Policy makers all over are starting to see how the design industry can affect the accessibility of new policies. The notion of strategic design is playing a key role in how we are informed of new policies and is especially prevalent within the third sector.

Strategic design is about applying some of the principles of traditional design to challenges like health care, education, and climate change. It changes how problems are tackled and helps to deliver ‘user friendly’ solutions. Put simply, design makes complicated issues easier to understand and brings them to the mass market.

A picture speaks a thousand words and using design to illustrate a policy helps people visualise it, making it much easier to understand than columns of jargonised text. It’s a way to deliver key messages in a simple and clear form without having to ferret through pages of text. This kind of strategic design has been really successful on campaigns revolving around smoking and the smoking ban. High impact designs of second-hand smoke surrounding children and tar-filled cigarettes are highly memorable and push out key messages.

This month we are very excited to announce that we have made two new additions to the Big Cat ranks. Tim Harbon and Guy Dawson join the design and marketing teams respectively following such a successful first quarter with a number of new account wins.

Our new designer Tim has previously worked as in-house for a local brewery and along with his freelance experience will be a vital addition to the Big Cat design team. Tim said, “I’m delighted to join the Big Cat team and to have the opportunity to work with such a range of exciting clients.”

Guy joins the marketing team in the position of Account Executive. He impressed Big Cat with his marketing knowledge and enthusiasm, and was offered the position after just six weeks into his three month internship. Guy said, “I feel privileged to be part of such a fun, dynamic and creative team of people, and I can’t wait to get my teeth stuck in.”

Great to have you on board guys, and we are looking forward to seeing what you can bring to Big Cat!

It’s divided opinion among web and print designers since it’s beta launch a few months ago. With some in the web community heavily critical of Adobe’s Muse software, which aims to make web design more accessible to print designers and non-programmers. The main criticisms being that Muse creates extremely untidy code that isn’t SEO friendly, has limited layout possibilities and the output doesn’t translate well over different devices.

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!

Six months ago we posted a blog about the lack of good street art around Birmingham City Centre, with the majority only being specially commissioned pieces. I visited Nottingham recently and saw a huge mural spanning the entire ground floor of an abandoned building. Not only was this in a busy part of the city centre, on closer inspection it had been commissioned by Nottingham Council. I was a little disappointed that Birmingham City Council doesn’t seem to have a similar attitude to art projects. I’ve seen an incredible amount of “blank canvas” around Birmingham so it seems daft that a city with so much regeneration – and therefore so much construction hoarding and unused buildings – has so little public art.

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.

This month Big Cat are celebrating becoming certified in ISO9001.

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.

Biddle & Webb has been an auctioneer in Birmingham and the West Midlands for over 50 years. This year  it decided to re-evaluate its brand including a new logo and print collateral.

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!

Earlier this month we were tasked with giving a long standing client a brand new advertising campaign to see them through the next 12 months.

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.

Having only been in England for eight weeks now, I’ve already seen quite a lot of differences between England and The Netherlands, even design wise. Reading Creative Review this month a listing of their top 20 favourite logos. So I thought I would show you the differences I’ve noticed in some big brand logos since being here.

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.

The NHS recently approached us to pitch for the design of their stand at this years Healthcare Innovation EXPO at ExCeL London.

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.

Here at Big Cat, we’re one big family, and given we spend a huge chunk of our lives working, we like to make it fun whenever possible. That’s why when it comes to those special occasions like birthdays, we make a real effort for the team – handmaking our cards rather than buying from the shops – a lot more expensive if you consider designer hourly rates etc – but it’s not about that of course. It’s about seeing the look on someones face when they find their head morphed into Lionel Richie – Class! Here are some of our creations over the last 12 months for your amusement (P.S we only get 15 mins per card so excuse some of the crude designs!!)

Last week I had the opportunity to art direct my first photo shoot with Graham Lucas Commons, a photographer we have used for numerous campaigns. Our job, although it might sound menial was to take a photograph of the front doors of RoPSA’s head office for their latest ad campaign.

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.

As Big Cat grows from strength to strength and all departments across the company see an increase in repeat business, this month’s Q & A comes from Julie Edge, Big Cat’s Studio Manager who has built up strong relationships with clients to help foster and grow these opportunities.

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.

The Drum, a national centre for black British arts and culture, recently hired the services of Big Cat to provide them with marketing and event strategies, and give their building a bit of a renovation. The aim was to attract more businesses to use the conference facilities and compete more effectively with other centres like The Public and The MAC.

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

We in Design thought it might be useful to share our knowledge of resources which have helped us develop a variety of award winning campaigns.

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.

Certain brands over the years have become so recognisable that they now only need elements of their logo to be recognised. This has recently been shown with the Starbucks brand which saw a re-brand and the removal of its name from take-away cups.

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 find decent street art in the Midlands to be quite scarce compared to cities like Bristol and Brighton. We seem to lack the abundance and variety offered by others. That’s not to say we’re completely without. There’s some decent stuff around if you look for it and Birmingham is one of the original locations for the now global Secret Wars, where artists try to out-draw one another with nothing but a black marker, a white wall and a bit of imagination. Various spots around Digbeth are regularly updated, but if I’m honest we still have some way to go.

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

Big Cat Design was recently asked to create re-prints of several original pieces of artwork for accident prevention client, RoSPA.

The client wanted the prints to be ‘re-touched’ and formatted to a larger size so that they could be framed and placed throughout their new head office.

Simplistic is a word that would be best used to describe the posters as well as visually pleasing and informative. As they were designed back in the early 1900’s they emanate a sense of vintage originality, which over recent months has seen a strong comeback in modern culture across a number of mediums.

What we’ve noticed here at Big Cat is that slowly but surely the advertising world is again beginning to appreciate the art of a hand-drawn poster, whether it be Art Nuvo, Surrealist, or Pop Art, the list goes on.

Stella Artois is an international brand that happily promotes the use of ‘old style’ design. It gives its advertising a unique feel when compared to every other alcoholic beverage company, priding itself on quality and image rather than appealing to a mass market. It is almost as if the beer comes second after the design, which is refreshing to see.

Is vintage here to stay then, and how exactly do you define it? Will our current campaigns perhaps be seen as vintage in 20 or 30 years time?

Just a quick blow of the Big Cat trumpet. We’re extremely proud to announce we walked home with Silver for “Most Effective Stand or Display” at this year’s Field Marketing & Brand Experience awards! The project was part of the campaign for CSI: The Experience at Birmingham’s Bullring, entered for the award in collaboration with Limited Space who organise advertising sites in prime retail locations around the UK.

The CSI ad campaign aimed to recruit potential visitors, enticing them to “become an agent” and take part in CSI: The Experience, an interactive entertainment experience. The lift advertising treated the space as the crime scene, with the graphics making the lift appear to be covered in bullet holes and police tape. People entered the lift as if they were the CSI agent, and were then encouraged to visit the experience and solve the crime.

So a big hand to everyone who worked on the project!

Whilst heading to a meeting across Birmingham the other morning, I walked through an underpass that I hadn’t seen for some time. What awaited me was rather different from what I remembered; the space had now been transformed into something quite visual. Where once lay a series of dimly lit paving stones and dark corners, now hangs multicoloured lanterns and seasonal pattern effects illuminated on the walls and floors. It was fantastic to see somewhere that has made the most of the space that it has.

It’s by the Mailbox if you can’t tell by the picture but worth a visit if you’re in that part of town.

This made me think, how many more spaces could benefit from something like this and does it make a difference to people’s moods? Do we live in a society where we worry more about the vandalisation of public property so therefore play for the safer option?

Whoever came up with the concept – well done. I for one noticed the effort. Hopefully more spaces like this in Birmingham will take a leaf out of this particular book, after all New York, Paris, London do it so why can’t Birmingham?

The use of cartoons/illustrations within advertising has been done for a long time within the advertising world. Especially when it comes to using ‘retro’ cartoons.

Specsavers have recently introduced a new campaign involving the Roger Hargreaves Mr Men series. This follows on from its popular Postman Pat advert, both working under the slogan ‘Should of gone to Specsavers’.

What is key to these adverts is that they keep their ‘Nostalgic’ looks (i.e. they look the same as the originals).  The only difference is that they have a twist on what you are usually accustomed to seeing previously within these cartoons.

Cartoons can be positive within advertising. They get talked about; they attract new audiences to a product, and give a product a new ‘fresh’ feel.

I have added some current and past adverts using cartoons to sell their products. Please take a look.

Mr Men advert – Specsavers

Postman pat advert – Specsavers

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles advert – Say no to drugs

Iron brew – Using a ‘Disney style’

Tetley – Bringing back old characters from previous adverts

Big Cat IDEA have been working with Digital Birmingham and Advantage West Midlands on this years’ Hello Digital Event branding and promotional material.

The event is being held in Birmingham from 18 – 22 October 2010 and comprises a number of events celebrating and promoting Birminghams’ achievements in Digital as some of the best in the world.

This years graphical style utilised the existing Hello Digital brand identity but placed in a digital Birmingham environment. It was created after we recognised the diverse nature of the digital industries in the City, and the potential if all individuals were to merge together to create something rather special. As it’s digital and as we loved the look, we used a multi-coloured pixel effect throughout the campaign, which was combined over images of the city.

We now have posters, banners CIP’s, various publications and literature floating around the city and beyond – so look out for them. Please see some samples of our advertising below.

During a trawl through the archives of TED (a website which streams videos from various experts in technology, science, design and other topics), I stumbled across a series of videos which you might all find enlightening. The talks from design legends Stefan Sagmeister and David Carson in particular are worth a watch.

Stefan Sagmeister, who takes a yearlong ’sabbatical’ every seven years, talks about the power of time off to refresh his creative outlook, which actually seems to have a positive effect – not to mention it sounds pretty fun.

Stefan Sagmeister – The power of time off and Happy Design

Stefan Sagmeister - Happy Design (view from the front, then the side)

Steven Johnson looks at the best way to encourage original ideas, and how some of the most notable – namely evolution – can sit for months amongst piles of notes until their discoverer has that eureka moment.

Steven Johnson – Where good ideas come from
David Carson – Design & Discovery

Genuinely inspiring stuff and I recommend having a search through TED anyway. Most of these talks last around 15 minutes, but they can vary from 5 minutes to half an hour.

Philippe Starck – Thinks deep on design

Isaac Mizrahi – Fashion & Creativity

Paolo Antonelli – Design as art

Design is now becoming an integral part within the football market, it is not only the design of the kits it’s the tracksuit, the training gear, and even the football itself. The England football team now has a new kit, which has partly been designed by art director, Peter Saville, and in my opinion has been a success, its one of my favourites for a long time.

The St George cross is now repeated across the back of the shirt in multi colours.

So I thought this would be a perfect time to talk about the football shirt design and how it has progressed throughout the football league. The premier league is now dominated by 2-3 brands with sub brands taking on some of the other teams i.e. Birmingham City now has a strong Chinese contingent so they now have a Chinese kit supplier.

In today’s world a great looking kit can bring in revenue, not only from the die hard fans (they will buy the shirt no matter what the shirt looks like) but the fans that like the look of shirt and will wear it not only at a match but when going out socialising.

I think you would agree that there are some great shirts out there now and some ‘not so great’. So I thought I would show a couple of examples of my current likes and dislikes from this years premier league.

Everton Away Shirt (What were they thinking!)

I do not see that there is a place for a neon pink shirt in football, it just looks wrong?! Plus, I do not agree with making your team badge all the same colour when it is a complicated as the Everton badge.

Chelsea Away Shirt

Simple and understated. A black away kit always has a strong statement look to them. The orange compliments this well. The badge is also in orange, but because the logo design is simple, it works.

West Bromwich Albion home Shirt

A Perfectly good shirt ruined by a horrible sponsor. I know clubs these days need a sponsor, but maybe there needs to be a re-think on how the logo is placed within the shirt?

It would be great to know your thoughts on this blog, what shirts do you like and dislike?

In recent months I was tasked with hunting down a new Creative to join our busy studio, with so much at stake to keep the level of work consistent – or better – for our existing clients, I felt enormous pressure to get the right person for the job.

So, I requested that each candidate to make it through to round two of interviews would take away a live brief and pitch their concepts back to me. There have been some negative comments regarding pitches in the recent press, but all of the candidates seemed happy to be able to showcase their skills in something as relevant as an existing Big Cat client.

One candidate was Justin Price, who ‘hounded’ me with dog themed ‘Lost’ mailers and e-shots in the hope that Big Cat would give him a chance. Justin’s work was thoughtful, creative, occasionally light-hearted, and I was impressed with his determination in his self-promotion, and so I decided to put him through.

The brief I put to the candidates was to create the next quarterly advertising campaign for RoSPA, a leading Health and Safety organisation based in the midlands. An arguably difficult subject and a very loose brief was thrown at the creatives, with a deadline of three days.

On the day of the presentations, we were excited to see what would come back, then Justin presented, and he had delivered!

A week or so later, we offered him the role, and forwarded the concepts to the client, as they were, we weren’t surprised that the client loved them, and didn’t want to change a thing.

Below are some examples of the new RoSPA speech bubbles campaign using on the mark copy lines, also created by Justin to complement the design.

Once the position was offered, Justin followed up by sending a ‘found’ poster, and very generously donated £250.00 to Birmingham dog’s home to end the campaign. Since them, Justin’s appointment has been covered in The Drum, Creative Boom, Event Magazine, Birmingham Post, and the Express and Star. Well done and welcome to the team, Justin!

Our graphic designer Jason Hannon has created an ad that’s both innovative and tasty. Using the literal imagery of pick ‘n’ mix sweets in the shape of a car, Jason has juxtaposed driver training with the concept of flexibility and choice within a tailored course. The ad, for RoSPA’s Driver Theory Workshop, uses a wide range of calorific treats to create a car with a surprising likeness, from the liquorice wheels to the jelly baby passengers. The ad was a complete success despite several attempts to sabotage the concept through the eating of vital ingredients.

Needless to say, both Big Cat and RoSPA were very impressed with the outcome. Check it out:

Final Advert

Hi, I’m Louise; I’m here at Big Cat to get some work experience in copywriting. I’ve just finished my second year studying English and Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. Having only been here for a day or so, I haven’t had a chance to get really stuck in yet. Still, I’ve been flicking through the Creative Review and a particular article caught my attention: Penguin’s upcoming release of the entire backlist of Vladimir Nabokov complete with classical looking covers redesigned by several different illustrators. The use of frames on the covers is interesting; particularly on Despair, where Karlovich’s hands hold the framed title box to partially obscure the protagonist’s supposed Doppelganger. The first print of Despair was also accidentally produced without a border pattern making it somewhat of a collector’s item.

Having read and enjoyed Lolita, I’ve often considered reading some of Nabokov’s lesser-known novels but have usually been deterred by endless University reading lists and deadlines. However, with a long exam-free summer ahead and the release of Penguin’s stunning new covers, an Invitation to a Beheading could be on the cards.

Recently Big Cat Idea had the great opportunity to work on the CSI: The Experience advertising campaign. CSI: The Experience is an interactive exhibition in which you become the Special Agent. We were given the task of creating a new campaign to promote the event. We obviously had the normal print based advertising (i.e. flyer and press ads) however in this case we had the chance to express our ideas further in different locations, we even had a piece written about our lift graphics! Below are some photos of our work. We hope you like them!

For more information about CSI: The experience please visit http://www.csibirmingham.co.uk/

CSI Escalators

CSI Lift Graphics outside

CSI Lift Graphics inside

CSI Crime scene stunt 1

CSI Crime scene stunt 2

Recently our client RoSPA briefed the design team on creating a new campaign for their advertising. Within the brief they added that they would like the new ad campaign to clearly ‘follow on’ from the last style of ads. They wanted their adverts to have a fresh new look and feel.
We then spent some time coming up with a few ideas of what we could do. We felt there needed to be a link with the new look 2010 RoSPA catalogues. The final idea was to use a minimal style. Stripping back the adverts, simplifying, and making the attention purely on the object you see before you.
With the new minimal white background, the object could then become alive in it’s own right. We decided to be slightly abstract, looking at the text supplied and relating the image to this. Instead of using the ‘norm’ in the style of a usual health and safety advert, we wanted the viewer to look at the advert then look again and think, ‘What has this got to do with health and safety?’ which would then make them read on and find the link between the text and the image.
Below are the first few examples of the new campaign we have produced. What do you think?

Are we as designers now depending on using a computer to do the work for us?

As a team in the studio we often have discussions on how we can give a greater service to our clients, how we can make life ‘easier’ and more productive between the clients and us. One of the issues we seem to come across quite often is portraying our ideas over to the client using scamps.

In previous jobs we have only supplied simple line drawings accompanied with a blurb about what our ideas are. Yes, this sometimes gets agreed first time, with the client getting the ‘idea’ straight away, but often the process takes longer than it really should. Once the idea is approved the client will often not see what the advert or campaign will really look like until the final piece, thus meaning the client could feel unsatisfied and the process may have to start again.

Our idea was to take a step back from the computer, and to create a personal hand drawn, finished scamp (as seen in the image below) using colour and detail, so that the client would get a real image of what the final piece would look like.

Scamping in progress

Using this technique is helping the process from getting the initial idea to the client, to the final piece, easier. The client is happy as they can see we are putting the effort in straight away from the initial ideas, and for our benefit we now have finished scamps that we can take to show potential new clients how hard we work for our current ones.

Final piece

The question here is…do you need to fancy up a logo to have a lasting impression on the audience that it is aimed at?

My personal opinion is no…simplicity is the key.

Take for example a recent logo, uploaded by the Big Idea team. Now on Logo of the Day.

This logo is a ‘logo of the day award winner’ and just shows how a simple logo with a slight hidden message can still be appreciated by the public in today’s modern society.

The real world, but not as we know it. The film industry has a great influx of new digitally mastered films, with the likes of Transformers being a massive hit. There are more masterpieces in production, so I thought I would examine a few, that I think look amazing.

Tron: Legacy

Tron Legacy is a contemporary version of the ’80 cult classic’. The Big wigs in Hollywood have now made a more slick and finished version and it looks awesome. I’m not too sure of the plot, but as you can see from the trailer, the graphics will definitely impress.

TRON LEGACY

THE ORIGINAL TRON

Alice in Wonderland

The genius that is Tim Burton has re-made this Disney classic. It follows the familiar, weird, and wonderfull style of other Tim Burton films i.e. Beatlejuice? If you’re looking for an all round ‘realistic but surreal’ graphic set-up then this is one to see.

JOHNNY DEPP AS THE MAD HATTER

There is news of a new Toy Story film coming out early next year, so let’s hope it gets here sooner rather than later.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, Twitter recently changed it’s own branding…
However when I searched for new the Twitter branding, I found that everyone seems to have there own various of the Twitter bird? Why is this? Is this good for the brand? Below are a few examples I thought you could look at……

As a creative, one of my key roles within the industry is Art Direction. Mostly this involves steering the way projects end up, both strategically and aesthetically, through the use of substract, type, image, shape and colour and on the odd occasion with the use of light and/or moving image.

My most recent AD assignment took me down a quite unusual path as the requirements were very specific but at the same time awkward.

In short, a new client had asked for a photoshoot to help promote the launch of a new range of products. Established for over 140 years, but needed to develop and modernise the brand, re-invent themselves, new markets, new opportunities,  etc etc. Only problem was, the photoshoot that they wanted was full of high expectation… “ Can we have a 30-35 year old with an Audrey Hepburn feel/Claudia Schiffer age/Girls Aloud attitude, finally can we get it done and printed for Tuesday last week!!!

Of course we delivered, because that’s what we do! Right? Where was I going to find a FREE model of that age, hair that could be styled and with plenty of slap on could be transformed and commercially acceptable.

They say “never work with animals and children”. I’ve got one more to add to that…. THE WIFE!!!!!

Check out the before and after shots for yourself!!

Before

After 1

After 2

Quick blog…I recently came across this great piece of footage of a Mac that transforms…don’t believe me? Check the video out at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=adf_1245828170

What’s amazing about this video is that it seems so ‘real’, the camera never really changes focus, there is still camera shake, as though this is ‘really’ happening, and the commentary finishes it off, as you can tell that the person who is watching the transformation, can’t believe whats happening.

Great piece of video manipulation.

Mac's can now transform

Hi, I am Jules, the Studio Manager. When I was asked to write a Blog for Big Cat, I was a little nervous. Having never done one before, I was at a loss what to write, apart from the joys of studio admin! But then I thought why not write about my experience getting a job with Big Cat, and what I think so far…

I joined Big Cat in Jan 2009. Made redundant from an in-house Studio Manager role – which was as corporate as they come – recruitment agencies told me I would never get an into an agency, I felt a fight rise in me. I had the skills, and I wanted to show an agency what I could do. So instead of waiting for recruitment agencies, I got on the case.

I understood the fees for recruitment agencies. They are extortionate. Especially when you think that those fees could be going towards 3, possibly 4 brand spanking new macs! So an excellent selling point was that my next employer would have no hidden charges or extra fees, plus, I looked pro-active, before I had even stepped into the interview. I searched on google and contacted as many as I could. Then I stumbled across Big Cat’s website, and I liked it, so I emailed.
When Big Cat called, they had a position, and it was exactly what I was looking for. It had been 9 years since I had been interviewed so I was nervous of course, but I really surprised myself, I came across well, and I came away feeling exhilarated, and inspired. I remember the Director saying, ‘We are like a big family’, and at the time, I thought back to all the politics in my previous job, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. The change in environment is a lot different. It is, well, like a family!
The first night out I had with BigCat was at the Old Library in the Custard Factory, we had the whole venue to ourselves, we had a gorgeous meal cooked by the Director’s, and were all dancing around with no shoes in this huge, stunning Gothic room to eighties music, it was such a contrast, it was amazing.

I think it is safe to say I am glad I was made redundant. And, for those of you that are in that position, take control, don’t rely on other people to find you work, be pro-active, and don’t stop until you land a great job too! There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and you are fast approaching… if you really want to be. It took me three weeks, that’s all.
In fact, go on to google now and help your self, it’s much more rewarding!!

Follow me on Twitter: @glitzyjules

I am currently studying a BA (Hons) in Graphic Communication at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff. My University was very keen for all second years to gain some work experience in the summer holidays before we went into our final and most important year of our degree.

So before the end of term in June, I began emailing graphic design agencies all over Birmingham. Thankfully, Big Cat replied, and after a short interview I started at the beginning of July. I am so grateful for all the help and guidance that I have received in the few weeks that I have been here.  The opportunity has been so worthwhile and I have gained an insight into designing for the real world.

I have been on two photo-shoots, created illustrations, and produced ideas and scamps for live briefs. Nathan also joined us for a week’s work experience in mid-July, and we rummaged through rubbish bins and created letterforms. Our input into one particular brief helped to create a unique and exciting piece of design, which felt great to be a part of. I have also been around the sites of Birmingham and took some abstract photographs, and got very messy when I helped with the interior design of the Old Library at the Custard Factory.

I have had such a beneficial time at Big Cat, and would advise anyone who will soon be let loose in the real world to get some work experience. It has definitely been a wake-up call for me, and I am now wiser in what standard I need to be at by the time I finish University; it is so important to absorb yourself within the graphic design industry and begin to make contacts as soon as you can.

Thankyou very much Big Cat!

You can now follow me on Twitter: @sarah_steve

As a the senior creative at BigCat I guessed it was about time that I contributed to this new world of  social tweetchatter ( I’ve trademarked that one!)

All the other guys in the office seem to be right on it and it became apparent the time had come for me to get myself immersed.

I stumbled across this guy from Seattle, USA. His name is Lee Le Fever (cool name) and he makes these really simple but effective information videos to help people (like me) to understand the nature of  Social Networking, Twitter, RSS, Blogs, etc.

I found them useful and thought I would pass the links on to anyone else that needs a bit more info in their locker before they come out.

I watched them all, the zombie one was a bit of a curve ball!!

http://www.commoncraft.com/
follow me on Twitter: @jayism

Wow, this is my first EVER blog post. I’m one of the designers at Big Cat and I’ll be leaving posts up here every now and again with anything interesting that’s caught my eye.

In particular, Modest Mouse return with new material, as well as a new video for ‘King Rat’. Directed by Heath Ledger after meeting with Isaac Brock in 2007, the video focuses on the illegal commercial whale hunting that occurs off the coast of Australia. The video features a reversal of the roles between the hunters and whales where, as the video progresses, the message becomes clearer.

There’s also an interesting blog by Daniel Auber on the making of the video. It was finished by The Masses, the film/music company Heath Ledger was part of. If you get the video off iTunes, the proceeds from the first month of its release go to Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, who campaign to save the habitat of wildlife and protect ecosystems in the world’s oceans.

Follow me on twitter:
@norbertlegs