In April Cheltenham housed its very first Design Festival. Spread over three days the programme showcased influential figures from the design industry. Set with a Friday day ticket I prepared myself in a sponge like manner, to be inspired. Talks covered all design disciplines, with speakers from an impressive line up of creative backgrounds.

I'd signed up for four talks throughout the day (with a convenient 1 hour lunch break for afternoon tea!). Simon Kavanagh gave us an insight into The KAOSPilots, a school positioned half way between a business and a design school. Their values are based on risk-taking and they pride their programme on being in the real world with an aim to bring out "positive social change through personal growth". Students present their big idea and lecturers support them (no matter how crazy they are). Extraordinary achievements included the Baisikeli idea where a student shipped Danish scrapped bicycles to Tanzania where they're repaired/rebuilt and sold, with all profit forming the foundation for the creation of a sustainable bicycle industry in Africa. He asked us what our big idea was, I couldn't quite answer. But the prospect of one idea transforming somebody's life was quite powerful and it reminded me that as a designer, we all have the potential to shape lives.

(image credit - Peter Stanners)

Not as design led as I'd expected, it became clear the event was about all aspects of creativity. It delved into processes, responsibilities, and innovation, it made us question our roles and what we can do with them. Design is just a small part of that collaboration. I also learnt, that it was okay not to understand what's going on all of the time! Nick Jankel, a life and leadership coach discussed chaos and where progress is concerned - it pays off to go deeper into the rabbit hole, for better results.

Each speaker had a different story, a different perspective but the one thing that remained consistent was the vision. Creative thinking affects our daily lives and also ensures the development of our future. From Simon Waterfall discussing the Sat Nav sucker marks on windscreens (that dramatically increased car crime in a matter of weeks), to Steve Haggarty explaining the cultural shifts in Chinese markets with youth culture and brands. 

I think it was safe to say I left feeling exhausted, but truly inspired. It's quite exciting to think that with perseverance, the right tools and platform - what one individual, or collaboration are capable of...

This post deviates from our normal digital media and graphic design related articles, and is in reference to our working environment at our Birmingham headquarters.

Substrakt started, and have grown up, in Digbeth. We opted for this area as we felt it had promise for regeneration as well as a respect for history and heritage, which is attractive to creative businesses like ours. We have enjoyed our time here, and have been housed within vibrant creative spaces of Custard Factory followed by our current home at Fazeley Studios. We've keenly followed public realm and architectual development in this area and the wider city.

I walked past Island House today, which essentially acts as a gate house to Digbeth and East side if you come down the Fazeley Street way. A good number of our team, and also clients, get to our studio from the city this way. To my horror I found that it was no longer there. I had heard rumors, but nothing confirmed... so this was indeed a surprise.

The re generation and activity around this area of Birmingham is exciting and mostly positive (bar the odd exception) with a new park and University campus as well as the addition of reputable organisations such as Birmingham Ormiston Academy arriving in the area. These sites are all new buildings. I'd like to know what the reasoning is behind the demolition of such a gorgeous building. From what I gather it was structurally sound, it housed the City Council arts team not so long ago, and didn't look too bad inside.

Was it to make way and create a view to the 'amazing' architecture? Was it just that the new hotel needed a car park? I'm not sure, but what I do know is that there must have been a way to keep this building standing. Are we so desperate to create a new identity for the city that we forget some of the old delightful buildings that have remained architectural pleasant for years and years.

I'm sure there is reasoning behind this and that someone will put me straight, but i'd like to hope that a huge amount of effort went in to trying to keep the building before the decision was made.

As a digital media business based in the Digbeth, an area named as a 'digital quarter', our desire to remain here has just decreased a little. No more surprises please!

Photo credit Brett Wilde

PS I've since found an article from Birmingham Mail that i'd obviously missed.

Last year a convo over a cuppa led to the exciting collaboration between myself and Birmingham Royal Ballet. Pointe Blank was born in May last year with a collection of works based on BRB's production of Coppelia, inviting 27 artists and designers to produce a piece of artwork to be exhibited.

With the success of the project I was pretty chuffed when Rob (my partner in crime at BRB) approached me back in December, inviting me to work on another Pointe Blank project with thorough support from all the company. It gave us an opportunity to really think about what the collaboration was about and what we were trying to do. The majority of the contributors had never been to the ballet before (me included) so we were really keen to tap into a new audience, the brief encouraging the designers to see the productions as a story, rather than a ballet. We felt that opportunities to collaborate were few and far between in Birmingham and with the use of a certain 140 character social media network we didn't have to search too far for talent!

This years production is Hobson's Choice. We were keen to keep the brief as unprescriptive as possible, allowing participants to be as creative as wanted to be. We filled the 27 spaces within a few hours with designers from Birmingham, London and Berlin!

We launched the collection on Monday 20th February at Birmingham Royal Ballet studios and it'll be exhibiting at 6/8 Kafe on Temple Row from 5th March. There's talks of a collaborative event with FAKE too, watch this space...

Last month I was invited to be part of B-Hive, sitting on the graphic design judging panel. B-Hive sees students and graduates from Birmingham’s universities and colleges pitch themselves and their work to the City's leading creative agencies, with the goal of securing themselves a four-week work placement. With myself, Lee and Jim all joining Substrakt straight from university a 3-4 years ago, we were really keen to get involved as we know how difficult the industry is, and how tough the competition can be! A four-week paid placement is an invaluable opportunity for gaining experience in a real studio environment.

The candidates came from the fields of digital, PR, graphic design, marketing and advertising, with a placement up for grabs in each discipline. All briefs followed the same campaign, each having their own objectives. Entries had be whittled down to 12 students who presented their ideas to our panel, including designers/directors from Orb Creative, Viva Aspire, Seal, Tomorrow People and Chosen. Think Dragons Den - with less dragon-like dragons.

The overarching campaign ‘Eat Birmingham’ was to position Birmingham as gourmet capital, communicating its diverse culinary offerings whilst improving perception scores of the city with great restaurants and bars. The graphic design brief was to unify it under one umbrella identity; a name and logo mark that can easily be displayed at participating restaurants to promote their contribution to Birmingham’s culinary diversity.

The level of work was really impressive from the students, five of which were given two two-week paid placements at two of the agencies involved. We went to the presentation evening in Zellig at the Custard Factory where the winners were announced. We are pleased to have Joseph Heeley (BCU) who will be joining us in June and Nathan Matthews (Met) in July who both impressed me with their unique approach and direction on the brief.

Photos courtesy of B_Hive, Taste Birmingham artwork by Joseph Heeley

We've recently re branded and developed a new website for Creative Alliance.

Creative Alliance is a group of experienced creative professionals working collaboratively to develop, support and train creative talent

It's been a great pleasure working with Creative Alliance, who are doing some really valuable work for the creative industries, notably their involvement with the creative apprenticeships programme.

Substrakt have also been working alongside Creative Alliance and Meshed Media on the all new Jobplot which went live earlier this week. More on this in a separate blog post soon.

Visit the new Creative Alliance website.

I've been away on two European trips in as many weeks. The first of which was to Amsterdam, and the 2nd was to the European ICT conference in Brussels. I'll come back to the Brussels trip, but for now i'll attempt a brief rundown of my jaunt to Holland.

The primary reason for this trip was my involvement with a project called Creative Metropoles, a project that presents a shared vision of 11 European cities on creative industries and creative economy. We heard from some seemingly very intelligent and afluent people running some interesting projects within the Amsterdam creative industries. One particular project that drew my attention was the Bureau Broedplaatsen, a project that subsidises and helps manage the development of creative spaces, http://bureaubroedplaatsen.amsterdam.nl/en/.

The added bonus of this trip was that I was able to attend the Amsterdam Picnic event, http://www.picnicnetwork.org/.

PICNIC is about innovative ideas for business and society. It is an annual three-day festival that blurs the lines between creativity, science, technology and business to explore new solutions in the spirit of co-creation. Curious minds eager to exchange their knowledge, ideas and skills gather at PICNIC, making it the place to create the future – together.

I attended some really engaging panels, which were extremely closely related to some of the work we've been doing here at Substrakt. In fact, one of the lab sessions took the same title as a project that we've been working on, Urban Lens (more to come on this soon). This particular session gave great input to our thinking on this project and explored how a city could be explored.

How do you experience the city surrounding you? As a series of buildings and streets, or a collection of data and connected objects? During the Urban Lenses Panel, a collection of experts will explore the city as they see it – combining services, sensors, objects and data.

The chaps from Tellart, who doing some pretty cool work, are especially worthy of note, http://www.tellart.com/

We design products, services, and environments that address human need and shape human experience. We work between worlds–analogue and digital, visual and physical, yesterday and today and tomorrow–because that is where most people live.

Urban Lenses Lab:
http://www.picnicnetwork.org/program/sessions/urban-lenses-lab.html

The Beyond Tourism session was highly relevant to some of our projects too, and explored the future direction of cultural content on mobile devices, http://www.picnicnetwork.org/program/sessions/beyond-tourism-future-directions-for-mobile-cultural-content.html

It would also be a crime not to mention the amazingly energetic and entertaining Pips Lab, presenting Diespace http://www.pipslab.nl/onlinepromo/diespace_subs.php

If you can get to this event then I would highly recommend it. I only managed to get to day 2 but the content throughout the days seemed to be of very high standard.

I certainly came away buzzing with ideas and inspiration.

2 days ago Typekit announced that Adobe was joining it's ever expanding roster of font foundries. For those unaware, Typekit is a way of getting more attractive fonts on your website, but in a more accessible, legal way. Fonts on the web have always been a hit and miss subject. You either go with images, cufon, sIFR etc (flash and javascript rendering) which have drawbacks, or go with the font's you know most people will have (Times New Roman, Arial etc).

In the last couple of years however services like Typekit have popped up, allowing webdesigners/developers to embed a vast range of fonts on a website, but remain fully selectable and legal. Most 'uncommon' fonts don't allow for embedding on websites, or just don't include the licensing terms for such things, so it's a bit of grey area. Typekit (and similar services) however deal directly with the type foundries, allowing you to use nicer fonts on the web for a subscription, which pays the foundries for the right to use them on the web. Everyone wins!

So what does Adobe bring to the table? Quite a few nice fonts actually. Some of my favourites of the bunch are Myriad Pro, Caflisch Script, Minion and Rosewood Fill, but many more. This also injects confidence in these type services if a heavyweight like Adobe is getting on-board. So hopefully eventually, any font should legally be available to use on the web (within reason). One question i've wondered though. How are some clients going to respond to paying a yearly subscription for fonts, when there are so many free ones available?

Here's a link to the Typekit press release.

We're loving the new Google image search at Substrakt. In creative terms, it feels a bit like unlocking a secret level on a game you've been playing for years. As the images keep appearing as you scroll down the page, it's got real photo album appeal - surprises, old favourites, cringe-making pics and genuine delights are revealed. So much easier to find what you need and keeps you engaged. It gives us Google natives another reason not to bother looking elsewhere.

However, as many commentators have pointed out, this new look and feel looks and feels like it's wearing a massive Bing costume. Oh no! Has Google copied Bing? Surely not again! How dare they? I think the answer to that's pretty simple - it's because it can and the risks of doing so are pretty minimal in terms of it's brand reputation.

Changing the way you look is way more risky than rolling out a new look from scratch. If you change your hair to match your favourite celebrity's, you worry that your boyfriend will like it, whereas when you first met him, I bet you weren't worrying about whether he liked your hair that much. But in reality, how many girls have been dumped because they got a bandwagon-jumping hipster haircut? The fact is, he loves you anyway, and will either have fun getting to know your new haircut, or grin and bear it when people run sniggering from you in the street. Because he's loyal and he thinks you're better than anyone else, the fool!

The same goes for Google - it instinctively knows as a brand that we'll appreciate the change and adapt to it. It also knows that its users won't care, in the main, that it copied Bing a bit. Much as the launch of Bing was a big deal and as we all know, there are other search engines out there, most people turn to Google as they appreciate the brand, are used to using it and frankly are a bit nervous of trying something new. To Google is a common verb to most of us now.

Fun with Google images - Substrakt in pictorial reference:

We have given the award winning Birmingham blog http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/ a little facelift.

This project was delivered by our resident branding heroine Claire Hartley, and Ryan Dean-Corke, new team member who has proved himself as a highly proficient web designer.

It was a great pleasure to deliver this project, as the blog is a great asset to Birmingham. Chris Unitt and the CiB team are about to launch a shop in the Bull Ring http://cibshop.wordpress.com/, exciting stuff, so we wish them all the best and look forward to doing some serious browsing!

We are working with Birmingham based blogger / social media consultant Chris Unitt (Meshed Media) to develop a West Midlands creative jobs board.

The primary aim of the website is to advertise jobs within the West Midland's creative industry, but it will also be a blog detailing latest news within the industry, tips from industry leaders and interviews to help potential employees improve their skills and industry knowledge.

The website has been launched, but is still a work in progress so feedback is welcome.