All future blogging activity will occur at our shiny new website, click here to visit...
Wednesday 1 October 2008
Tuesday 24 June 2008
The Doc Lives
Spotted on the M4 heading into town.
Unfortunately due to the rush hour traffic we didn't get up to 88 miles an hour, so I couldn't see if it was a fully functional replica...
Unfortunately due to the rush hour traffic we didn't get up to 88 miles an hour, so I couldn't see if it was a fully functional replica...
Monday 23 June 2008
When Bus Wraps Go Wrong
It's all very well being able to apply large imagery to the side of busses...
but you have to remember that the windows will still open.
but you have to remember that the windows will still open.
Thursday 19 June 2008
Happy Birthday Us
It was our second Birthday recently and to celebrate we sent all our clients, friends and family a birthday cake.
Whilst trying to write some copy covering what had happened in such a short space of time we decided it was impossible to put it all into words, so instead we put it in numbers...
1 world record
4 new recruits
7 countries worked in
13 clients won
17 packs of Hob-Nobs (a very conservative estimate)
32 fish-finger sandwiches in the Slaughtered Lamb
78 days spent in Birmingham
83 invoices paid
92 projects completed
5,841 cups of coffee drunk
10,077 tunes on the studio mac
11,856 miles cycled into work
81,738 mb of work archived
212,597 people entertained
1,000,000 thanks to everyone who helped us get this far
Trine spent many hours packaging them up with a candle and an explanatory piece of print that slotted over the top to keep the cakes intact while they travelled with Royal Mail's finest.
The cakes were made for us by the good people at Konditor and Cook and seem to have been well recieved by all and sundry
Whilst trying to write some copy covering what had happened in such a short space of time we decided it was impossible to put it all into words, so instead we put it in numbers...
1 world record
4 new recruits
7 countries worked in
13 clients won
17 packs of Hob-Nobs (a very conservative estimate)
32 fish-finger sandwiches in the Slaughtered Lamb
78 days spent in Birmingham
83 invoices paid
92 projects completed
5,841 cups of coffee drunk
10,077 tunes on the studio mac
11,856 miles cycled into work
81,738 mb of work archived
212,597 people entertained
1,000,000 thanks to everyone who helped us get this far
Trine spent many hours packaging them up with a candle and an explanatory piece of print that slotted over the top to keep the cakes intact while they travelled with Royal Mail's finest.
The cakes were made for us by the good people at Konditor and Cook and seem to have been well recieved by all and sundry
More from EURO 2008
As well as the Performance Pitch (see below) we've also created the Castrol hospitality areas in Vienna, Basel, Bern and Zurich. The spaces are used to entertain Castrol's guests pre and post match.
As such we've we've made them all look and feel like team changing rooms. This ties in with Castrol's 'Inside Man' positioning and is part of a wider guest journey that starts with the invitation and travel documents we designed and includes a glimpse inside the 'Mangers Office' with one of the Castrol Ambassadors (Wenger, Collina, Hitfeld, Butrageno) the night before a game.
The pictures show the Zurich event which was held in a fabulous restaurant (La Salle) that's situated in an old ship builders yard.
As such we've we've made them all look and feel like team changing rooms. This ties in with Castrol's 'Inside Man' positioning and is part of a wider guest journey that starts with the invitation and travel documents we designed and includes a glimpse inside the 'Mangers Office' with one of the Castrol Ambassadors (Wenger, Collina, Hitfeld, Butrageno) the night before a game.
The pictures show the Zurich event which was held in a fabulous restaurant (La Salle) that's situated in an old ship builders yard.
Monday 9 June 2008
Castrol Performance Pitch - Day Three/Four and Five
Well the daily thing didn't quite work out now did it, so here's a summary…
By the end of day three we had a pitch including hoardings and a net, a big screen that works, a reception area, a TRACAB studio and a nearly complete changing room…
Finishing the pitch was made a little more complicated by the fact that we had to pick up half a tonne of sand to level out some of the lumps. We managed to find something appropriate from the DIY store on the way to site on Day 4, the only problem being that we had to get all the sand and four of us into an Opel Zafira!
The TRACAB team responsible for the tracking system and screen content arrived on day three with an incredible 12 people (more than set and AV conbined!) and set to working filling up their office with more computer hardware than NASA.
The good folks from GTMS powered on with the interior through day four - hanging the casement ceiling and cladding the second changing room, the tunnel and the players lounge. With Ben and James working through the night to get everything finished.
Meaning day five was all about snags, tweaks and Matt conducting staff training sessions while the finishing touches where being made around a bemused group of referees, security staff and hosts.
The last big job on day five was the installation of the large banner across the screen hoarding. We had decided to get this produced in a single piece to avoid the problem of joins and seams, the only downside being that if everything wasn't exactly as drawn we'd be in a bit of trouble. Thankfully it fitted pretty much perfectly (40 mm out over 18m isn't bad!) and bar one frightening moment with the German translation it finishes things off a treat.
Once we'd assembled a raft of ikea furniture, filled many bin liners full of rubbish and shocked the life out of the two cleaners who arrived at 06:00 on Friday to find a sawdust strewn structure in desperate need of a hoover things were pretty much completed.
All in all a pretty typical week on site, lots of hard work, some late nights and early mornings, much laughter, but mostly it's all about everyone pulling together to make sure it gets finished on time to the highests standard possible.
By the end of day three we had a pitch including hoardings and a net, a big screen that works, a reception area, a TRACAB studio and a nearly complete changing room…
Finishing the pitch was made a little more complicated by the fact that we had to pick up half a tonne of sand to level out some of the lumps. We managed to find something appropriate from the DIY store on the way to site on Day 4, the only problem being that we had to get all the sand and four of us into an Opel Zafira!
The TRACAB team responsible for the tracking system and screen content arrived on day three with an incredible 12 people (more than set and AV conbined!) and set to working filling up their office with more computer hardware than NASA.
The good folks from GTMS powered on with the interior through day four - hanging the casement ceiling and cladding the second changing room, the tunnel and the players lounge. With Ben and James working through the night to get everything finished.
Meaning day five was all about snags, tweaks and Matt conducting staff training sessions while the finishing touches where being made around a bemused group of referees, security staff and hosts.
The last big job on day five was the installation of the large banner across the screen hoarding. We had decided to get this produced in a single piece to avoid the problem of joins and seams, the only downside being that if everything wasn't exactly as drawn we'd be in a bit of trouble. Thankfully it fitted pretty much perfectly (40 mm out over 18m isn't bad!) and bar one frightening moment with the German translation it finishes things off a treat.
Once we'd assembled a raft of ikea furniture, filled many bin liners full of rubbish and shocked the life out of the two cleaners who arrived at 06:00 on Friday to find a sawdust strewn structure in desperate need of a hoover things were pretty much completed.
All in all a pretty typical week on site, lots of hard work, some late nights and early mornings, much laughter, but mostly it's all about everyone pulling together to make sure it gets finished on time to the highests standard possible.
Wednesday 4 June 2008
Castrol Performance Pitch - Day Two
It can get a bit frustrating once all the big stuff has been put up. Progress doesn't seem to be as visibly quick and all the hard work starts to go into the details.
Todays main task has been cladding the screen structure. A pain staking process of mounting, wiring and securing a series of 4.3 meter high flats gives the good folks from GTMS a(nother) day of hard graft.
While they ploughed on, the LED screen (PSL are looking after all the AV, wiring and the screen structure) is pieced together and winched up onto the truss, we spend a good while trying to get it's position spot on so the large banner will (fingers crossed) line up perfectly.
Inside the Lossberger, we get most of the first fix electrical in place, ready for the application of all the internal panels that will really make things start to look finished.
At about midday the strips of turf for the pitch arrive. Before this can go down we lay out a foam shock membrane that will help ease the impact on players feet. The turf is then rolled on top of this, cut and taped in place.
By 21:00 this is complete along with the front facade of the screen structure and it gives a real idea of how everything will look.
We manage a very enjoyable supper at about 22:30 with our client Toby, before heading back for some much needed kip.
Todays main task has been cladding the screen structure. A pain staking process of mounting, wiring and securing a series of 4.3 meter high flats gives the good folks from GTMS a(nother) day of hard graft.
While they ploughed on, the LED screen (PSL are looking after all the AV, wiring and the screen structure) is pieced together and winched up onto the truss, we spend a good while trying to get it's position spot on so the large banner will (fingers crossed) line up perfectly.
Inside the Lossberger, we get most of the first fix electrical in place, ready for the application of all the internal panels that will really make things start to look finished.
At about midday the strips of turf for the pitch arrive. Before this can go down we lay out a foam shock membrane that will help ease the impact on players feet. The turf is then rolled on top of this, cut and taped in place.
By 21:00 this is complete along with the front facade of the screen structure and it gives a real idea of how everything will look.
We manage a very enjoyable supper at about 22:30 with our client Toby, before heading back for some much needed kip.
Castrol Performanc Pitch - Day One
06:00 start on site, all pretty much as we expected. Spent the first hour or two marking out the structures, pitch and hoardings to make sure everything will fit together as planned.
The boys from Lossberger arrived and in an extraordinary display of efficency they erected and levelled the structure floor and erected the roof, panels and glass surround in under five hours. This allowed the set team to crack on and pretty much fit out the internal stud walls by the close of play.
It's always tense seeing a space that you've only seen on paper come together in the flesh. I'm pretty pleased with the end result, all the rooms feel comfortable from a space point of view and the people flow through the structure will work well - from registration to the first changing room, into the tunnel, out onto the pitch, back into the second changing room and finally on into the players lounge so they can see how they performed. We can have five groups of ten players on the site at any one moment and they'll never see each other - this means our throughput can be dramatically increased.
Meanwhile the truss structure on the steps came together as planned (though a little larger than drawn!) - it's weighted down with 6 tonnes of water ballast to prevent any movement from the wind.
The structure will hold the large outdoor LED screen that shows the live tracking system in action and also supports the array of cameras that follow and record the player's movement around the pitch. It will be clad with flats and then wrapped in a large printed graphic.
We finished up at about 20:30 before heading over to the Kempster production office to meet up with Jamie and see all the collateral we've been designing over the last few months, then quick bit to eat and home to bed by midnight.
The boys from Lossberger arrived and in an extraordinary display of efficency they erected and levelled the structure floor and erected the roof, panels and glass surround in under five hours. This allowed the set team to crack on and pretty much fit out the internal stud walls by the close of play.
It's always tense seeing a space that you've only seen on paper come together in the flesh. I'm pretty pleased with the end result, all the rooms feel comfortable from a space point of view and the people flow through the structure will work well - from registration to the first changing room, into the tunnel, out onto the pitch, back into the second changing room and finally on into the players lounge so they can see how they performed. We can have five groups of ten players on the site at any one moment and they'll never see each other - this means our throughput can be dramatically increased.
Meanwhile the truss structure on the steps came together as planned (though a little larger than drawn!) - it's weighted down with 6 tonnes of water ballast to prevent any movement from the wind.
The structure will hold the large outdoor LED screen that shows the live tracking system in action and also supports the array of cameras that follow and record the player's movement around the pitch. It will be clad with flats and then wrapped in a large printed graphic.
We finished up at about 20:30 before heading over to the Kempster production office to meet up with Jamie and see all the collateral we've been designing over the last few months, then quick bit to eat and home to bed by midnight.
Euro 2008 Fan Zone
I'm spending this week in Vienna at the Fan Zone while the Castrol Performance Pitch is being built ahead of the EURO 2008 tournament. Kempster have looked after all the project management and we're responsible for the design elements.
The pitch gives guests the opportunity to play a 10 minute 5-a-side game. During the game they are monitored by a remarkable piece of technology that will give them cold hard facts relating to their performance - including average speed, distance covered, percentage of time running, walking and sprinting, the number of goals/saves they made and also their position on the pitch over the entire game as a 'heatmap'.
All this information is made available to players online after the game in the form of a personalised player card. The card also contains an overall score that will rank their performance against all others who participate.
I thought I'd try and post a daily record of the site as it takes shape. First picture will be of an empty site at some ungodly hour tomorrow...
The pitch gives guests the opportunity to play a 10 minute 5-a-side game. During the game they are monitored by a remarkable piece of technology that will give them cold hard facts relating to their performance - including average speed, distance covered, percentage of time running, walking and sprinting, the number of goals/saves they made and also their position on the pitch over the entire game as a 'heatmap'.
All this information is made available to players online after the game in the form of a personalised player card. The card also contains an overall score that will rank their performance against all others who participate.
I thought I'd try and post a daily record of the site as it takes shape. First picture will be of an empty site at some ungodly hour tomorrow...
Tuesday 3 June 2008
Richard Rogers at the Design Museum
Managed to get to the Design Museum last weekend to see their Richard Rogers retrospective.
It was a very enjoyable hour or two spent browsing an extraordinary body of work.
Especially memorable for me was this model of his master scheme for the South Bank - I first saw it as a young boy visiting an architecture exhibition at (I think) the Royal Acadamy. It was looking at this particular model that I vividly recall being inspired by 'design' for the first time and fascinated by the fact that people did this stuff as a job.
The other item of personal interest to me was the dome, I spent a couple of years working on two of the zones when I was at Park Avenue. One of which was this scheme for Rest, that was never built. The model must have been one of the (many) made to show of the interior to the great and the good and features our design.
The exhibition elements were built by our friends at DHA, who've just finished working for us on an installation at the Bentley factory in Crewe. Their level of detail and finish was as spot on as ever
It was a very enjoyable hour or two spent browsing an extraordinary body of work.
Especially memorable for me was this model of his master scheme for the South Bank - I first saw it as a young boy visiting an architecture exhibition at (I think) the Royal Acadamy. It was looking at this particular model that I vividly recall being inspired by 'design' for the first time and fascinated by the fact that people did this stuff as a job.
The other item of personal interest to me was the dome, I spent a couple of years working on two of the zones when I was at Park Avenue. One of which was this scheme for Rest, that was never built. The model must have been one of the (many) made to show of the interior to the great and the good and features our design.
The exhibition elements were built by our friends at DHA, who've just finished working for us on an installation at the Bentley factory in Crewe. Their level of detail and finish was as spot on as ever
Keyholes
I'm always intrigued by what is going on behind building hoardings. I can frequently be found peering through gaps in the fence or up on tip toes trying to see what's going on behind the facade.
As such these simple "keyhole" windows on a Bond Street building site really hit the spot. A great way to let people know what's happening and to allow regular passers by to watch how things develop and feel involved with the construction.
As such these simple "keyhole" windows on a Bond Street building site really hit the spot. A great way to let people know what's happening and to allow regular passers by to watch how things develop and feel involved with the construction.
Friday 16 May 2008
Catch the Pigeon
This (very blurred) little fella got on at Hammersmith and off at Shepards Bush.
Personally, I would of thought it's quicker to fly, but what do I know.
Personally, I would of thought it's quicker to fly, but what do I know.
Thursday 15 May 2008
Road Trip
Spent much of the last week hopping around Austria and Switzerland looking at Euro 2008 venues. In four rather manic days I managed to visit Zurich, Vienna, Innsbruck and Salzburg. Here's some stuff I saw...
The Zurich stadium. Really impressive structure, it's hunkered down into the ground, so from the outside it looks like a single story building, great unrestricted viewing internally.
It's surrounded by large steel panels left untreated so they'll slowly rust to add character.
In the Zurich train station we spotted this animated light installation, made from an individually controllable grid of LED spheres. Had real depth and movement. Just been covered by The Cool Hunter (they have much better pictures and more info on who made it).
Swiss multistory car parks are a model in efficiency. Each level has a little digital read out telling you how many bays are available. Added to which each bay then has a little light above it - red for full, green for available. When looking down the line you can instantly tell which spaces are available and where they are.
The Ski jump tower in Innsbruck lives up to the hype, sure you've all seen the images of this Zaha Hadid designed beauty. It sits protectively over the town and has a cafe space on the very top floor with stunning views.
It's being used as a Fan Park for the tournament so we went to check it out, I managed to get out onto the launch platform and can assure you it's a very brave man who can throw themselves off from here.
The Zurich stadium. Really impressive structure, it's hunkered down into the ground, so from the outside it looks like a single story building, great unrestricted viewing internally.
It's surrounded by large steel panels left untreated so they'll slowly rust to add character.
In the Zurich train station we spotted this animated light installation, made from an individually controllable grid of LED spheres. Had real depth and movement. Just been covered by The Cool Hunter (they have much better pictures and more info on who made it).
Swiss multistory car parks are a model in efficiency. Each level has a little digital read out telling you how many bays are available. Added to which each bay then has a little light above it - red for full, green for available. When looking down the line you can instantly tell which spaces are available and where they are.
The Ski jump tower in Innsbruck lives up to the hype, sure you've all seen the images of this Zaha Hadid designed beauty. It sits protectively over the town and has a cafe space on the very top floor with stunning views.
It's being used as a Fan Park for the tournament so we went to check it out, I managed to get out onto the launch platform and can assure you it's a very brave man who can throw themselves off from here.
Spotted - The bloke from Hot Chip...
On our way to meeting in Hammersmith Catherine and I spied the fellow from Hot Chip in the next carriage (we think).
Be great if anyone could confirm or deny our 'spot' before we send it into Heat.
Be great if anyone could confirm or deny our 'spot' before we send it into Heat.
Meat Meeting
We've been doing a lot of work with the good people of Kempster. We're both working for Castrol to make their Euro 2008 sponsorship work as hard as possible.
At a recent meeting instead of the normal plate of dried biscuits more usually associated with such an occasion we were presented with this plate of cured meat.
Very good meeting etiquette and a pleasure to eat.
At a recent meeting instead of the normal plate of dried biscuits more usually associated with such an occasion we were presented with this plate of cured meat.
Very good meeting etiquette and a pleasure to eat.
Sunday 6 April 2008
Biscuits Of The World 6
More biscuit news, this time courtesy of Trine and her trip to Japan. This makes these beauties the furthest flung of the series so far and jolly tasty they are to.
Our lack of skill in the Japanese language makes identifying the flavour a tad tricky, but so far we're reasonably sure there is a lime one, an orange one, a green tea one, several sesame ones and many more that remain a mystery.
Our lack of skill in the Japanese language makes identifying the flavour a tad tricky, but so far we're reasonably sure there is a lime one, an orange one, a green tea one, several sesame ones and many more that remain a mystery.
Tie in the office
So after two years faithfull permilance service, Mr Colledge is finally 100% full time with us, too celebrate and mark his first day as a corporate wage slave he became the first person ever to wear a tie in the office...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)