The Brew.
Honest, reliable, friend.
An ice-breaker.
A comfort.
An all-round good egg.
Yep, we like brews… But do we? … Really?

There are strange fancy boxes in the office kitchen. Spotted them next to biscuit crumbs left over from 1998. Brew-rounds are being infiltrated with foreign goody-goody hippy teas and decaffeinated substitutes. There is no substitute for tea! Is this the beginning of the end? Are we loosing the need for caffeine? Why does tea need to be green… with jasmine…. and picked from the right side of the tea-plant every second Monday of the month?

A quick office survey later and a big sigh of relief shows that we have an average of 3.125 cups of tea per head per day.

Good.

Nice.

Reassuring.

….

So why are there colourful boxes in the cupboard? Shiny silver foils open and pessimistically more than half empty?

Another hit of number crunching shows that:
Coffee is our second favourite tipple. Acceptable.

Peppermint Tea and Decaf Tea. Third. No comment.

Horlicks, Hot Ribena, Ovaltine, Hot Chocolate and Andrew’s Liver Salts. Anomalies.

But not a threat.

An indulgence.

A treat.

An occasion.

Phew.

Yet… how far have alternative brew solutions spread? Is there a chance that we’re in a minority? That this is just the start of brew selection change?
Send your reassurances and end this internal torment.

After a rather lazy 30-second search on Google I found The Times’ Top Ten Gifts for Men, 2009. They are, in reverse order:

10. A sonic scrubber

9. A wall storage cycle rack

8. A laser spirit level

7. A toaster made of glass

6. A DIY book

5. A lager brewing kit

4. Some comfy shoes

3. A survival course

2. A computer game

1. A tweed jacket

Amazingly, nowhere on that list is an Account Director, which is exactly what our MD Chris Conlan would like for Christmas, to work on one of our key clients*.

Last year Chris got a lighthouse and tugboat set for his bath.

There are many types of Account Director, but the one Chris is looking for is the deluxe, upgraded version. Not the old 2.0 model. The 2.7, 3.6, or even 8.4 version. Full spec includes:

- Over 5 years’ experience in design/advertising.

- Fully compatible with TV, print, & digital.

- Experience with international clients**.

- Appreciates the importance of media neutral thinking, but doesn’t use twatty phrases like media neutral thinking.

- Knows the difference between an idea and an execution.

- Good with money.

- Good knowledge of design & designers.

- Takes 4x AA Batteries. (Not included)

All this plus all the benefits you’d expect as standard: hard working, team player, fun to be around, good with people, addiction to some basic drugs, blah blah blah. Please send interest and CVs to info@lovecreative.com with “All I want for Christmas Is You” or “Account Director Job”. Probably the latter one, actually.

NOTE: If you’re sat there (or stood there, leaning there or even lying there) reading this thinking  “That sounds just like me, but I’m more suited to a Account Manager role”, then please send us your CV too. Just adjust the subject line and cover note accordingly.

* That’s a major client, not a client who’s a locksmith.

** That’s a client for an international business, not a client who’s from Belgium.

One or two of you will have noticed that Christmas is coming. If you missed the geese rapidly putting on weight, then you may well have spotted other tell-tale signs such as the shops being heated to tropical temperatures, people in novelty ties being sick in the street, and your bank account being empty. And, if you were in the LOVE offices, you’d also have noticed our annual Christmas cards being delivered. Except ‘delivered’ is probably the wrong word to use, and so is ‘card’, making that last sentence almost entirely pointless. ‘Gifts’ were sort of ‘dumped’ in the office and needed packing.

It was a Herculean task to get them all done, but fortunately we had our very own Herculette in charge, Miss Dani Hawley. That’s her on the left below, telling Johnny his glasses are stupid.

Then I cracked this really funny joke, but only Helen found it funny. And Tom found a small bit of fluff on his jumper. It’s not his favourite jumper. The blue one is his favourite.

And then they were all packed up and ready to go. They’re being posted out today, so we’ll show you what they are in a later post. If you haven’t already received one by then. Previous years’ cards can be found here, and here.

[I'm not entirely sure of the relevance of the title for this post - it just popped into my head and I couldn't be bothered to change it. Sorry. I don't think they were listening to Coldplay when they were packing everything. Which is unusual for us because we are partial to a spot of Coldplay at least once a day. Sometimes even twice.]

Spin. Those in the advertising and marketing world should be no stranger to it. It first seemed to enter the public conscience with Alistair Campbell, PM Tony Blair’s very own ‘Spin Doctor’. That Max Clifford chap had something to do with it all too. There’s no situation so bad these men can’t turn it into something good with a bit of positive spin.

Sadly Max and Big Al (to his mates) are currently out of the office, and the only spin I can think of to put on our two silver awards at Friday night’s Roses Design Awards comes from the popular playground rhyme:

“First the worst, second the best.”

As memory serves the lyrics make no mention of nominations and how they sit in this ranking system.

One Silver was for the A-Z books for The University of the Arts, London.

The other silver was for our own website, which you shouldn’t really need to see an image of. Click the button marked ‘WORK’ in the top right corner of this page.

Still it was a good night, and congratulations to everyone from Manchester who managed to survive the two hour train journey to Nottingham without dying from asphyxiation.

And congratulations to Uniform for collecting Design Team of the Year and True North for picking up the Grand Prix. (Bad choice of words, there, perhaps.)

Here’s a poster we did a month or two ago for Umbro. It comes in two colours – the red one seen below, and a black one.

Sadly we haven’t got any images of the black one, as they just changed the inks at press. But if you close your eyes you won’t be able to read this, so keep them open and just imagine that the red bits are black, and the needle is blue and the ball and thread is white. Got it? If we get five minutes we’ll mac up the other version for you USING THE POWERS OF PHOTOSHOP. Or we could just take a photo of it.

Nice work from Mr Chris Gray and illustration from TOY.

Over the last eight months we’ve been doing a lot of work with Umbro. Sadly much of it we cannot show you, except the outside cover.

Inside is a ten year global brand plan that we’ve helped develop for them. That’s a plan, for a brand, that will be used all over the world, for approximately ten years. So while it might not be much to look at, there’s gold in them thar pages. A neat detail that I’ve been told to bring to your attention is the use of boot studs to bind it with. See what we did there?

We could show you more, but then we’d have to kill you, but unless you left your name and address in the comments section we wouldn’t really know who you are or where you live, so actually we wouldn’t be able to kill you. Fortunately we were also asked by Umbro to help “articulate this new direction to all the staff at their Cheadle offices: we needed to bring football culture to their workplace in an engaging and meaningful way.” And we can show you some pictures of the work we did there.

Those are genuine, bona fide, authentic, original Wembley seat backs on the wall there. You can see more of the work we did at their offices by clicking here. And a big thank you to the illustrators at TOY for all their excellent work.

There’s plenty more to show you, but let’s save some for another day.

Summer means two things at LOVE: Firstly, an unnamed person from the Creative Department will appear on at least one day wearing shorts, jacket and hat, making him look like he’s auditioning for The Railway Children.

Dave Palmer: Brilliant at kerning, rubbish at laundry.

And secondly, someone will be busy designing the prospectuses and Short Course brochure for Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon Colleges (CCW) from the University of the Arts, London. Previous years’ prospectuses have been recognised by the New York Festivals, Design Week and D&AD, so the bar is always high.

2006/07:

2007/08:

2008/09:

With budgets slashed for everyone this year we had to keep the costs down, so they were designed as tabloid newspapers, complete with sensationalist headlines. They’re not cheap as chips, but they’re in the same ball park.

The papers all fold out into giant posters:

Sadly there is no Sudoku section.

The Short Courses brochure also employed the weird and wonderful skills of illustrator Jody Barton. But more about him later – he deserves his own post.

Dear Abby, Adam, Alex, Alex, Andy, Andy, Andy, Andrew, Amit, Anna, Anthony, Anthony, Ashley, Ben, Ben, Becky, Charlotte, Christopher, Christopher, Chris, Clint, Daniel, Danny, Dany, David, Dean, Dominic, Edward, Elizabeth, Ella, Fiata, Ganella, Grace, Helen, Helen, Howard, Jade, James, James, Jamie, Jenny, Joanne, Karl, Kate, Katie, Kedarnath, Kirsty, Kooi, Laura, Lisa, Mark, Matt, Matthew, Mayu, Meera, Michael, Nicola, Nilesh, Olga, Phil, Phill, Rachael, Raphael, Richard, Ross, Ryan, Sally, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sara, Selina, Simon, Sophie, Steven, Steve, Tom, Tommy, Tony, Victoria, Will and William.

Firstly, thank you for all the excellent work you sent in.

Secondly, thank you for your patience – we’ve been pretty busy here and it’s not always easy to find time to fit all these things in.

Thirdly, we’ve finally looked through all the portfolios (at 79 there more than a third as many as last year. If I had more time I would work out the exact percentage increase, but it’s nearly time to go home) and we’ve drawn up a shortlist of ten grads to come into LOVE for a few drinks. We did this last year, and I think people found it useful – even the nine who we didn’t pick. It just gives us a bit of time to see all your work and check you’re not a total axe murderer.

We could announce them all on here, but it doesn’t seem like the done thing. So I’ll email you all over the weekend to let you know. If I was more important and powerful I would have someone to do all this for me, but I’m not, so I don’t. but I’ll be as quick as I can.

Have a good weekend. Here’s a funny link for you. (It’s not really that bad.)

Stephen Owen, not Michael. Although when you watch the video below that Ste filmed for Umbro, I think you’ll agree the similarities are uncanny. Both Ste and Michael look no more than twelve years old.

You can read more about Umbro’s Speciali boot and Stephen’s incredible ability to do keep ups on concrete on the Umbro blog. Camera work was by Ste’s mate Ben, who can be found here.

So, yes, the City gig is tomorrow night.

The big question is: Will JT be there?

The second biggest question is: who won the Umbro competition?

Well we won’t keep you in suspense any longer.

The judges picked three winners.

In no particular order:

Ben Prescott

Richard Connolly:

and Rob Scott:

Congratulations to those three, and commiserations to the others who entered. On the plus side, it seemed that most of the people who entered were City fans, so they’ve got no real reason for being upset at the moment. Also, Richard, if you’re reading this, please check your email. There’s a good fella.