Thompson Brand Partners

Olympic Dillon

Delighted to see that Fontsmith's FS Dillion has been implemented as a signage font for a number of key venues at the London 2012 Olympic park, and it looks fantastic. Well done guys!

Take a look over at the Fontsmith blog.

Sculpture/Performance

If you're stuck for a Bank Holiday activity for this weekend, pop down to Yorkshire Sculpture Park and witness sculpture - live.

Artist Florence Peake is coming to Yorkshire to conduct the live build and then deconstruction of a monolithic structure before the eyes of a live audience. The build/performance begins at 17.00, is FREE to attend and will last for about an hour, with refreshments available (theatre-style). 

http://www.ysp.co.uk/events/florence-peake-make

Pimp my IKEA sofa

It seems so obvious, I can't believe no one beat Prettypegs to it... This Swedish company produce quirky, playful legs that screw into the bottom of IKEA sofas and beds, allowing you to quickly, easily and relatively cheaply update your furniture (well, it's cheaper than a new sofa anyway).

Prettypegs allow you to choose your design and colour, and will ship it all the way from sunny Sweden for you to install yourself, IKEA-style. 

Their website is nice too - www.prettypegs.se

Rach x

Disneyland Paris

 

 

 

 

 

We booked family trip to Disneyland Paris during the October school holidays and had a wonderful time. It’s funny but I started reading about the history of Disneyland Paris when I got back and was shocked to see that it struggled when it first opened with low attendance figures – amazing to think when it was heaving while we were there.

Apparently one of the reasons for its slow uptake was the name. Originally launched as EuroDisney, this was seen as a negative name. For Europeans the word Euro is a term associated with business, currency and commerce and not with the fun and excitement of a theme park. Euro was dropped in 1995 and Disneyland Paris was born. The power of words never fails to astound me!

Anyway, I though I would put down some top tips for anyone planning to visit Disneyland Paris in the not too distant future.

Coffee - You can’t get a decent cup of coffee for love nor money so if you need a certain amount of caffeine to get you going on a morning, you might need to think again.

Cost - You can pay up to €9 for a pint of beer and €17 for burger and chips (which is simply glorified McDonalds). At today’s exchange rates it becomes an expensive do. We took some basics with us to help combat the food costs.

Location - Choose your location well. We booked a self-catering hotel on the outskirts of Disneyland in a town called Serris.  The hotel was next door to a huge shopping mall that had a great supermarket and it provided a free shuttle to the Disney parks.

Footwear - Long days especially if you go over a special themed event such as Halloween. We spent over 14 hours on one particular day in the parks. Although the kids had a great time, my feet were not so sure.

Length - For us 3 days was enough. We actually went for 4 nights, 5 full days but we were ready for home after 3 days.

Travel - Check out flights versus train.  The flight time is approximately 1 hour and we flew from a local airport so no trip to London.  It also worked out cheaper to fly!

Shows - Watch them all. You’ll be pleasantly surprised as each one is different and they all offer some form of excitement – even the ones for the younger children.

Plan, Plan, Plan - The big rides offer a Fast Pass facility so you can book a slot to ride. The kid’s rides don’t and often have the biggest queues.  We found it best to get there early and jump straight on to the younger children’s rides before the queues started to form.

And finally,

French culture - It definitely takes some getting used to. Queue is not a word they seem to understand!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope this gives you some tips and you enjoy your time at Disneyland Paris, we certainly did.

When it rains, it pours.

Despite a long and productive relationship with this fantastic institution, never before have we had the pleasure of working on quite so many amazing projects with Leeds College of Music!

From the (newly revamped) prospectus, to banners, sticker and adverts, their new branding is really coming to life. But my favourite is the incredible vinyl wall installation that went up on Saturday morning - a collage of over 200 photos of students and alumni, Leeds music scene, visiting professors and everything in between. We're taking pictures as we write... Stand by!

Rachel

Pantone-chic

Hola Geeks:

9 different colours available for iPhone, 4 for iPad, available from a shocking £30 each in your local Apple store.

Now if you ask me, the Pantone mugs were pseudo-ironic cool, i.e. if I got one in my stocking, I'd secretly be pleased and insist on having my Earl Grey in nothing but. That chap on Come Dine With Me lining his kitchen with a spectrum on green mugs because he thought they were the height of designer cool? Get off my telly.

As for the iPhone cases - not for me thanks.

Rach x

New release from Fontsmith

We've been dying to show you this for ages. Its our first job with Fontsmith, introducing their brand new library font FS Pimlico, which was officially launched today. Here are some pics of the booklet mailed to their customers. 

And this is just the start! The next project is the big one. Its a set of booklets to celebrate Fontsmith's last '10 Years in Type' and it shaping up to be a classic. The booklets will feature the real stories of various classic library fonts including FS Me and FS Lola, bespoke typeface projects including Channel 4 and The Champions League, and the leading type design studio's client logo work. The booklets will be published in July, and you can register for a copy now at 10yearsintype.com.

Fontsmith chooses Thompson Brand Partners to help launch a new typeface and celebrate 10 Years in Type

London-based Fontsmith, has appointed Thompson Brand Partners to develop a marketing campaign for a new typeface that is due to launch in this month. The launch will also be the start of a larger campaign to celebrate Fontsmith’s last 10 years as a leading type designer.

Details of the new font have not yet been released, but we can confirm that it will be called FS Pimlico. Designed by Fernando Mello the font is described as a powerful sans serif designed to solve difficult typographic problems, available in a range of weights and styles.

Over the last 10 years, Fontsmith has become established as one of the leading international type design studios designing typefaces, fonts, logos and logotypes for a range of clients including UEFA Champions League, BBC, Channel 4 and Telefonica. The studio, led by Jason Smith, consists of a team dedicated to designing and developing high quality typefaces for independent release as well as bespoke fonts for international clients. The Fontsmith library includes such modern greats as FS Lola, FS Me, FS Albert, FS Sally and FS Joey.

The 10 Years in Type campaign will celebrate Fontsmith’s greatest achievements so far. For each, the compelling story of how the project came about, the inspiration and how each was taken through to completion will be told in the words of the individual designers involved in each. The campaign is due to break after the launch of FS Pimlico.

Founder Jason Smith is delighted with the progress made: “The last 10 years have been phenomenal for Fontsmith and we felt it was the right time to celebrate our achievements and share for the first time the inside stories of how each came about. Working with Thompson has been great. They are like-minded souls, type fanatics and get the way we think.

Ian Thompson, Creative Director of Thompson Brand Partners, is thoroughly enjoying the relationship: “We have been customers of Fontsmith for years and love what they do, so the opportunity to work with Jason and his team has been a bit of a dream for us. There have been so many highlights over the last 10 years, our biggest challenge has been deciding what to include and what to leave out.”

trainers at the ready folks.

It's been a while (4 years to be precise) since I took part in parkrun* at Leeds' Hyde Park and the last time I ventured online to sign up, their website was pretty basic/rubbish.

So last night when, due to a new health kick, I visited the website once more to see if the timings and locations of the events were still the same (which they are), I was met with a real visual treat. They've undergone a fabulous rebrand, really in-keeping the friendly, welcoming and eco-friendly ethos of the organisation. And it helps that I'm a complete sucker for cute animation.

Have a look here

Rachel x

*parkrun (no caps please) organise FREE 5k runs every single week in parks all over the country, normally on a Saturday morning. There's two within 3 miles of my current location behind my desk in fact. You just sign up once online by 6pm on the Friday and then you are free to attend as often as you like. It's not competitive (unless you want it to be), but can simply be used to keep fit, monitor your fitness and training, or for a bit of a weekend amble. It's also ridiculously sociable, always culminating in a post-run coffee at some nearby cafe. Do it.

A great brand is not always enough...

Times are tough. We all know that. And as brand experts, one of the best pieces of advice we give is the need to find and occupy a distinctive positioning in your market. Get this right, communicate your point of difference creatively, usually with the help of your own brand personality, and the rest should sort itself out. Right? Well, that's the theory.

This week Oddbins, one of my favourite brands, went into administration. Well, the brand didn't, but the company that owns it did. They have struggled against the supermarkets for years, and when the companies they owed money to decided not to accept 21p in the £ and a voluntary settlement (who can blame them), the administrators were called in. My hope in these situations is that the staff continue to be paid, which the guy in Street Lane said he has been. On Sunday night at least.

Established in 1963, the Oddbins brand has been built around a very distinctive personality. It stands out from the usual crowd of offies (as we used to call them) with its tone of voice. Great messages in the windows, knowledgeable staff with their welcome and sense of humour, Oddbins has always served me very well. Their recommendations have very rarely been anything other than great, and for someone that knows little about wine, its a great help.
So what went wrong? Well the obvious factor has been the power of the supermarkets. Stack it high and the masses will buy. We all love a good deal after all. Everyone moans about supermarket shopping and the convenience of buying everything in one go, but very few manage to avoid it. Oddbins has also made some mistakes too. It has concentrated on a very narrow slice of the market, selling wines of between about £8 and £15 a bottle. Nothing here to really compete in the mass market, which is looking for decent plonk for 6 quid or that ever popular brand of 3for. At the top end, Oddbins also used to look after the connoisseurs, with an excellent range of finer wines for the finer palette. But that went too, as the money men pushed too hard in too narrow a niche. And for all the efforts to create individuality and avoid generic POS, their game has noticeably slipped over the last couple of years, and their performance with it.

In the end, with the familiar tale of strangling debt, the brand has not been able to compete in our evermore competitive markets. So one of the most distinctive brands out there has gone the way of so many. I personally hope the brand lives on and can still be true to the itself. It sounds as if a number of buyers are in the frame, so the name at least will rise from the ashes. For me, there is definitely still room for specialist advice from a trusted advisor, which is what Oddbins is all about, and I for one will be supporting it as much as this moderate drinker can.