For the the past few months Hoffi has been working in partnership with S4C, BBC, WMC, Creative Skillset Cymru, Media Academy Wales and Welsh Government to create the branding for Digital Cardiff Week.

Digital Cardiff Week is a major event hosted by Wales Millennium Centre between June 24-27, 2013, with free talks, training and events for the digital and creative industries.

Digital Cardiff Week brings together the best talent in the public, private, educational and training sectors to explore new ideas, innovation and opportunities across the whole digital spectrum. The event is led by a number of partners including BBC Cymru Wales, S4C, Cardiff Council, Creative Skillset Cymru, BAFTA Cymru, Media Academy Wales and the Welsh Government.

Highlights of the week include Digital Futures Day, which will look at what digital broadcasting will look like in a converged, internet-connected media environment; Digital Skills Day, a day of free taster training sessions from across the production chain; the Wales Games Development Show 2013, showcasing games and interactive development companies and projects from across the digital media industry in Wales; and Digital Economy Day, which will see the best talent from the Welsh creative industries come together with their digital sector counterparts to explore new ideas and identify areas of digital convergence.

The events is happening in 7 days so for further details about #digitalcardiff, including a full schedule and booking links, please visit Digital Cardiff Week website

I'm not sure where it all came from, but I woke up one morning and thought, today i'm going to make some macaroons. Didn't give it a second thought that macaroons are very difficult to make or that i'm as good as baking as I am at football (crap by the way)

So thanks to Mary Berry I attempted my first batch, which to be fair went better than expected, but they weren't as smooth as they should be, the colour was a bit pale and the 'feet' (the fluffy bit) was blowing out. See below:

So a bit or research on the texture and I found out that even though the ground almonds you buy are very fine, they need to be sieved and processed further to get a smoother finish. This did help the texture, but it's still not as smooth as it should be. Colour was still a problem though, it was still very pale, as you can see in the below pictures they go in quite pink but come out pale. The feet are still blowing out though, so two problems to tackle

Ok, so liquid food colouring is a no no, it thins our the mixture a bit but more importantly it really fades when cooking. The solution? gel food paste, it's very thick so doesn't thin the mixture out and keeps it colour when cooking, problem solved. Next problem, the feet, so more research and the heat in the oven is crucial and I don't trust my oven so an oven thermometer was purchased. Turns out my oven is about 10 - 20 degrees out!, so I have the perfect temperature, but what else? I found that I should be using two sheets of parchment paper to insulate the bottom of the macaroons, this stops them cooking to quick and causing the blow out of the feet! Things are looking up now, but I still need to get the mixture smoother and the right consistency, I think this is to do with the eggs. I have read that there is an ageing process to the egg whites and that you should separate them out and leave them in an air tight container for 2 days before mixing as fresh egg whites are not the best for mixing? Below are the latest efforts, I will be carrying on with experimenting to get them perfect!

So after 6 years of trying, laughs, sweat, headaches, anger issues, I did it, I won photomarathon UK 2012.

If anyone is not familiar with Photomarathon; Over 12 hours you have to take 12 pictures on 12 given topics. It’s not your physical condition, but your sense of improvisation, fun and creativity that is stressed throughout the Photomarathon.

I don’t think this quite gets over the physical and mental stress of it all, you are given the first 4 topics at 10am in the morning, another 4 at 2pm and the remaining 4 at 6pm. These are usually one word topics such as “press” or friendship. The challenge then is to think of a single photograph that will capture this topic, easier than it sounds. You need to take the photograph and move on to the next topic, you can’t go back to a previous topic either, unless you want to delete any pictures you took previously, as all pictures have to be in the order given. 12 hours sounds like a long time to take just 12 photographs, but trust me it is not.

Very happy to be winning this year, below is a selection of my images this year

More can be seen on my Flickr

My weekend made me think about how we interact with people less and less while buying products or services. It seems that as new technology comes out the less it makes us need to speak to anyone else, I realised last night that I nearly went the whole weekend without hardly interacting with anyone.

Let's start off filling the car full of petrol, I'm able to use the 'Pay at Pump' feature at most garages. I can drive up, put my card in fill my care up and drive off without having to speak to anyone.

Next stop was the hotel, here I was able to use an app on my phone to pay for my parking outside the hotel and then check in to my room using their self check in service. I had already paid online so didn't have to make any transaction.

So I then needed to get to get into the city centre to have some food before seeing a show. Best way to get in was a bus and being in London I had my Oyster Card. My card was already topped with credit online, so I was able to jump of the bus, swipe my card, and jump off at my destination. I'm now 5 hours into my day and even though I have interacted with a few services I haven't spoken to anyone!

I was now hungry and I had to interact with someone, which was nice, being sat in a restaurant and having someone provide a human service, asking me how I was etc. From all the services I interact with, restaurant service is the one I value the most and can't see this disengaging with people and hope it doesn't, unless of course you love those vending machine restaurants in Japan!

Time for the show, so on the way there I needed to pick up some drinks (no way was I paying venue prices :) ). A quick stop off in tesco, pick up a drink and of course pay at the self checkout. Now i'm a fan of these when you want to get in and out quickly and buying one or two things, not your entire weekly shop! I really do think these have a place in our shops, except where you need to speak to someone for advice. Next stop was the show, I had already purchased the tickets online, printed them out myself and had them in my pocket. All that had to be done was for the door person to scan my ticket. Now i'm not sure if I'll count this as human interaction as the door person wasn't very talkative.

So show over, back to the hotel and of course, bus and underground it is with the oyster card, all the way back to the hotel and to bed!

Next morning, time for breakfast, I had already purchased breakfast online so no transactions were needed. It was all self service, so I filled up on as much as I could and it was time to go. We needed to check out and of course this was done without speaking to anyone, just drop the key card into the slot at reception. Decided to stay around a bit longer and see some Museums that day, so topped up the car parking with the app, jumped back on the bus and underground and visited Saatchi Gallery, V&A museum and the Science Museum without having to speak to a single person

After tiring myself out around all the museums it was time to jump back on the undergaround and bus, head back to the car, jump in and head back to Wales. Of course we had to through the Severn Bridge toll, but this was easily done by throwing the money the coin bin, then we were home!

I suppose you can choose to interact with people or not at certain points, such as petrol stations, tesco and the hotel but I choose not to. Is this a good or bad reflection on their service design? Is good that they have made things so easy for me that I can interact with them as quick as possible or a bad thing that the interaction is so quick they are not leaving me with an experience to remember. Personally I'm a fan of automated things, but only in certain places, but the trend is going that soon these places will also been taken over and we will interact even less with each other, sad times I think.

Another week and another launch, this time it was the turn of Rubicon Dance. We were invited along to Rubicon on Friday to help them introduce everyone to the new brand and website. It was great to see various people from the industry supporting Rubicon and they venture on a new chapter to grow and become even more successful, we even got to see a few of their dancers perform

We have been working with Rubicon Dance. for over 2 years now, initially starting with developing the class brochure and other printed work to rebranding them and developing a new website.

Rubicon Dance provide classes for all, splitting between part-time and full-time courses. Rubicon Dance wanted to develop their brand and also their brand elements in line with moving to a more commercially viable model (relying less on arts funding). We developed a number of elements that could be used to bring new audiences to Rubicon.

The challenge with Rubicon was to move the brand feel of community to one that still caters for community and in the same breath it is professional and produces great dancers. With the quality of the teaching being second to none. We worked to develop this slightly more grown up brand and produced communications to reinforce the two areas that Rubicon inhabits.

You can view some of the work we have done for Rubicon Dance in our Case Study

Yesterday was the first official launch of Coreo Cymru, Creative Dance Producer, Wales in Chapter Cardiff. Coreo Cymru is a new initiative set up to encourage and manage the creation and production of new dance activity, and to support the development of Wales based artists and companies.

Initiated and supported by the Arts Council of Wales, the three year programme is being developed in partnership with Creative Producer, Carole Blade and Chapter, Cardiff and also includes partnerships with Wales based organisations along with international partnerships and co-producers.

Coreo Cymru aims to connect with audiences by offering a mix of inspiring ways to engage with the programme, offering new and accessible ways of presenting dance.

Working with Carole over the past few months, we developed the name, brand identity, brochures, leaflets, banners, video sting and holding page (finished website to follow in a few months). As part of the branding process we came up with the concept for the imagery and set up a photoshoot. The idea behind the imagery was to show an emerging form ready to grow and develop, similar to the brand. We are really looking forward to developing the brand in new and exciting ways as the programme of shows comes to life. The brand will respond and develop to each of the individual shows within the programme over the next 3 years.

Below are some behind the scene shots of the photoshoot, it was done with a paddling pool, gantry system, lots of bath milk, luke warm water and very understanding model (Chloe Loftus) and a photographer with vertigo issues (Jorge Lizalde)

Morph was the small scale test!

So following on from each of our previous posts about our bag designs we finally took a day out from Hoffi and visited the lovely people at PrintHaus to silk screen the bags. After a few false starts (Andrew) and trying to remember back to our student days we finally got in the swing of things. We had a 100 bags to print each and we mostly came back with a 100 each!(Andrew didn't). It was great fun taking the time out do something different, check out some images below of our progress:

Below are the finished products, these are available to buy now on our Etsy shop, the "shopping robot" bag is looking cool I think... feel free to let us know which one you prefer.

Following on from my previous post showing a quick preview of the new signage for Rubicon Dance, below is a quick snap of it up on their building. There is a little bit more to the sign that is shown here, so watch out for a new case study on Rubicon Dance on our work page soon that will reveal everything!

Also on the same day, the new t-shirt and hoodies arrived, here is a quick picture of me and Elin modelling a couple of designs, I think wearing this t-shirt will make a better dancer*

* others will disagree

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!

Last night Renato (follow him here @Kyanos)twittered a link to Yowayowacamera a Japanese photographer that takes pictures of herself levitating (and some cats). Amazed by how eerie her pictures looked (and egged on by Renato) we decided to have a go for ourselves

Above are her efforts, and below are ours :)