Photographer Andy and I got out of the car and unloaded the equipment. In front of me was a caravan and a selection of cars. A couple of models stood waiting. Our mission: creating branded photography from scratch for our client. The project manager turned to me and said, ‘where do you want to start…?’

It was at that moment, standing in a leafy clearing just outside Heilbronn in southern Germany that I realised, this was serious.

Over the past six months the team and I have been working on what I’ve come to think as an almost sentimental journey. For sure it’s also been clear-eyed hard work, but there’s something wonderful about seeing a classic brand being given the platform it once always enjoyed.

I’m talking about ORIS, a classic, decades-old southern-German manufacturing name that in recent years had begun to slowly disappear amid a welter of corporate machinations.

We were first offered the chance to consider the brand almost two years ago and it seemed so obvious even then that this business had bags of brand equity, the elusive wonderstuff that design and PR agencies the world over yearn for.

Today, it’s back with nothing less than an epic creative commercial relaunch.

Each time we work with the legal profession it seems that we explore new territory.

For instance, our long-time client Freedman+Hilmi required a modern, urban approach reflecting their work in the brisk world of West End real estate. By contrast, our work for California-based practice Rivera Employment Law had a brief for us to embody a more open, laid back feel for the branding and website, related to their approach to individual and corporate rights (and all that sunshine).

The latest legal project we’ve completed is for Winter Scott, experts in maritime law. A classic British firm of solicitors, they are a fascinating compliment to the other legal work we’ve done.

It’s a tidy project and to my mind sets a standard in terms of planning and creative approach and a great example of best practice web design for solicitors.

We are thrilled to say that following our double nominations at the print industry’s Solutions Awards, this week we were joint winners! It’s a really fantastic recognition of our work over the past year and the team and I are absolutely thrilled. The winning project was our work for concierge service Thadeus London in the Best Solution for Paper category.

We see this wonderful prize as  huge boost going into 2020 and with so much of our time being spent on the web it’s fantastic to achieve an award win for our print design work.

We are thrilled to announce that we’ve been shortlisted twice for the Solutions Awards 2019. These design award nominations represent the fifth consecutive year we’ve been recognised by one of the print industry’s biggest annual award events.

The two projects that have made the cut this year are an elegant brochure with superb print finishing for personal concierge service Thadeus London and our latest longform winners book for the Shine School Media charitable project.

People always say this sort of thing, but in a particularly demanding year it’s genuinely so gratifying to be recognised, particularly in the context of the illuminati of the print business. As we head towards the awards ceremony in November with fingers crossed, we’d like to particularly thank PurePrint, who were involved in both of these projects and also co-sponsor the Shine project with us.

I never get tired of ‘a first’. A completely new experience that takes me (and the team) away from everything we’re used to and then leaves me wondering what other new horizons are out there to conquer next.

We’ve just completed one such project – a website for an interior designer in Riyadh. I think the fact that Yasmin Alsdais is a woman isn’t necessarily that remarkable to me, but in the context of her business which is growing fast and being hugely successful in Saudi Arabia, it’s most definitely a different (and very admirable) story. Given both that fact and the ease in which we worked across two continents, I’m particularly proud to be associated with the endeavour.

It’s been a great experience and opened up a fresh avenue designing for Saudi business in London which I hope is the start of a new chapter of work.