L+B Team Updates
We’ve had lots of people in the studio this summer with two new members of our team, and no less than 8 student placements!
Welcome to Zara Farrar and Bob Wilson. Zara, who is now in charge of production and admin, has a fantastic range of skills and interests. She is a drama graduate, spent two years as an Apple Genius solving all manner of computer problems, creates webisodes at events, and sings in a choir in her spare time – and if all this wasn’t enough, Zara also bakes exceedingly good cakes! We knew that Bob Wilson was the right designer for us when we understood just how passionate he is about typography – type is absolutely the core of all we do. A recent graduate with a First Class degree, Bob set up his own online type foundry, Typespec, which won him a Graduate Showcase Excellence Award for Typography, and he has designed several original fonts.
We had a massive response to our offer for student placements, eventually whittling the applications down to second year students Becca Hersey and James Flint, followed by graduates Gemma Hockey, Vicky Perry, Dario Utichi, Mina Bach and Lucy Doolan. They brought new ideas and enthusiasm (and a fascinating insight into design education around the UK), and got stuck into a variety of projects ranging from logos, Christmas cards, slideshows and the Shelf of Shame website (you’ll just have to wait for that one!). They all told us how useful the work experience was, and we were delighted to hear that several have since got design jobs. Keep in touch guys! We’ll be offering more placements in the Spring – please email us if you are interested.
And finally - best wishes to Russell for his future at the BBC. He'd applied to be a website picture researcher before coming to us but it wasn't til June that they offered him a job in the new BBC Salford. It was too good an opportunity to miss, and we know he'll do well - he did some great work for us and we enjoyed having him as part of the team here.
Thrilled to see David Walliams (accompanied by an entourage of canoes, filmcrews and support teams) this afternoon as his epic fundraising 140-mile Thames swimming challenge passed our studio at Mortlake.
Find us on Facebook
If you're on Facebook (and having resisted it for ages we're enjoying reconnecting with all sorts of people!) do visit our L+B page. We'll use it to post photo albums (for example more from Anthony's India trip) as well as studio news. We've also put "like" buttons on our DesignSpeak articles, and hope these might get a wider audience this way (they answer questions that we really do get asked frequently so should be of general interest!). Click here for our Facebook page.
App Design for Theatre Ninjas
Here at L+B we’re huge fans of the Edinburgh Festival so we were really excited about being asked to redesign a website and iPhone App by the Theatre Ninjas team. The original app, launched last year, helped people find free tickets for the thousands of shows at the Festival. Theatre Ninjas’ innovative idea took everyone by surprise and they got onto the prestigious Sunday Times App list. This year they’re going back to the Festival with a new-look website and app designed by L+B, featuring the little Ninja helpers which Mark created, and a revamped logo. After working with the enthusiastic Theatre Ninjas team we’re confident that they’re going to go far – check out the new website.
L+B Rebrands
It's taken us a bit longer than the somewhat optimistic “New Year”, but our new brand is finally in place – and we'd love to hear what you think!
It was time to refresh, and Mark came up with the + concept, illustrating “design plus”. This perfectly sums up everything that we’re about as we regularly supply/ research/ commission or advise on all the component parts needed for a successful job, not just the design. Over the years we’ve done everything from the expected (planned websites, written reams of copy, set up electronic and paper mailing systems, organised printing, produced 28,000 training kits on CD ROM) to the slightly less predictable (made a lego cow for a campaign, found someone to print beachballs at a couple of days' notice, created a Flash presentation based on a pupil’s anti-bullying project).
Mortlake to Mumbai
Last autumn Anthony undertook a two-week photo assignment for PETA India. He and PETA President Ingrid Newkirk travelled over 2,500 miles documenting PETA's hands-on animal protection work.
On Ant's return, L+B created a series of posters illustrating solutions to common animal cruelty issues, such as yoking a horse and a bullock together (horses' strength is in their chests, not their shoulders, and the animals are different heights). These stylised yet simple infographics explain proper animal care and are designed to be understood whichever of the 114 languages people speak, as well as by the majority of the target audience who are unable to read any of them.
While they were in Mumbai, PETA launched the "Oil Without Toil" campaign, where they swap a customised tuk-tuk for a bullock which has been used to pull a delivery cart, and Anthony was on hand to come up with some instant graphics.