New website for the City Property Association

Here's the website I wrote for the City Property Association, which (as you might expect) represents those who own or lease commercial property in the City of London.

The CPA's elegant new identity is by Purpose, who also designed the site in conjunction with Sennep.

The whole project was managed by the redoubtable Liz Lockwood, formerly Head of Marketing at Land Securities and now her own woman, doing great things under the banner of Infanta Creative.

The best retail address in London?

It's got to be up there: the huge space directly underneath Piccadilly Circus's famous illuminated advertising hoardings. A space currently occupied by Burger King, but which is soon to become vacant.

This whole building, Piccadilly Lights, is owned, almost inevitably, by my client Land Securities. With Burger King's lease up, they're looking to let this unique location to a leading international brand. So, naturally enough, they turned to Hat-trick - and me.


Together, we've created a brochure and a website (beautifully realised, as ever, by Bounce) that reflect the location's glitz and gloss. In fact, the brochure's so incredibly glossy, slipping it out of its clear envelope for the first time released a pungent bouquet of ink and varnish: an unexpected, but rather wonderful, olfactory bonus. Mind you, I'm one of those people who loves the smell of creosote.


In this location, retailers have a real shopfront on the world, not just London. So the copy focuses on the site's potential to enhance any international brand, tying it to one of the globe's great city icons.


The images, reminiscent of the towering billboards themselves, are pixelated with tiny little shopping bag pixels, which tie in to the numbers of people seeing, passing and visiting the site.


You can read all the copy, and see more of the imagery, at the One Piccadilly Lights website.

A rare breed of moving card

My clients at Rare Breed have just moved offices. And they rang me up for some help on the moving card. The thing was, they'd been offered the chance to use a rather nice new woodgrain-style stock. So their question to me was, 'What could we do to build a moving card around this? It looks quite like the floor in the new office.'

My solution was to put half the line on the front:

And the other half on the back:

Which seemed to work quite well.

Cardiff Waterside

It's all property development at the moment. Here's some more: the website for Cardiff Waterside, a huge collection of commercial buildings on the edge of Cardiff Bay.

Working (for the first time) with Brownjohn and my old friends at Bounce, I wrote a brochure for the development's central building, and the new website for the development.

As usual, Bounce have built a site that's a joy to look at as well as to use. And Brownjohn's identity is one of those nifty bits of visual punnery that always makes me think, 'I wish I'd come up with that.'

Croydon College posters and postcards

Yet another Croydon-based project, this time for Croydon College. Working with Mark Studio - a welcome new addition to the client list - I wrote a campaign of posters and accompanying postcards, encouraging people to sign up for further education. 

The target audience, fairly obviously, is those who've been through the education system without necessarily gaining all the qualifications they need. Finding themselves somewhat stymied in life, they're offered the chance of a fresh start with a qualification from Croydon.

The postcards follow the theme of the posters, but introduce case studies of people who've already made this journey - like the man who used to flog washing machines, but now runs his own recruitment agency. It's an education in education.

If you'd like to read the copy on the posters, download one here as a PDF (137k).

Ruskin Square brochure

The last element in my work on Ruskin Square was this beautifully produced brochure, introducing the development to agents, buyers and partners. (Thanks to Figtree for the images.)

Ruskin Square billboards

As promised, and with thanks to Ruby at Figtree, here are some pictures of my billboards for the Ruskin Square development in Croydon. Look quite smart, don't they?
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Ruskin Square website

Ruskin Square is a major new mixed-use development in the heart of Croydon, designed by Foster+Partners and FaulknerBrowns.

The development is remarkable in that it accommodates an entire community, with homes, offices, shops, restaurants, bars and even a GP surgery. It is also providing a stunning new home for Croydon's famous Warehouse Theatre.

As its name suggests, the development has been inspired by the ideas of John Ruskin, who believed passionately in the power of architecture to transform lives.

I worked with design consultancy Figtree on the development website, as well as a brochure and a selection of hoardings and billboards around the construction site.

You can see the website here, and watch this space for some more images of the work as soon as I get hold of some copies...