Mailer wins ISTD gong

Fantastic news: I've just heard from Matt Baxter of 300million that my much-ballyhooed 'And...' mailer (which 300million, of course, designed into greatness) has won a 'Premier' award from the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD).

(Pic thanks to AceJet170)

Premier Awards are, according to the ISTD, 'chosen from the work that has met the criteria for a Certificate of Excellence, but which is also outstanding in the view of the majority of the jurors.' Very nice.

So I need to thank the geniuses of the 'Million once again, in this case especially Kerry White and Gareth Rutter, who did the really very fiddly typography. (Kerry was also the driving force behind the whole design.) Thanks, geniuses.

I won a Grand Prix

There are other ways of winning Grand Prix, it turns out, than jumping into a super-powered car and haring off round a loop of track.

One way is to write some posters for a printer, and have them come out top of the pile at the Roses Design Awards.



Yep, the APG Visual Colour posters I wrote for True North didn't just win Gold in the Poster category, they also scooped the Design Grand Prix for the overall outstanding piece of work in the entire Design category.

You may number me among the Extremely Chuffed.

My posters win Gold and Silver

I did some posters with True North recently, and they've only gone and won some awards. See my Portfolio page for details.

This is the sort of response we like

I recently started working with designers Aricot Vert on materials for Raison d'Etre spas, who create bespoke, five-star spas at hotels and destinations worldwide.

My first submission of work, for a new brochure, brought this response from the client, which was too good not to share:

"I just want to say thank you so much for the copy ... I love it. It is so easy to read and has very subtle unexpected twists. I will of course go through it with a tooth comb, but on the first reading nothing stuck out. So thank you so much."

Something tells me this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Nice words from Michael Wolff

I've just begun what could be a really interesting collaboration with Michael Wolff, formerly the Wolff in Wolff Olins, and the branding agency Heavenly.

I submitted my first bit of copy to the team yesterday, and got this from Michael this morning. It was so nice I wanted to show it off:

Beautiful, calm, enthusiastic and reassuring.
Thank you Mike.

And thank you for demonstrating the value
of tone of voice so eloquently.

Isn't that nice? And from a proper legend, too. Chuffed.

Nominated for a Rose Award

I recently worked with True North on some posters for Highlight printers. They were fun to write: big, chatty messages apparently giving voice the posters themselves. And now Matt at True North, who designed them, tells me they've been nominated for a Roses Award. Lovely!

All the nominations are here. (Scroll down to Graphic: Posters to see ours.)

More in the blush-free self-promotional line

I've just started working with luxury travel consultants Exosphere. We seem to have got off on the right foot. Havng submitted my first piece of copy, Sophie at Exosphere wrote to say:

"Very good indeed - you have managed to sum up what we have been trying to sum up for ages!"

Which is nice.