Thompson Brand Partners

Music to our ears

The new identity for Leeds College of Music is looking very sexy indeed.

But what's been the most satisfying about this new brand refresh is the client's renewed sense of excitement and incredible passion for the new work we've been producing for Leeds College of Music.

Here's a few tasteful artistic images of the latest printed materials. Looking the business.

Wait til you see the prospectus.

Lepidoptery

As most if you will know, Lepidoptery is the study and observation of Butterflies.

A few of us became temporary lepidoptorans during the recent branding project of the UK wide recruitment group IHR due to the imagery we used as part of their brand language.

We settled on butterflies as a rather obvious (but often overlooked in this context) metaphor for the effect they have on the careers and lives of the people they work with and it turned into a rather beautiful and very differentiated brand identity that we recently launched.

The butterflies themselves were particularly difficult to source and most of them were imported (not alive of course) and they now adorn the reception walls of the new offices of The IHR Group in Leeds. The photography was by Lee Funnel

The stationery arrived yesterday and very cool it looks too. Here's a non designer snap to be going on with. We'll be taking some cool shots as we quite fancy entering it into some awards.

Who watches the watchmen?

Well, me for a start.

I have an interest to declare on The Watchmen. First published in 1986, it was the first 'graphic novel' of it's kind and pretty much revolutionised not only the genre, but superheroes in general. And I loved it.

I firmly believe that without Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbon's creation, we would never have had the dark re-imagining of superheroes and in conjunction with Frank Miller's Dark Knight, changed the world of fantasy film making forever. Never has so much been owed to so few etc.

So it was with some nervousness that I approached Zack Snyder's attempt to put on screen what had been widely thought to be 'unfilmable'. Moore of course has disowned it (as with all his previous movie versions, quite rightly in some cases) but he needn't have done that.

I think the film is very game attempt at capturing the rich complexity and incredible ambition contained in the original book. It was a book that always wanted to be more that a comic book and challenge the notion that serious and adult storytelling could be told through this medium. 

The film captures this beautifully and because of the 18 certificate it doesn't seem beholden to creating a 'superhero blockbuster' by filling it with action, dumbing down the layers of complexity, cutting back on the violence and toning down the very adult themes. It's a very grown up film and I imagine hard for modern audiences to get to grips with (for starters, its almost three hours long) in particular the existentialist heart of the film and quite unpalatable structure by modern standards.

Visually, it's a joy to behold and the art direction is straight out of the book which is quite remarkable given its age. Non superhero fans will find much to enjoy in this but may find some of Moore's cod philosophising a little hard to swallow. All in all though, well worth seeing on the big screen before it scuttles off to the inevitable Blu Ray special edition.

Scottish toilet discovery

Josh is on holiday this week.

We all thought he'd probably gone to Cornwall. Or even Lanzarote. Tenby was a possible.

Imagine our surprise when we discover he's halfway through a weeklong tour of pub toilets in the highlands of Scotland. 

Ever the trailblazer, Josh is truly at the cutting edge of package holidays leaving our frankly pathetic attempts at cool or edgy vacations well behind.

Imagine further the double bonus, then, whilst visiting the mens room in 'The Poncy English Sassenach' (in Paisley) he discovers a poster that he has designed for NHS Direct! Now that's fame for you.

Coming to a urinal near you. If you spot one in your local gents (a poster that is) - take a snap of it and send it to us.

1985

Imagine a world where all of the known super villains of the Marvel universe can run riot without being checked by their super hero nemeses.

If the thought of that gets you excited (and it did me) then '1985' is the graphic novel for you.

Now I realise that this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it really is well worth a look. 

The real fun is spotting the super villains as they show up one by one and seeing if you can correctly identify who's who by the havoc they are wreaking. Some of these guys I last saw in original Spiderman, Avengers or Fantastic Four comics and to see them again under the leadership of Victor von Doom (of course) is a joy.

Geeky.

Museums, museums and more museums...

Chatham last week... Jorvik this week. Thankfully we didn't get into a fight with a Viking.

Ahoy there!

Friday last week was spent at The Historic Dockyard Chatham to talk about launching an exciting new part of the museum opening in 2010. Located on the River Medway, the Dockyard is a unique maritime heritage attraction. For 414 years Chatham Dockyard provided over 500 ships for the Royal Navy, and was forefront of shipbuilding, industrial and architectural technology.  Chatham dockyard closed in 1984, and 84 acres  of the Georgian dockyard is now managed as a visitor attraction by the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust.

Apart from the stunning Georgian and Victorian architecture, the extensive maritime collections and attractions, there are three historic warships. The HMS Gannet (1878), HMS Caviler (1944) and HMS Ocelot (1961), all fully boardable and manned by experts. Because the weather was so good it made it a great experience.

They are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year so well worth keeping up to date on the events and paying a visit.

Birmingham, Essex and back again

Well the week I planned certainly has taken a few twists and turns. Two big tenders that we submitted on Friday and Monday have resulted in a shortlisting for interview which means two very short notice trip to Birmingham and Chelmsford on subsequent days and if we win, back down to Brum on Friday!

There's lots of hard graft in the building with almost day to day trafficking meetings to make sure we deliver on our promises (we're big on that). We've a couple of big brand programmes underway and another about to be started, so it's all hands on deck. 

It's Teva (big Pharma company) week in artwork too - and the time of the month when some very large copy heavy docs land and are turned around within two days. Suffice to say there's a lot of concentration and swearing involved.

Should be able to use the train to catch up on the other stuff and prep for the meeting on Thursday. If we get past the winning post of both of these projects I'll post some more information on them. They're both really cool and interesting projects. Both are arts and cultural so right up our street, so we'll see.

Finally Hayley has just joined us for 6 months to help out in finance and admin support - so welcome aboard Hayley. She helped us out when Anna bust her leg in February so we thought it would be a good idea to get her back. As well as being a super efficient member of the team, she's a fine artist. There's more to her than meets the eye. Have a look here

Standards

There's a lot of people bemoaning either the lack of standards or that standards are slipping these days.

Not Standards Board for England. Oh no. They are big on Standards (as you'd expect).

They are the strategic regulator for all of the elected local authority officials across the country and here's a sneak peek of their annual assembly design materials that are literally hot off the press.

There's more to follow, but for now...

Switzerland

I'm back in the office this week after my skiing trip in the Swiss Alps. Great fun, even though a few blizzards meant I ended up doing an excellent impression Sir Ranulph Fiennes... its a good look.

In between masquerading as a polar adventurer I came across some nice postcards of post-war ski posters by artist/designer Martin Peikert.