The Belmacz shop is coming together bit by bit. Today our design for the toilet walls got printed, featuring Google Earth images of large mines. The glass panels will be fitted with gold leaf foil from the back.

Our Thank F*** poster was shown at the V&A and in Belgium as part of the Mobile Museum.

Today saw the launch of Ken Kirtons Studio Cookbook (which we contributed to) at Bokship . We decided to make four dishes representing each nationality in the studio. Holger made German potato pancakes, Claire served French baguette with sausage and cheese, our intern Laura made Swiss Schoggibrötli and Craig, who is away on holiday at the moment, told us how to make Irish coffee before he went.

Today the new Tom Dixon caltalogue arrived from the printer. We are doing it for the third year now and it has become a quite a regular project. We are changing the design slightly every year and its still nice to see that it turned out well. The whole catalogue can be seen online here .

After almost a year in the making and battling with complicated staircases and dump spots the Belmacz shop is now finally very close to opening. Last week our flexible shop sign went up already. Lets hope everything else that we designed for the shop will look good as well.

Well, not quite the BAFTA’s although the photo they took at the entrance quite reminded us of the kind of pictures you see in ‘Hello Magazine’. Holger and Claire went to the award ceremony of the Restaurant and Bar Design Awards . Since we are not taking part in award schemes Holger was asked to be part of the jury, which got us free tickets to this rather posh event. More images here.

Holger and his students organised the Logo Marathon as a public event. Despite rain and cold temperatures 25 students battled against the clock and designed 42 logos in a little over 4 hours. This time for real people that could set instant briefs. Certainly a 6 minute logo sketch is not a proper identity but the results were surprisingly original. Not just the students had a lot of fun, also their new ‘clients’ were very happy with the results. The idea of the experiment was to investigate if a spontaneous and intuitive response can produce relevant results as opposed to a long strategic development. More about the Logo Marathon here .

Today Holger received a surprise email from Werner Stahl who runs a design studio in Cologne, Germany. More than 23 years ago Holger did his first (and only) internship here and had lost contact since. Werner sent a small drawing by Holger from that time which he felt summed up the experience pretty well. Those were the days of creating everything by hand and doing layouts with sticky glue. Thanks again Werner for everything!

Craig and Holger gave a short talk and run a workshop called ‘Body Copy’ in Sofia as part of the Sofia Design Week. The idea was that participants design a typeface or individual letters by using their own bodies. As intended it was quite a messy event, some sort of typographic orgy. Some images here and here.

Marawa is on Britain’s Got Talent. Vote for Marawa! Go Marawa Go! Good thing we just did her new logo before she hits superstardom.

Craig and Holger will be running a workshop at the upcoming Sophia Design Week in Bulgaria on the 17th of June. It will be a kind of typographic orgy. More infos can be found here.

Final preparations are on their way for the opening of the Japan Week at the University of Applied Science in Düsseldorf, Germany. Holgers students were busy printing posters, leaflets, bags, producing display tables and large wall installations. In case you happen to be in Germany do not miss it. More information can be found here.

Today was the launch of ‘Feed My Ride’ at Look Mum No Hands organized by Progress. You can buy ours and 14 other great musette cycling bags here . You know you want it!

Tonight Circus was shown on The Apprentice. Lord Sugar called it “one of Covent Garden’s trendiest bars”. He should call us instead of wasting his time on those losers. We need his big bundles of cash.

We designed a new website for Fashion Freedom, a charity organisation that produces fashion in collaboration with developing countries. The project is supported by the United Nations’ ITC (International Trade Centre).
→ Fashion Freedom

Craig gave a talk and showed our work at Nottingham Trent University. Unfortunately his camera broke so there are no images (except for some of Nottingham train station when his camera started functioning again). Maybe he just went there, got stage fright and went straight back again. Only the students will know.

Today we heard that our poster/cover for Belmacz was shown at the Mobile Museum in Milan. We didn’t see it but the Mobile Museum is an absolutely brilliant concept and a beautiful installation.

Students from St Martins are rallying against the proposed move of their print workshops offsite. We are all for keeping the dirty, inky, practical aspects of graphic design as accessible as possible. You can learn more and support the cause here.

Progress have asked us and 14 other studios to design a cycling musette bag. We can’t reveal our design yet but there will be a show running from 19th until 26 May at Look Mum No Hands, London. Bags will be on sale at LMNH and a dedicated website to follow.

We designed a solid cast-metal table base for Tom Dixons new ‘roll’ table inspired by manhole covers. Claire also designed the new catalogue which can be downloaded here.

As part of his teaching at the University of applied Science in Düsseldorf Holger organised a Logo Marathon. A marathon goes over 42 kilometer for which the average athlete needs 4 hours. Based on this parameters students design 42 logos in 4 hours. One every six minutes. The subjects are generated at random by a specially designed website. The idea behind the project is to try a more spontaneous and intuitive approach to logo design. Follow the events here.

Holger will give a short talk next thursday at the Pretty — Ugly event organised by the MA St. Martins student to raise money for their upcoming degree show. We also donated Dr.Ink mugs and T-shirts which will be auctioned. You can see other donations here.

Holger talked about our studios work at the University of applied Science in Düsseldorf where he is teaching. The lecture was part of the regular Jour Fixe event series.

Friends at CSM organized another fund raising event to collect money for the Save the Children Japan tsunami appeal. They are selling beautiful hand made postcards. Or you can order/donate online.

Grafik Magazine wrote a very good article about our studio and the work we are doing. Only one tiny mistake we found. Claire is not ‘Anglo-Egyptian’, she is entirely French (and was only born in Egypt). However, she supports the democratic uprising in her newly adopted mother country.

Our studio always had strong connection with Japan and we are shocked and saddened by the catastrophe that hit the country. You can donate directly to the British Red Cross from this link. Or if you are around Broadway Market next Saturday (March 26) come to the schoolyard opposite London Fields where Japanese friends run a Japan relief jumble sale stand.

Today we received a copy of the beautifully designed and printed Studio Cookbook by Ken Kirton. You can (and should) by your copy here and learn how to cook proper Swiss cheese fondu.

Today students from the University of Alberta in Canada visited our studio. Their tutor brought us a bottle of proper Canadian Maple syrup as well. Thanks Aidan!

Since late summer 2010 Craig and Holger are working on the Belmacz shop and overall redesign of the identity. The identity is now finalized but the shop is not. However, we have already put up some work-in-progress images in the identity section and hopefully the shop will be opening within the next two months.

Today we went to The Finnish Institute for the launch of ‘Common Interest: Documents’ a new design book by our friend Emmi. It shows some of our work among other great projects. You can buy the book here. Its worth it.

Today we switched off the computers and turned the studio into a little arts and crafts workshop trying out potato stamps. We are working on a new restaurant project so there might be some food-related logic in this.

Today, despite receiving calls and e-mail reminders, we purposefully missed another D&AD Awards deadline and happily remain a non-award winning design practice. We also missed the TDC, ADC, Red Dot and all the other award deadlines and concentrated on work instead.

While working on the design for the first Belmacz jewellery shop Holger has developed a rather worrying obsession with spotting diamond mines on Google Earth. Images of those massive holes in the ground (like this one for example) will be part of the shop interior.

We did a talk at Saint Martins College of Art showing our work and giving a bit more insight into the nitty gritty of production. We were happy that so many students came. Thanks for coming.

As Britain plunges into the usual yearly snow chaos (here the view from the studio window) the studio closes for the Christmas break. We are all trying to fly to our native countries (Germany, Switzerland, Ireland and France). Finger crossed and Happy Christmas everyone.

Playlab’s little elves are running a DIY Make ‘n’ Do production line at the Tom Dixon Christmas Market. Drop by and make your own Christmas cards, tags and wrapping paper.

We are building an illuminated version of Marawa’s M logo using 63 small lightbulbs. Unfortunalely the three 9-volt batteries we connected last exactly 3 minutes before they run out of power. We should have listened to the geeks at Maplin.

Our Dr.Ink mugs came today. If you are still looking for a Christmas present here is your opportunity. We haven’t set up a Paypal for those yet but drop us a mail if you want one (they are £6 excluding delivery).

Today we celebrated Johannes last day at the studio (at the Vietnamese on Mare Street). Andy already left three month ago but we haven’t officially announced it. As a new member of the team Claire joined us. Welcome Claire! And a big thank you to Johannes and Andy. You guys made the studio what it is today!

Oh no, what have we created? Today we found out that our client Crepe Affaire turned the little animation we created for their website into a real live character, harassing innocent passers-by on the street. Watch out for some big smiley yellow thing chasing you with pancake vouchers!

And another Christmas market we designed. This time at The Dock. More info here.

We recently worked on the promotional campaign and Christmas decoration for the Oxo Tower and Gabriel’s Wharf which went up today.

We just picked up our new catalogue for Belmacz from the printer. This years model is Rufus the lazy cat. He reminded us so much of the iconic villain pet in the James Bond movie that we printed the cover as a folded ‘most wanted’ poster.

Although we haven’t designed a book in ages (just lots of catalogues) we attended quite a few book events recently. First the Most Beautiful Swiss Books at Cafe Oto, then the new and brilliant Best Of British Books: A Proposal and finally Talking Books an event organised by the ISTD.

Our ‘I am not a courier’ shirt in courier sans for all self-confessed fakengers out there is available for sale now. It comes in S, M, L, XL and goes for 15 squid, including postage within the UK. (Thanks Romilly for modelling).

Holger has been working for the past week on pattern designs for a new Japanese fashion label. Once we receive images of the printed fabrics we might show it in the work section.

We designed the graphics and some signage for the yearly ‘ The Dock’ design festival at the Tom Dixon headquarters. Basically an adaptation of our design from last year. More about The Dock here.

We are working on the final touches of a new identity for international hula hoop superstar Marawa (the Amazing). Soon to hit the identity section. (photo: ©Marawa)