so you’ll have to be quick. Although the posters shout the names of Banksy, Shepard Fairey and Jamie Hewlett, these artists only have a handful of work on show between them. And although respect where it’s due, the world of street art does not revolve around these three. Most eye-catching was the work of Vhils, Ben Slow, and Birmingham based Mohammed Ali, Newso and Lucy McLauchlan. The latter being my particular favourite of the exhibition, and she’s also decorated the outside of Birmingham Central Library. I really recommend visiting, especially as it’s FREE! If the Midland’s city walls don’t tolerate street art, strangely at least our galleries do.

Shepard Fairey - Duality Of Humanity 2 Mural Canvas

Vhils - Unknown icons

Lucy McLauchlan at The Herbert Gallery

Newso in Digbeth