We’ve been watching the mysterious “artist in red” from the office windows at LOVE HQ for a few days. We think she was on track to complete her artistic masterpiece “le panoramique de manchester” - meticulously painted from her vantage point on the 5th floor of the NCP over the road. That was until the bloke from the NCP moved her on. Creativity, cut off in its prime.

Here are a few images from the LOVE branded Knowsley Hall Music Festival. It was wet and muddy but great. ‘The Who’ in the words of Gre, were “awwwweeesommme” (he wasn’t there, but if he was, that’s how he would have described the performance.

I hadn’t heard about Equitrade until recently, but it’s a pretty smart idea.  It’s all about keeping as much of the production, manufacture, packaging and design of products in the country of origin so that local suppliers in poorer countries keep more of the cash value of the brands they help create.  There’s a Preston-based company called Malagasy Foods who make their bars of chocolate in Madagascar - as opposed to just buying the cocoa at a Fair Trade price and paying money to less needy British manufacturers, packagers and designers to turn the cocoa into a chocolate brand.  I wonder whether we could offer our design skills to growers, farmers and manufacturers in poorer countries to help them create and sell brands as opposed to just selling raw materials.  Malagasy reckon that only 5p of the £1.70 cost of a 100g bar of chocolate goes to the cocoa producers under Fair Trade, but a much bigger percentage of that money stays in the poorer countries with Equitrade. We wish Malagasy chocolate well and when you come across it, be sure to buy a few bars.

From July 1st, every public place is legally required to prominently display ugly No Smoking signs like these.  Presumably that means every shop, pub, office, cab, heritage building, restaurant…they’ll be everywhere - smoking pollution replaced by visual pollution.  Maybe we should design some alternative No Smoking signs that are more pleasing or entertaining to look at. 

Just remembered how beautifully simple and fantastic this is.

Last week, we asked 15 year old work placement Andrew Maxwell to design us a T Shirt. We’ve now stuck it on Teetonic for you to vote for. If he gets enough votes then his T-shirt will be available for purchase.

Make his dreams come true!
Vote for his shirt

By Korean artist Hyungkoo Lee. You can see more here

I forget where I found them… think it was via boing boing, which is really rather good.

We designed some cows. Here they are being put on the roof of Fort Dunlop, Birmingham.

If you missed the work of genius called Britain’s Got Talent last night, you missed Crew 82.  Awesome.