Castelfalfi resort, Tuscany

I've been working with digital design agency Bounce on a brochure and website for Castelfalfi, a huge new Knight Frank development in Tuscany.

Well, I say 'new'. Many of the buildings are medieval, but they've fallen into picturesque dissuitude over the years. Now, they're being revived in a plan to breathe life into the whole region.

You can download a PDF of the brochure here (4.6MB).

Blue Monday

I've helped my designer friends at Zerofee with a few words for Blue Monday - a website by their clients at People United.

The idea is to do something nice for each other on 'Blue Monday': 25 January. What a good idea.

Charles Kendall website

We start 2010 with the unveiling of my final job of 2009: the new website for supply chain group Charles Kendall.

The new site has been created (with design and build by Catch) as part of the group's global rebranding, including a new identity by Brownjohn.

The process has been managed by the group's events and marketing business, Altitude, who provided my first introduction the group some time back, when I began working with them on their own particular brand.

As well as writing the new site (and the various divisional sites, which are currently in progress), I've been helping with press releases, letters to clients and suppliers, the new intranet and internal communications around the new identity.

It's been a huge job, but I have to say Charles Kendall have been a pleasure to work with. This is the sort of project that can very easily become mired in a nightmare of amends and approval processes. But it didn't. The amends were light and sensible, and if there were any internal wrangles I wasn't aware of them.

In fact, the amends process was almost entirely achieved in a single session where Mark Kendall, the Group Operations Director, and I sat down with the first draft and went through it. The decisions were made on the spot, and I could get on and incorporate them. Bliss.

IDS Christmas card

I've failed miserably to do a Christmas card this year. But that's partly because I've been busy doing other people's.



This is for IDS, the sales arm of Virgin Media. I was brought in to write it by the designers, Blast, who've done a lovely job on the visual side. (And the tactile - the stock is creamy and gorgeous.)

As you can see, my less than reverential pastiche of the Christmas story contains the names of all the Virgin channels IDS wanted to promote. (Having Virgin itself was a bit of a gift.) The silver shows up a bit better in this view:



Merry Christmas everyone.

I'm in the Howies catalogue again

It's been a while, but my words have appeared in another of Howies' justly famous catalogues. This time, the brief was to find something Swedish to write about, as both this catalogue and its Autumn predecessor have been shot in Sweden.

I've always been intrigued by the wildly different attitude to taxation in Scandinavia, so I did a bit of digging and found what most British people would regard as a startling contradiction: the Swedes are the second-most taxed people in the world, but among the happiest of any population anywhere.



How can that be? Well, that's what the piece is about - you'll just have to read it. You can download the full catalogue (or order a printed one), including my piece on page 99, at the Howies website.

Some award-winning posters

I've just heard that the posters I did with True North, for their printer client APG Visual Colour, have won two awards at the Fresh Creative Awards.

They won Silver in the Posters category and (best of all for me) Gold in Writing for Design. Naturally, I'm thrilled.

The posters have also been nominated in the Rose Awards, and are being entered for Design Week as I type. So I'm hoping for a sackful of silverware.

(This is the kick I needed to tell you about the posters. With the arrival of my new website looming, I'm afraid I've been neglecting this one. Sorry about that.)

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UPDATE: The posters have done better than I could have hoped at the Roses, scooping the Design Grand Prix! More details in my news section.
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London Vision Clinic website

The London Vision Clinic website, 99% of which I wrote, is now up and running. Have a look and see what you think.

Hat-trick designed the page templates, based on their new identity for the Clinic, and Quirk did all the technical stuff. The result is a site that offers an extraordinary amount of information, without looking dauntingly dense. Instead, readers can drill down as far as they want to, to find out more about laser eye surgery, and the Clinic's pioneering reputation.

I wrote the Clinic's new brochure too, as you may remember. You can read that story - including the bit about getting fully immersed in the client by having my own eyes lasered - here.