Little stabs at happiness

Metrowrap party

We all went along to the Metrowrap party at the Vinyl Factory in Poland Street, Soho on Wednesday night. Metro really put on a good party - the work was well displayed, there were themed beer bottles with the shortlisted entries on them, and tasty canapés arriving at regular intervals.

My husband James unfortunately left early and I had to go onto stage on his behalf when they called him to the stage for his shortlisted idea. You've got to admire the man for having his priorities in order: Arsenal was playing Barcelona, and he was fairly certain that the print deadline was way too soon to allow the time to create an interactive exhibition, so felt pretty sure his idea wouldn't win.

The Partners concept 'Make Someone's Day' was the winner - the gloriously simple idea of printing a bunch of flowers on the paper so that you may present it to a stranger like a gift. There was a moment of confusion for our team when they announced the winner as 'Make Someone's Day' as we had re-named our 'Space to think' concept as 'Make Your Day' so we actually thought momentarily that we'd won. Little did we know that the members of the other team had known secretly for three days that they had won and had been preparing the artwork for press in advance. So much for surprises!

The issue will run on Tuesday morning after the Easter weekend. Four million Londoners will see it. Nice bit of promo for The Partners - well done guys.

Brand workshop market share posters

D&AD Blog: All wrapped up

Metrowrap submissions shortlisted

So, we found out at the end of last week that not one, but two of our Metrowrap submissions were shortlisted. The shortlisted entries from us were Just for a laugh and Space to think.

Fine Cell Work launch at the V&A

Last night we attended the Fine Cell Work launch of the new major exhibition of Quilts at the V&A museum. This was a massive fund raising event, attended by what appeared to be the retired old money of Kensington. Chief Inspector of prisons, Lord Ramsbottom was in attendance, and gave a somewhat lengthy speech. A small red quilt made by prisoners (shown behind Lord Ramsbottom in the photo) was auctioned for more than £5500, and the Fine Cell Work cushions were selling like hot-cakes. Overall it looked like a resounding success.

We had a quick look around the quilt exhibition as well, which looked lovely, I’ll be heading back to see that in more detail at another time.

Fine Cell Work - Christmas event invitation

 

Fine Cell Work - branding

 

Me

Our placement (Steve) used a photo of me to make this illustration for a project he's working on. It really really looks like me.

Tying the knot: online invitation

Since we're a multi-disciplinary couple, James wanted to get a bit digital on the wedding invite too, so we created an online invitation. (this is still live, check out the link)

Tying the knot: our wedding invitation

 

 

Well being a designer, and getting married meant that creating a wedding invitation had to be treated as a personal design brief. It ended up turning into quite a production.

I came up with the theme of 'knots', and then decided that I wanted to make a little tiny booklet which would be almost like a story-book, setting up the idea of tying knots, and also telling the story of how we met. I wanted this to feel like an old pocket-book of knots, the type of thing a sailor might just keep in his trousers or something.

I found a fantastic old book about knots where I borrowed the images from. In order to save money on doing a professional print run, I decided to create the whole thing by hand. I didn’t realise what a mad idea this was until I embarked on it.

For the invitation:
• I created rubber stamps for the cover titles which were hand applied.
• I ordered Strathmore Wove paper (posh stuff) and printed the inside spreads on the CLC at work
• These had to be hand trimmed and scored and collated
• I then machine stitched the spines
• These were hand labeled and posted in tiny little envelopes with red tissue lining

The invitations were really well received, some people didn't know what they were at first, but then understood the connection halfway through reading them. A few people reported back that it had brought tears to their eyes, which I thought was a good sign!

At the beginning of the wedding process I didn’t believe that I was the type of person who would become a ‘bridezilla’ but unfortunately I think I made the metamorphosis.

I decided that we should give away gift bags, so we created an audio CD of songs which were important to us and hand stamped the CDs and created the labels for the backs. I hand printed the thank you cards with a Japanese print gocco (an awesome invention). This also contained a little pack of heart shaped biscuits which I briefed the maker to pipe with a knot decoration. We even had Libby at Polka Dot Cakes do a beautiful rope detail in icing on the wedding cake.

So in the end, I almost drove myself and my husband mad with my obsessive attention to these details. But I think it was worth it. The only thing I wouldn’t do if I had to do it all again is the bloody gift bags! That was the straw that broke my back.