Presented by Julian Sykes (Brands Director), Hoffi's brand workshop takes place on Friday 14 September 2012 and is perfect for developing an understanding of branding and how it is integral to your company.
We 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 14 September 2012
Where: Enterprise House, Cardiff Bay, CF10 5LE
If you would like further information on our seminar, please contact 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!
Through our actions we influence others, or at the every least we affect them.
I wanted to think about this in a branding sense, and in particular the idea of branding a destination. Firstly lets think about a place as a person. As with a person a city has a personality both good and bad. It also has interests these might fade over time but there will always be an underlying nature or a core that runs throughout. Just like people a city will change and grow, I once remember reading that someone's personality changes approx every seven years. In time a city changes emphasise from housing, innovation, manufacturing, festivals all of these elements will seem to be more or less important at different times.
So I think for me what is really interesting is can we inspire a city? Can we make it change personality and can this be a genuine thing as opposed to a make over? As we are based in Cardiff I think it best to contextualise it through my experiences of the city. Cardiff is an interesting personality.
In it's modern guise (widely identified by many as being created through John Crichton-Stuart's work) it was a rich city, somewhere for trade and a port at the centre of the industrial revolution. It helped power the world economy through the black coal being pulled out of it's very heart further North in the valleys. Features that have since been formed from this and are now such an integral part of the city. Spaces such as the green spaces of the city and other iconic buildings such as the castle which due to it being in the centre of the city has to be a great personal attribute. But these are physical attributes what are the things underlying the city that make it ebb and flow. What are the things that excite the city and want the city to tell other cities about?
So through various work over the years our work with Cardiff Design Festival has tried to give the city a design interest a place that could potentially grow into a creative centre of excellence. The festival produced by Olwen and Angela with the support of Cardiff Met Uni, has indeed changed my experience of the design scene within Cardiff from one of a closed nature through to one that is opening up day by day. Only time will tell what impact in clients and projects these design companies get but the future has begun.
Secondly over the last two to three years I have been hugely involved in working with thinkARK , where we have produced a number of projects that have all commented on Cardiff in some way. Sometimes positive other times looking at what could be improved. But what I have come to realise recently is actually the work is an attempt to change and inspire the city to bring an ability and skill to it that it may not have had before. With this simple thought I felt that this might extend to all of the small 'events' being created in Cardiff. These are truly the unique parts of Cardiff. The independence, lack of funding and openness is what makes them unique. The small events when added together are huge part of events in Cardiff. Just as the smal businesses of the UK make up the majority of the UK economy so too does the small event.
So is it time to bring these to the fore? Make and give Cardiff it's heart through the genuine local events.
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
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 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???
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.
If you would like further information before you book, please contact Hoffi's brand director Julian on 029 2048 7941 or e-mail shwmai@hoffi.com
More and more recently we have been asked what we do. Sure we have designed websites and brochures over the years. But fundamentally we have been a branding company at first this has been produced through the visual aspects of branding such as the mark, and other communications such as stationery, flyers, powerpoint templates etc. More recently however we have been developing projects that also get into the strategy of our clients and what they do and more importantly why they do it.
As we have all heard the big challenge of today is to create authentic stories that are of your brand. Describing what and how you do it are still important but it seems to be the story and narrative that really gets people emotionally involved in a brand and it's experience. The above short video a quick snapshot of a recent project we have worked on with EDC. What has been interesting with the ongoing project is the huge amount of stories people have when it comes to Ecodesign, yet it is still on initial approach seen as a bit of a grey area. You can see more of EDC's thoughts on their blog EDCshare.
With the goal of opening up the organisation as much as possible we think the blog is a good start. And it is this that has made us realise that 'making' and 'doing' can be done in many different ways. We feel the next decade or so will be our role to challenge preconceptions of our clients and hope to bring insight. Curating to create brand narratives.
Even though it's called the Cardiff Design Festival it always covered design from all over Wales, sometimes outside of Wales. Last year was the festivals biggest year and this year it's looking even bigger with interest from design agencies in Newport, Swansea and Wrexham putting on their own fringe events in the cities.
With this in mind we created sub brands for each city, highlighting that there are Cardiff Design Festival events going on in those cities. The idea behind the brand being, Cardiff is always central in the brand, with each city sitting alongside it as it would sit geographically to Cardiff.
The festival hopes in the future that more cities will come on-board creating a whole network.
I came across a really interesting article the other day which spoke about the Google's failure (so far) to setup some kind of social platform. Obviously it's not like they have not tried. Systems such as buzz and wave were all dips into the arena, but as the article discusses it is the fact that they are trying to do something that has been done before.
What it has brought for me to think about is two things:
- Does a scatter gun approach to development work?
- Will Google be 2nd in a few years to facebook?
ARTICLE
http://memeburn.com/2011/05/why-cant-google-win-at-social/