Happy to see that Kricket was voted one of the 10 hottest restaurants in London by Hot Dinners. Not bad for a small restaurant in a shipping container just about a month after opening. Obviously the great food the guys do counts for a lot more than the design we did for them but we like to imagine that our logo gave them the edge.

Today was Steve's last day at the studio. We all went to the Dove for a leaving drink, teaming up with Mind Design aluminise Craig and Clair. We will miss you Steve. Still got your playlist of classic Punk songs though.

The Werkschau (degree show) at the HSD Düsseldorf, where Holger is teaching took place again. This time not only the poster and orientation system were designed by Holgers students but also the After party.

Holger went to see The Brighton Degree Show at Studio 350 Which coincided with a podium discussion and the launch of the book Crowd Talks Volume One. You can buy the book here. It features our often quoted article on on Internships.

The studio has a new boss who from now on will answer all e-mails and take care of business. She can already reach the keyboard and clearly tells us the only way is up.

The United Notions Exhibition is coming to Berlin next week. Here some images from the Moscow show. Go and check it out between 18.05 and 20.06 in Kreuzberg. You can also buy our posters here and here.

Last night we all went to the opening of the 100/100 Beer project exhibition at Protein Gallery. Good to see you Neal.

Come and join us next Wednesday at Protein Gallery for the long awaited London exhibition of the 100/100 Beer project.

We are working on a new pop-up restaurant in a Brixton container. Kricket will open on wednesday, serving amazing Indian food and cocktails. Today our big K logo was painted on the container by the brilliant Bella Pace.

We are proud to be one among the designers from 20 countries invited by The Bakery Design Studio (thanks Ksenia!) to produce two screen printed poster for United Notions Exhibition in Moscow which launched today. If you happen to be in Moscow you can see our take on the Jellied Ell shop around the corner and the interpretation of the same brief by our Brazilian counterparts. More to follow.

This evening we all went to see our good friends Frank and Billy from Brighten The Corners talking at the St. Brides Library. Here you can see Frank surrounded by design groupies.

This morning we where visited by a film crew from trendy Mr. Porter who were doing a feature on us and one of our clients. Well, actually more about our client, we were more there to provide the trendy design studio location.

One project often leads to another. We recently designed the identity for Yoga Campus (website coming soon), a school that trains yoga teachers. Our Life Centre sign has got company now.

We took part in a very nice charity publication that raises money for Heart Research UK, The Heart Index. Craig Atkinson from SEA Design asked over 70 international Designer to illustrate a heart. Sounds simple but the variety is amazing. Among the contributors are many friends and some all time design heroes such as Lance Wyman and Wim Crouwel. You can buy the book here. All proceeds will be donated to Heart Research UK.

Two highly valued ex-Mind Design team members came over from Switzerland simultaneously to visit us (without having this planned). Sara and Andy. Great to see both of you.

Today a group of students from the master class at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland came to visit us. Also Holger was pretty tired from taking taking the early morning flight back from Germany we had a good discussion. The studio has a lot of swiss connections and we are always happy to meet other designers from Switzerland.

Our ex-intern Brigitta who returned from Budapest visited the studio and made a really nice lunch for everyone. Thank you Brigitta!

Big News. We will be cheaper than this guys. Not for a fiver, not even for one quid, we do it for a sandwich!!! Yes you heard right, turn up at 12:30 lunchtime with a decent sandwich (prefer cheese over chicken) and we scribble you a fantastic logo while we eat. No vectors, sorry.

Went to see the 100 Years of Graphic Design exhibition at currently homeless Kemistry Gallery. Maybe the title promises more than it can fulfil and a for truly representative show of 100 Years Graphic Design history you have to hire the whole of the V&A, but I enjoyed the selection and you have to appreciate what this guys are doing for the Design Community. (posted by Holger)

Sometimes I like to show interesting work by my students here and this is most definitely a good one. In my course 'Porn Rules' Tobias Textor developed a font you can speed up. As faster it gets as more readable it becomes. The font is part of the virtual Freiland exhibition. (posted by Holger)

Yesterday we went to the launch of a beautiful small book that our ex-colleague Claire designed. It took place at Ti Pi Tin. Amazing bookshop stacked with beautifully designed art publications. Stupidly we missed the opening of 100 Years of Graphic Design at the same evening.

We are in the process of re-designing the overall identity for London-based fine jeweller Noor Fares. The logo is done, website will launch next week. More soon.

Holger just returned from Rotterdam and Düsseldorf where he was running a student workshop together with Studio Dumbar. Unrelated to the German Carnival season the assignment was to design a personal visual identity using your own body as the canvas. The final presentation took place at Playspace in Rotterdam. thanks Liza, Vince and everyone who took part.

Today Marco Müller, the first designer who was employed at the studio came over from Switzerland for a short visit. Thanks to Marco a long trail of Swiss designers followed. Check out Marco's work, it's brilliant.

We found this nice picture of supermodel Erin O'Connor on Instagram posing in front of our Tess sign. A very glamorous sign.

The Christmas tree is lit on Broadway Market and another eventful year is coming to an end. Our studio is now closed until the New Year. Back on the 5th of January. We like to thank all our clients, friends and interns for their support in 2014 and wish everyone a very nice Christmas and a Happy New Year!

If anyone is still looking for a late Christmas present, buy the 100/100 Beer Project book, designed by SB Studio which features our Beer Label among those by other great designers. It is for Charity!

Yesterday I gave a talk at the FH Münster. Very nice school, very enjoyable evening. Apologies to everyone that I was half an hour late for my own talk. Bloody train. Never happened before, not cool for someone who is not a Rock Star. Thanks to everyone for coming, I really appreciate your patience. Also a massive Thanks to Felix Scheinberger, Professor for illustration, for inviting me. He drew this slightly freaky but absolutely spot-on portrait of me (after a beer and at least half a bottle of wine). Münster is cool. (posted by Holger)

Holger invited Tobias Röttger from Stahl R in Berlin to come to Düsseldorf to give a talk to his students. Great Work. Thanks for coming Tobias!

The annual studio Christmas dinner took place in The Dove again. Afterwards we ventured to the Eel Shop to get drunk on Gin.

The Studio published the dictionary Basics in English – East London Edition. Printed on extra thin flimsy paper this concise publication contains the most essential words you need to get by in East London, exactly 3 to be precise. If you want a copy just pop by the studio.

After a two months wait the boxes we designed for Belle Epoque finally arrived from the printers in France. Turned out well enough to display them on the bookshelf for a little while.

Its about time to update on some work following so many group pictures and social gatherings. At the moment we are working on the rebranding of the French jewellery company Gripoix which has produced jewellery for luxury brands such as Channel and Dior for almost 150 years. We just received some test sheets from our printer.

Going by the name of 'Lena and the Bad Boys', the studio took part in the annual Graphic Design Pub Quiz last night at the Railway Tavern in Dalston. The competition was fierce, the ale was flowing and we came in (a respectable) fourth place – but, it has to be said, only two points shy of the top spot. We'll have to nerd up for next year. Thanks to James from Design Studio for organising. Check out the questions here.

The RCA is currently running a series of talks as part of the exhibition GraphicsRCA: Fifty Years and Beyond. Holger went to the one on design start-ups. The next one is on the big question What is Graphic Design and Who is it For? The schedule is a bit hard to find on the website. Here the link. If you are not really interested in what Mr. Brody has to say about the future of Design its a good opportunity to nick a painting from the exclusive Senior Common Room (or get a free beer).

Today another group of French students from La Martiniere Diderot in Lyon came to visit our studio. Always nice to have visitors from the other side of the channel. This time we treated them to (by French culinary standards probably terrible) British sausage rolls and only showed projects for French clients (of which we seem to have quite a few recently).

Holger and his University colleague Sebastian just came back from a tour of the Netherlands. With 25 students they visited 12 design studios, the Sandberg Institute and the Stedelijk Museum. A massive thank you to everyone. Especially to Bas Koopmans, Lesley Moore, Maureen Mooren, Ruben Dornweerd (photo), Roosje Klap, De Designpolitie, Meeusontwerpt, Lava, Lust Lab, The Rodina, Team Thursday, 75B, and Liza from Studio Dumbar. Everyone we met was super nice, the work is amazing and Dutch designers seem to have educated their clients pretty well.

Yesterday evening I went back to the RCA for the opening of the exhibition GraphicsRCA: Fifty Years and Beyond. Brilliant evening. Never seen so many well known designers in one place. It was great to see so many old friends, former class mates and tutors. Felt like a big extended family gathering. The exhibition itself may receive some mixed reviews. On the one hand it was great to see that they did not just choose the work of those students who became big and famous after college, on the other hand it felt a bit like someone went down into the basement and took out everything he could find from some old cupboard. However, the RCA was always about the community of great designers and that community is definitely still there. (posted by Holger)

While in Tokyo Holger also met with good friend and fellow RCA graduate Miho Tanaka and her assistant Yusuke from Cocoroto to discuss possible collaborations.

Holger went to Japan where he met with one of our nicest regular clients Askul. The whole company recently moved to a brand new office building with amazing views over the Tokyo Bay area. It was nice to meet some of the people we only knew from emailing so far.

Today Holger acquired a new Omamori, a company blessing from the shrine in Narita, Japan. According to the size of the company he went for one of the smaller ones. Our financial future for the next couple of years is secured.

Wow, now they even have Tom Dixon lamps at our local pub. The gentrification of the East End is officially complete. Some may wonder why there are so many news concerning the pub in here – thats simply because we spent a lot of time there.

Holger went to the opening of Polymyth x Miss Information exhibition at Auto Italia South East. Beside seeing the work of our friends Pinar&Viola, as well as Metahaven and Holly Herndon it was nice to meet 80s design icon April Greiman.

The new Mondrian Sea Containers Hotel designed by Tom Dixon has opened. We were responsible for the large letters (3.22 meters to be precise) on top of the building. So far we have only seen press photos. It seemed that the spacing between the E and A is too wide. Making mistakes (and learning from them) is part of a designers job, but not on this scale. So we checked the drawings, all correct. We checked on Google Street View, all fine. So must be the angle in the photo.
In our original proposal there were no letters on the roof at all. The lights on the windows were meant to be letters that move across the building like a fish swarm. Monospaced!

Today we went to KK Outlet to see the work of ex Mind Design team member Claire. Check out her beautiful, poetic and understated identity for I am Dora.

This may not be the most exciting news at all but today we got new shutters installed. The old ones were getting rusty and we need to protect ourselves against all those celebs haunting the area.

A quick update in the Hackney gentrification process: Today we spotted Mr. Geldof and his daughter at La Bouche on Broadway Market. Bugger, all the estate agents peeping through their windows must have seen them as well. And bang, our studio rent has probably gone up a good 20% right away. We might re-locate to Chelsea once they are all moved over here.

Today some of the extended Mind Design family came together at Hoxton Square to celebrate the baptism of Holgers daughter Juna. Sara, her new godmother came all the way from Switzerland.