Presented by Julian Sykes, Hoffi's brand workshop is perfect for developing an understanding of branding and how it is integral to your company.
During the morning Julian will discuss examples of what branding is, what it is not and why having a good brand is valuable for your business. Covering what the key ingredients of a good brand are, concentrating on how to use your brand to position itself in the marketplace.
8.30 - 9.00 Networking and refreshments.
9.00 - 9.30 Understanding brands how they evolve within the marketplace.
9.30 - 10.00 Workshop: Develop a rich understanding of your customer and how they interact with your brand.
10.00 - 10.30 Networking and refreshments.
10.30 - 11.00 The Future: How brands are changing within the market place.
11.00 - 11.30 How trends affect your brand.
11.30 - 12.00 Networking and questions.
When: 9am - 12pm Friday 2 December 2011
Where: Enterprise House, Cardiff Bay, CF10 5LE
If you would like further information on our seminar, please contact Hoffi's brand director Julian on 029 2048 7941 or e-mail shwmai@hoffi.com to book your place.
Please remember places are limited, so please remember to book early!
So after my first piece about the Cardiff Design Festival and some of the more business/design related events I thought I would write a bit about the smaller events that centred around designers socialising and generally getting to know each other. It's an odd paradox while most designers spend their entire day developing to things to communicate and make lives easier we sometimes aren't the most social of people. So I think the social events are really at the core of Cardiff Design Festival. Without designers on board then the festival is never going to be what it could. So the events that I went to were (for obvious reasons) the NakedWales pub quiz, and the Design Wars out the back of Milgi.
I think both offered something totally different. The quiz was a great chance for people to catch up or meet, have a few drinks, and answer (or maybe not) some quiz questions. The great thing is that we have done three of these quiz's over the years and each time it has got busier and busier until this year when we ran out of chairs. So while I can't say what it was like as I had to read the questions out I think people had a good time? Let us know what people thought.
The Design Wars started last year and I think from hearing about it from other people it was a highlight. So this year I had to pop in and see what it was all about. I think the idea is great and it pulled in a variety of of students, practicing designers and just people interested in what was going on. I think the thing it made me think was that the Design festival did start to bring together recently graduated designers together. Almost the length of the festival has allowed them to grow up with the festival and now as people who are practicing they are now supporting it.
We have been working with Rubicon for a couple of years now slowly developing a new brand for them. Over the last few months we have slowly introduced their new brand on some communications to the public, but over the next month or two, there will be a new website, more communications, t-shirts and hoodies for the pupils and of course a new sign for the building. I popped over to the signage company this morning to get a sneak preview of the sign, installation will be next week and we are really looking forward to seeing it in the night!
The first two weeks of October have gone by and with it, so has Cardiff Design Festival 2011. I managed to miss most of last years festival as I was busy working on a project. So this year I was determined to go to as many events as possible. Firstly I think from the year break it has really shown me that the festival feels a lot more solid and a great two weeks of events. I think there are levels of events now, within the festival. Events for designers and business, to social events for designers, right through to events that were put on by designers that attracted a public audience. Definitely from the 2009 event there seems to be a big progression. So I am going to give you a quick over view of some of the events I attended and give you an idea of what I thought.
I think I might go in reverse order. So the last event I attended was Design Wales' Service Design seminars at the Pierhead building. speakers were Ben Reason from Live|Work and Nick March from Sidekick Studio's. Both companies practice service design at different levels. Live|Work are a huge established service design company working with large clients from all over the world. Where as sidekick studio's are, (as the name implies) a much smaller studio working on smaller digital service design projects.
So what did I think?
For me the work Live|Work showed and how Ben described the way they felt design was going was bang on. But I don't think it gave me much insight into them as a company. I think for people just getting into this arena then I could see it being really interesting, but it didn't really hold the attention. Second up was Nick. Who discussed the transition sidekick studio's are going through right now. Instead of just doing client based work. They are now developing projects internally and then trying to sell them. The projects he discussed such as Buddy and the Amazings were really interesting and it will be interesting to see if they do manage to get this going long term. I think Designers have for a long time made off shoot businesses. It is nothing new. Elmwood for example have for many years had their own tea brand and more recently launched a boutique beer. Traditionally designers have often sold one off designs within the shop section of their websites.
What I felt was slightly different about Nick's viewpoint were the requirements of the project in the first place. A mini value set, or mini brief if you like. This helped them decide on whether the project should go forward. In a nutshell all the projects had to be "digital products that make money, change lives and put a smile on people's faces" with the aim to "make our society better". So for me with general interest in this subject it was interesting to see this type of model within a commercial company. Granted they do get a lot of their initial start up funds from research pots and other funding schemes, but long term it left me questioning is this the way we should look at developing projects and companies for the future?
This thought brings me nicely to another event I helped out in at the Old Library. EDC had for a few months now been talking to Llamau – a Welsh based charity that do great work with young people. For many years they have worked with them to develop social enterprises. So we worked them to try and develop their projects in a one day design workshop. Working through the business generation workshop diagram, we developed a number of small exercises that allowed people to explore their initial business ideas and hopefully get them to think about their potential customers, and also who would be needed to make the business a success. I guess looking back on both these two events. Design has a real opportunity to make a difference within lives for good and also generally across society in general. I think regardless of the client. We should be looking to advise about how to make things 'better'.
I will write another post about other events soon.
Posted by Andrew Thomas
Those who have spoken to me recently will know that I've started keeping chickens, so what else could my bag illustration be but an exploded diagram of the first Chicken coop that I built earlier this year. If only I had this when I first built the ark.
So following on from Julian's blog on his design:
http://www.hoffi.com/blog/julian-sykes/5p-carrier-bag
I'm throwing my design into the ring, there are 3 more designs to come
Well this year Wales has taken the bold step of charging for plastic bags. You can get more information about this from Cynnal Cymru's website. The idea is obviously to reduce plastic waste and get into bringing your own bags to the shops. So we thought it was a great idea to give you the chance to get some really cool canvas bags designed but our own fair hands.
This is my design which is still in progress. I am wrestling with the idea of whether I should also have 'I DON'T LIKE EGGS' written large on it. More bag designs form the rest of Hoffi to come very soon.
Which one do people prefer???
