It’s been a quiet month blog wise due to all sorts of exciting goings on at work, (more about that here) but myself and the team from 29a managed to squeeze in some fun exploration of the slightly shinier and richer side of the tracks where we live.

It turns out that although the residents of Little Venice appear to live on the fabled “Streets of Gold” in London, they still find time to slip in a decent gag when comes to house numbers:

That'll be 2a then?

We soon found ourselves in the age old quest to find a pub, succeeding at the third attempt (some of our party may or may not have been wearing shorts and sandals, which may or may not have been deemed inappropriate dress for drinking in the posh pubs in Maida Vale). We were delighted to find not only were we allowed into the Prince Albert (giggle!), but there was all sorts of fun to be had with the Scrabble game at our table.

That was until about 3 rounds in when I was dealt the hand below and sulked about my crap luck for pretty much the rest of the game:

No chance

Needless to say, I lost. Badly.

Other highlights of the evening involved dictionary checks on the following words:

ungritted, any thing that isn’t gritted
– disallowed due to it clearly not being a word.

grimxkin, some rubbish skin
- see above

littlepony, a small pony
– not putting a space between words does not automatically make one word

sea/pony/grittedtax, tax applicable on the sea/a pony/something gritted
– adding “tax” as a prefix or suffix to an existing word does not make it a word

…and just as I’m finishing up this post the man on the tannoy has asked for the Milk Manager to head to reception. It just goes to show what a great opportunity being Milk Monitor at school was. If only the rest of us had grasped the opportunity with both hands like this fellow then we’d all be laughing into our silver-tops like he or she is right now. Adios.

Big things going down at work recently. Not sure how much I can say about any of the projects at the moment as we’re quite near to launching them, but regardless of the secrecy LOOK IT’S ME AND MARTIN LAMBIE-NAIRN!

Soft focus purely accidental (thanks to Graham's camera)

For any of you who don’t know Martin and his work (and if you are anyway interested in graphic design and branding then shame on you) then here’s a quick round up:

First he did this.
Then he set up this.
And they do loads of famous stuff, including this and this.
He then left to set up on his own (again) and did these. (Plus a hell of a lot more in between)

Needless to say, Martin pretty much invented channel branding and so to be working with him is pretty special, especially as he’s such a gracious and enjoyable fellow to work with (unlike certain members of the creative industries that I have met).

Hopefully I’ll have some of the work that we’ve been helping him with live soon so I can be one of those annoying people that points out any of their live work that’s out and about on the streets.

University, wasn’t it fun? 3 months to complete a project, free money (ok, so you have to pay it back eventually, but still…), cheap drinks. Tis the things dreams are made of.What with the new batch of graduates currently doing the rounds, I felt it was about time I polished up a few of my University projects and stuck them back up on my website.

One such project, Banter, was an identity and campaign for a volunteer organisation wishing to bring back the art of conversation. As part of the campaign we had plan to stage some flash-mobs (flash-chats, if you like) in public areas. Seeing how much T-mobile are riding off their own self-satisfaction after pulling of the huge scale flash mobs for those bloody annoying as hell campaigns, I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed at how many people got involved in the Banter flash-chats!

Saying that, it was a hell of a lot of fun working with my film-study-buddies Andy and Dom, and even resulted in Andy coming out with one of his most notable vitriolic outbursts yet when he screamed “I’M THE DIRECTOR YOU SON OF A BITCH” from the top of the office block from which he was filming.

Anyways, below is the video we filmed for it. Bring on the Banter!

Thanks to the heartwarming generosity of the chaps and chapettes over at Sell!Sell!, we now have this handy reminder on our walls ensuring we keep things simple here at Heavenly towers.

Note: it is actually carefully positioned by our account directors/strategy director, as they freely admitted they were running on a “healthy bullshit economy”.

Cheers Sell!Sell!

Get your own here.

Soooo… new work slowly coming together after a rather tumultuous time recently. Just to prove I haven’t just being sitting round on my arse all day (well technically I have, seeing as I have to sit at my desk to work) here’s a bit of a teaser from my favourite project to date.

Yep that’s correct, thats some gold foil blocking right there. Plenty more to come (once it arrives from the printers) so keep your eyes on www.adamding.co.uk as this, along with others, will be gracing that page when I implement the much needed shuffle around I’ve been orchestrating.

Over and out.

Cracking little bit of work here that contained The Observer film section last weekend. Surprised that this hasn’t made it onto a blog somewhere by now so in that case I officially claim this spot in the name of Adam Ding (even though it was technically Heavenly accounts chappie Neil Whyte who spotted it)!

The stresses and strains of being a design director must be unbearable sometimes. First of all you break your glasses having a kick around with your design team at lunchtime (being lobbed by the flame haired new junior must suck too!), then the super glue you buy to fix said glasses splits in your pocket and gets stuck to the £20 in your pocket. On the silver foil strip no-less, rendering that £20 useless.

Heck, at least as a design director you get to show it off like a cool graphic designer would.

And they say Alistair Darling had some tough financial issues to deal with of late.

No posts in April, eh? Goodness me. Must do better. I’ll put it down to trying to settle into a routine with the wife.

Anyway, onwards and upload. Here a pun-tastic web address spotted down Edgware Road…

If only there were an emoticon for *badumph-tisch*.

Anyone on here who used to follow the mighty Serif blog would have been much saddened by it being taken off the e-airwaves late last year. Never fear though, as it has been (sort of) resurrected by one of The Serif’s founders as the Fleuron.  (Bonus points if you understand the significance of its moniker. If not, go here and get learned)

Alongside the procrastination-tastic design, photography, typography and generally uber-creative posts on the site, it also has a creative opportunities section. Although currently pretty sparse, this was one feature (as I’m sure last year’s graphic design grads like myself will remember) played a very important part in the popularity of The Serif. Hopefully it’ll start padding out nicely for when the next crop come bursting out of their respective universities in a couple of months time!

Also rather excellently, you can help support the site (and get a wee bit of self promotion in on the home page) by contributing a 17×17 pixel icon to the supporters pixel wall on the home page. All you have to do is pop a link to the Fleuron on your site then send your icon over to the chaps, where they’ll happily oblige by sticking your little contribution to the insides of everyone’s screen (at least I think that’s how the internet works.)

Check-ch-check-ch-check-ch-check it owt.

iPhone app + Basset Hound + Daft Punk Console = sunday evening fun for me and my friend Adam.

If clicking the picture doesn’t work go here.

Anyone who has been on the design blogs recently will recognise the Mouth Off iPhone app and the Daft Punk keyboard emulator. Having nothing better to do, myself and mr.Peters created what we believe to be the first perfect internet-technology feedback loop. I’d draw a graph to explain the science better but I’m all out of graph paper.