Today was Romilly’s last day at the studio. Stewart is taking over from him. We celebrated at the Dove and Craig came along too.

We are working on the identity for the new fashion label ‘Feral Sphere’ which should be finished very soon. Our design is inspired by Japanese Shinto spirits and the ghost in Lost. As usually there are many ‘logo’ versions (and they all have Japanese names).

Today the jumble sale continued outside in front of the studio. Everything that didn’t sell went into the skip. We have a nice clean studio now and made enough money to buy a brand new Dyson hoover to keep it that way.

Again our work was shown on The Apprentice. In 2011 they went to Circus for a treat. This time it was Cupcake. The final of the popular show was also a brilliant example of what is happening more and more in the world of branding nowadays. This type of entrepreneur used to come to us for the design of their identity, now they often think they know it all themselves. The results, as we saw, are usually terrible. Both brand identities featured were an absolute disaster but everyone was eager to point out how much they know about branding (do they really?). The winner, Lea, even said “I like boring”. Funny enough that when it comes to her own medical business she would only work with highly trained and qualified doctors. Question is why wouldn’t she apply the same standards to her design?

The 20PlusX summer school in Munic, Germany is back on again and Holger will be talking there on Thursday the 24th of October as well as running a workshop. A week earlier on the 18th of October he will also be talking at the Selected D conference in Bilbao, Spain.

We have been so busy that we forgot to mention the degree show at the FH Düsseldorf, where Holger is teaching. Its over now unfortunately. The poster and exhibition graphics were designed by Holger’s student Thanh-Thao Tran. His other students that deserve a mention are Marielle Neumann with her movie about mermaids, Florian Mecklenburg who designed a new magazine, En Bloc based on dialogue, as well as our ex-intern Adrian Meseck with his documentation of the local 50’s and 60’s advertising ageny Troost. Congratulations!

This is so good it had to be on our news page. Could every client please watch it before commissioning us! For further education please also watch this one.

Come along to our big studio jumble sale. Its on today and tomorrow only!!! Everything must go. Super cheap or pay what you want!

We spent the past few months sorting out the studio. Now we are selling or giving away everything we don’t really want to keep anymore: books, prints, samples, equipment, etc. Please pop in and visit our big Jumble Sale and freebie give away on Saturday the 13th and Sunday the 14th of July. The Jumble Sale will be joined by our friends from the second floor Azumi and David (A’N’D).

We are having a big studio clear-out and are organising all the work samples from the past 15 years. Impressive how much work there is just for Belmacz alone all laid out on the floor.

Romilly was invited to talk about our position on internships at the Crowd Talks event that took place at the The Book Club. Thanks to everyone who came. We hope it was interesting.

Holger will be talking on 20th of June at the 20PlusX Summer School in Munich, Germany. If you are in the area come along. He will also do a 3 day workshop. The results will be exhibited on the 23rd of June.
Correction: I just heard from the organizers that the date of the event has been changed to the 24–27 of October. So no Bavarian beer and sausages at this time.

We received a lot of applications for the job we have at our studio. We are looking through all of them now but its taking us a bit longer than expected and on top of that Romilly’s computer with all the applications on there just died (don’t worry, we are getting it fixed and none of the data will be lost). If you applied for the job please be patient we will contact you soon if we like to meet you.

Holger’s German students came over to London for a one week typographic research trip. We looked at public lettering mostly in pubs, visited the East End markets, shops and restaurants. We also visited St. Brides Library and Christian Küsters showed us the new gigantic Central Saint Martins building. We met with great designers such as the fantastic Morag Myerscough, traditional signwriter Peter Hardwicke, Alex Bettler from Modern Activity, big scale type designers Dalton Maag, typography legends Phil Baines and Catherine Dixon, our friends from Julia, and letterpress monster Ian Gabb. A good week with some serious typographic milage and a lot of walking.

Well, that rare event which only occurs once in a million years is happening again: we actually have a real job to offer, properly paid, no internship, serious responsibility. However, we will be very, very, very picky. (The position has now been filled.)

Today a group of students from the University of Würzburg in Germany visited the studio.

We recently designed the identity and website for Lock Studios, a new photographic studio situated on Regents Canal. The place is still a building site but our work is pretty much done. We just need to update the images on the website once it is up and running.

We are currently working on the identity and website for Loop.pH, a design studio that does very interesting artistic and architectural installations inspired by science and nature.

We always find it to a certain extent, amusing when other designers copy our work. Obviously there is a certain degree of influence and inspiration involved in all design work but some things just go a step too far. See the original here and the copy here.
The world has become a very crowded place nowadays, design is everywhere. It becomes a duty for every good designer to make sure his work is original. A good way of doing that is NOT to look at any design books or blogs WHILE you are working on something but AFTERWARDS just to make sure nobody accidentally had the same idea (if so start from scratch). However some people seem to do it the other way round.

Holger just came back from Darmstadt where he did a talk at the design faculty of the University of applied Sciences coinciding with their Work in Progress show. He also met with friends Billy Kiosoglou from Brighten the Corners and Liza Enebeis from Studio Dumbar who stayed on to run workshops.

Romilly was asked to take part in this year’s Pick Me Up design festival, being on the portfolio advice panel.

If anyone is interested in the new Tom Dixon catalogue we just designed, its not printed yet but you can already view it online here.

We were happy to see our font Verdun being used on a nice new furniture shop in Chatsworth Road. Not sure who designed it but looks like a very nice job.

We designed a series of ‘explorer’ t-shirts for Tom Dixon, mixing drawings of plants and techical instruments. They were launched in Milan and one of them is being sold by Fab.

Our website is currently experiencing technical problems and is not showing all pages or some pages incomplete. Be patient, we are working on it. (Fixed, Thanks Alex!)

We designed a rather beautiful mosaic for the entrance of Villandry in Great Portland Street. Very nice to see how the details of the letters are constructed from small coloured stones.

This week Most in Milan kicks off again. We designed the overall identity and orientation system (in different colours this year) and its currently being implemented by the Italians. So we keep a watchful eye over it from the distance. We also designed some t-shirts and posters for the main event partner Fab which will also be available at Most. If you happen to be in Milan go and see it. And please send us some photos of the signs, banners and everything else.

Now there finally is a design book we can really recommend (you can buy it here). Not only is our work in there, it is also designed by our good friends Billy and Frank from Brighten the Corners, and most importantly it really is a very good read. Many design books nowadays just show the same work by the same design studios under different subjects, like pattern, colours, type, etc. This book actually shows work that has never been seen before and has something to say.
The UK launch is on Monday at Camberwell College of Art at 6pm with some interesting talks. The German launch will be in April at the University of Applied Science, Darmstadt where Holger will be speaking as well.

If you happen to be in Germany this week come to see the ‘Werkschau’ (degree show) in Düsseldorf where Holger teaches. His student Marielle Neumann designed a very poetic overall identity for the show (where every graduating student is a little star on the big design skyline).

You can still buy our Musette Cycling Bag and do something for a good cause at the same time. Now available through Cycle Love.

Today Holger was talking at the VOID symposium in Düsseldorf, Germany. It was very nice to meet the other speakers, especially the guys from Wolff Olins who also came all the way from London.

On the 11th of January Holger will be talking at the VOID symposium in Düsseldorf, Germany. His talk will be about failure and crisis in design. He will be showing only bad work and projects that have gone wrong and explore what he and the studio have learned from it. Come along and check out the work that never made it to this website!

This year we had our Christmas dinner quite early and it was a rather small and cozy affaire. None of the old crew members could make but we had a good time in the Talbot pub. Happy Christmas everyone. Once we are done with the last bits of work the studio will be closed for the Christmas break.

We designed the identity for an Italian Restaurant on the Covent Garden Plaza. Unfortunately we are not in charge of the implementation which is why the project won’t make it onto our website. But good to see the logo finally going up.

Today saw the opening of Typomöbel in Düsseldorf. In just 4 hours we managed to transfer a slightly run-down community space into a furniture showroom.

On his last day of growing a mustache Romilly appeared in a promotional video by Aufi, the highly active guys representing us and other good small design studios.

Today a group of French students from (La Martiniere Diderot) in Lyon came to visit our studio together with their professor.

We were invited by the Society of Hungarian Graphic Designers and Typographers to give a talk at the Budapest Design Center (Design Terminal). We had a great time and met so many nice and incredibly talented people.

For the first time we have been working on the identity and titles for a film. The promotional newspaper arrived from the printers today. The film is not made yet but looks very promising. You can see the teaser for ‘One Square Mile’ here.

If you happen to be in Düsseldorf on the evening of the 6th of December come to the opening of Typomöbel. The exhibition shows typographic furniture designed by Holger’s students.

Holger just came back from Germany where he run a one week workshop with his students. Under the title ‘The End of Digital’ students explored artistic interventions of public or social media websites. Some of the results can be seen here. Text is only in German. Beside other great projects check out the Mondrian inspired ‘Neo Bauhaus’ Facebook page as long as it lasts.

Romilly travelled South of the river to take part in a mentoring workshop with 2nd and 3rd year students from the London College of Communication along with other professionals from the design industry. The work was very encouraging, it all made for a good evening of discussion and debate.

We finished designing the website for Eduardo Padilha. Have a look at his work, he is a great artist who even drilled holes through the walls of his own flat for an exhibition.

Over the weekend we cleaned the studio which was long overdue. Its just the beginning, we are throwing out a lot of clutter, books, magazines, samples, etc. Before Christmas we are planning to do a big Designers Jumble sale or give away.

Today we uploaded images of one of our latest projects, the signage for the IQ Student Accommodation in Shoreditch.
→ IQ Student Accommodation

If you are interested in books check out Antfarm London and Holger’s recommendation of his favorite books.

Today our friend Ken Kirton launched the second edition of the Studio Cookbook at the Whitechapel Gallery. Holger and Romilly peeled about 300 potaoes and made German potato pancakes. Far too many. We are still eating the leftovers from the event.

A sad day. Today the Tea shop, one of our favorite identity projects closed its doors. Located next to St. Paul’s Cathedral it just didn’t survive the loss of revenue caused by the area being ‘occupied’ for several months. Bloody hippies — there you have it: Instead of banks you closed down the venture of harmless, peace-loving, tea drinking people. However, Tea will survive as a product available from many retailers and since we originally planned the shop as a chain it may resurface again. Hopefully in the East of London.