The nature of our work – designing, being creative, looking after our clients, completing the projects commissioned – hasn’t changed in the past three months, but the delivery and communications of the work? That’s another story. We now have a set of new clients for whom we’ve written proposals, started projects, designed an identity and gone live with websites – who we’ve never met in person.

Meeting via Zoom has become not just acceptable but the standard, saving everyone involved hours of travel and waiting around without negatively affecting the work. Meeting in person does have it’s benefits though. Designing an identity means understanding personalities – and that’s particularly true of what I call ‘signature businesses’ (like mine!) with the name of the owner at the top of the page. A case in point of such a recent ‘lockdown client’ project is this new branding and website for Chelsea style guru Alessia Nicolini.

Here’s the remarkable thing: I’ve still not met Alessia in person – despite it turning out that she’s a neighbour, running her office from the same building as us. But we’ve made it work – very well – and I am incredibly pleased with the outcome.

Just recently in the studio, we’ve been throwing around a new theory:  that every piece of creative we work on is actually ‘a brand project’.

Our theory is that every time we complete a piece of design it advances a brand in some way. That’s a punchy claim, but the more we started thinking about it, the more it just happens to be true.

Rare is the piece of design that we do that is without any sort of innovation. Equally unusual is collaborating with a brand that has guidelines so exhaustive that every eventuality has been considered. In fact these gradual ways of redefining your brand aren’t a problem but actually, we believe, positive incremental changes that should be embraced.

With a creative brand guardian overviewing the work, these could be seen as investments in the future of the brand.

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.

It’s our sixth year working on the Shine School Media Awards project and every time we get involved, something fascinating comes out of it that none of us expected.

The Awards programme recognises talented young people from around the UK who produce a school newspaper, magazine, podcast or website. Each summer, nominated students gather at Stationers’ Hall in the City of London for a day of workshops, talks from industry experts and of course an exciting and frequently moving awards ceremony.

Our design job is to create an overall look for each year’s awards including a ‘step and repeat’ backdrop for photos or selfies, a day programme and a forty-plus-page book of the winning and highly-commended students and sponsors’ ads.

Our goal each year is the same – to create a fantastic piece of modern print design.

The Barbican Estate is an internationally recognised Grade II* listed brutalist masterpiece revered by students (young and old) of the genre and most crucially by its residents.

You wouldn’t think such an icon it would be subject to fundamental structural change – but it seems there are no sacred cows when it comes to London’s built environment in 2019. To local dismay, the City of London School for Girls has announced proposals for a significant expansion within the Barbican Estate.

Supporting a grassroots appeal to debate these plans, we have built a new photography library and created materials for the press to give life to this nascent movement. This has unexpectedly turned into a smart little design project – and a great case study of graphic design for campaigns.