Today we’re excited by the arrival of our newest Senior Creative, Julia D’Arcy. Julia brings a big, bulging bag of experience in branding, packaging and illustration, having worked at Junc for the past six years.
We’re stoked to have her valuable input and know that her style will add a further dimension to the work we produce.
WooHoo!
DJ Yoda has been tweeting his reviews of various biscuits and a link to our blog appeared in his review of Toffee Dodgers.
We’re now buddies and there’s a whole lot of love and retweeting going on.
Here is the logo we’ve created as part of the identity for ‘Sous Chef’ – a new web based company to supply the chef at home. Sous Chef will sell rare ingredients, quality equipment and books to allow any aspiring top chef to cook like the best at home.
We’ve also worked on packaging labels and corporate stationery.
For more, please www.souschef.co.uk
Yesterday my inbox was filled with news of upcoming design awards and links to entry applications. One of these was for a new Pentaward called ‘Pentawards Concept’, that’s different to the main Pentawards which is now ‘Pentawards Classic’ as it’s solely for concept. This opens the field up to a whole host of potential new entrants and even students.
Pentawards is just one of many prestigious awards in our field and each has multiple categories. Not content with just one competition each year, Pentawards now has two. Design Week has it’s own, then there’s the DBA’s ‘Design Effectiveness Awards’ and much much more.
Soon there could be more design competition entry opportunities than design agencies, so do any of these awards actually mean anything?
Surely an award within a specialist field is only worth any merit if judged against the whole field. Not every agency enters the awards I’ve mentioned and a large reason for this is probably that each is costly to enter. These awards are therefore by nature, elitist.
Elmwood claim to be “the world’s most effective brand design consultancy” and this stands to reason because they have more ‘Design Effectiveness’ awards than any other company.
I suspect that there’s a correlation between this and the fact that they are also one of the largest consultancies, working on the most amount of projects. They can afford to enter huge amounts of work into a lot of different categories. How can they therefore be judged against any agencies that aren’t as big, producing as much work, entering as many categories each year?
Even if Robot-food could afford to enter the DBA’s ‘Design Effectiveness’ Awards, we would be unable. This is because we haven’t paid to become members of the DBA. We can’t compete with Elmwood and because of this Elmwood will never been judged against us, so who can say that their work is actually more effective?
Sure, it would be nice to have a shiny lump on the shelf that seals our position as an ‘award winning agency’, but in a world where not having an award makes you stand out, maybe it’s good for us to remain remarkable.
As packaging designers, our work is on the shelves for all to see and judge. It would be lovely if someone, one day, decided our work was worthy of an award – Just as long as we didn’t have to fill out any forms, upload any images or hand over any money.
Anyone who’s a regular visitor to our blog will be aware of the talent that is our friend and artist Schoph Schophield. Last year we commissioned Schoph to paint the canvas pictured below and now, due to the fact that we’ve just bought his largest ever piece, we’re essentially trading up and looking to sell this untitled 4ft by 4ft acrylic masterpiece.
If you’re interested and want to know more, please get in touch with Simon.
It’s been a long wait, as we completed the artwork a year ago, but the new Myprotein Pouches have finally landed and the wait has been worthwhile. Myprotein are the largest online supplier of protein powders and supplements in the UK and have now branched into retail with the new market leading pouches we designed.
There are 27 different product pouches across four ranges. We rebranded the ‘Essentials’ range as ‘Core’, in a simple white and blue pouch and chose a reflective metallic stock for the MP Max premium ranges. These include MP Max, Max Elle and Max Elite, which are clearly defined by category colours.
While working on the project we also suggested changing the company strapline from ‘The Home of Sports Nutrition’ to ‘Fuel Your Ambition’, which is far more emotive and lifestyle orientated, so better suited the wide product group, which includes diet supplements.
Check out this beauty, complete with basket for the daily commute to the studio. It’s a ‘Specalized Daily’ 3 speed and it’s proper bangtidy.
Tom Box is a digital artist and illustrator from Leeds. His work typically revolves around visualising the absurd or making social commentary through the guise of nonsense.
Here’s the new identity we’ve developed for Beanies. The logo is based on the original font, but we’ve spaced and resized the lettering to be more legible. It’s still fun and by removing the keylines, appears more adult and contemporary. It will be applied to the new pack designs in a bold white gloss foil, so check back soon to see. We’ve also heroes the coffee bean icon above the ‘i’ and added ‘The Flavour Co.’ as a strapline, to leave no doubt what Beanies is famous for.
Now, here’s a couple of wines worthy of a Christmas smash up!
AC/DC has partnered up with Woolworths in Australia for initial domestic distribution of a few wines. Now, with your turkey dinner you can have Hells Bells Sauvignon Blanc or make mulled wine from a Cab Sauvignon that will shake you all night long.
Woo-yeah! As much as we love our work and hanging out in the studio, today is the last day before 10 days of holiday. We’ll arrive back refreshed and slightly fatter to kick ass in 2012. It’s due to be an exciting year as January 1st will start our fourth year of business, in which we’ll be relocating to amazing new studios in Leeds and joined by an extremely talented female designer in February!
Peace and love to all who visit our blog and we wish you every succsess for 2012. We’ll leave you with a piece of art by friend and Artist Network illustrator, Jono Wood.
Check out this untitled masterpiece by friend of Robot-food, Schoph Schophiled
It was the main exhibit at the recent RedBull ‘Art of Flight’ show in London and is a massive 6 x 7 ft, painted onto wood. It’s to be the focal piece in the design studio at our new HQ in Leeds. ‘Churchhands’, as we’re calling it, will look spectacular on the 20 foot high walls and we can’t wait to move in and take delivery.
Thanks Schoph!
Country Warmth are the authorised distributor of AGA and Rayburn for North Yorkshire, Ryedale and the Humberside regions. They recently appointed us to design a new corporate identity and website, which has just gone live at: www.countrywarmth.co.uk
The new site offers a window to their store in Malton, encouraging customers to take advantage of their years of experties.
He’s some pretty sweet invitations, to a joint surprise party for twins, designed by our very own Martin.
The two sided typography based design looks awesome on an uncoated card stock.
Some of the outfits were pretty smart too!…
‘The Time Is Now’ is a new art exhibition by our friends at RedHouse Originals, which opens as a private viewing on Friday evening. The show will be running from 2nd December to 30th January.
The exhibition features work by the godfather of pop-art, Sir Peter Blake and art and photos from Terry Cryer, Pete Mckee, David Rushbatch and our mate and collaborator, Schoph Schophield. Schoph will be showing his latest work ‘Bikers & Pin-ups’, booze will flow and if we’re lucky, Joe Flanagan will be making an appearance. If you’re around, we’ll hopefully catch you there.
Yes! We’ve just bee appointed by Flavour Coffee experts Beanies, to refresh their branding and redesign their packaging ahead of some new product launches in spring.
Of course that means plenty of sample coffee to keep us going while we work on it.
Check back soon for more info.
Okay, it doesn’t look much at the moment, but here’s our new studios in the Holbeck Urban Village in central Leeds. The two rooms were the director’s offices of the Tower Works, former needle factory – currently being renovated. The 800+ sq ft units are linked by a door and are the certainly the coolest rooms, which together make up the largest unit in the old part of the listed building. Each has huge 20 foot ceilings with exposed beams, fireplaces and areas of brickwork, which will be left exposed.
Although it’s hard to visualise the end result, it’s going to be impressive and the whole development will be exclusive to creative, marketing and media companies. It’s five minutes walk from Leeds train station and the new public square at Tower Works connects a beautiful stretch of the Leeds and Liverpool canal to the great public spaces at Round Foundry. Over the road are the Cross Keys pub and The Midnight Bell, which are arguably the best pubs in Leeds, together with numerous cafes, restaurants and juice bars.
We can’t wait to become a part of this thriving independent business district and will be moving in February!
Regional magazine, Excelle have just launched the December issue, which includes a story all about our design of the Shade Station store in Victoria Quarter, Leeds. Much love to Xana at Excelle for that!
Here are the new MyProtein MP Max pouches that we designed. They are available for order direct from MyProtein now and soon to follow will be MP Max Elle, Elite and the MP Core range, which we renamed (previously ‘Essentials’).
The aim of the design is to appear more innovative and scientific, as more people buy into sports nutrition products. We simplified the existing branding, introducing new fonts and symbols. The packs are easy to read with key messaging to suggest number of portions etc. We also suggested the new company strap-line, “Fuel Your Ambition”, which is direct and emotive and can be applied to weight loss products and health suppliments, as well as protein powders.
