I’ve never read the book Business For Dummies, nor am I 100% sure that one exists with that title. But if it does, I’m fairly certain that quite near the front, like page 1, there’ll be a passage that says “If you are attending an international design conference in China, don’t forget to take your business cards with you, otherwise you’ll look stupid.”

Fortunately Alistair bought plenty with him, but now everyone thinks we’re both called Alistair Sim. This is why he is MD, and I am not.

One or two of you may have noticed there’s a major world event happening in China at the moment, with some of the UK’s finest talent on show. What you may not know is that our MD (Alistair) and myself (Simon) are heading out next week to represent the United Kingdom. Yes, that’s right, it’s the 2008 China Design Taskforce, coordinated by the Creative and Media Unit at UK Trade & Investment.

The  China Design Taskforce works with British government organisations and industry trade bodies to raise the profile of British Design to buyers, intermediaries, public sector and press in greater China, and to help attract Chinese design buyers to consider British design expertise in their procurement.

Andrew Cahn, Chief Executive of UK Trade & Investment says: “We’re taking a giant leap forward in showcasing the best of British Design in this booming market. The potential market for UK design will develop rapidly as China’s economy moves towards selling more sophisticated products and services in a competitive market place.”

LOVE will be taking part in two seminars structured around the theme of ‘Love & Money’: one in Shanghai on the 19^th August, and the other in Beijing on the 22^nd. Hopefully we’ll also get the chance to have a look around some of the main Olympic sites, and give Michael Phelps a few swimming lessons. Some of the other agencies taking part are  Lisa Tse, The One Off and venturethree, so we’re looking forward to catching up with a few of them there.

Four further things, which I’m going to bullet point, because I’ve done enough writing at this point:

- If anyone else is going and fancies a night out, then please get in touch.

- If anyone has any advice on where to go/ what to see/ what to take, then please get in touch.

- We’ll bring you a few updates on the trip next week.

- I didn’t forget to change the title of this post, I just couldn’t think of anything clever or amusing.

The ‘60s – a time of bell-bottoms, tie-dies, unruly body hair and vegetables. At the heart of this revolution was Cranks, who believed a healthy, soul-satisfying diet didn’t have to include meat, mush or stodge. They believed health and taste could go hand in hand. They believed good food could take you to a better place. They were right.

They’ve come a long way in the years since, and their latest development is a refreshing new website, which our digital monkeys have just completed. It’s filled with products, recipes, news, inspiration and information on their restaurant in Devon. So if you’re looking to eat well and feel good, we’d recommend you take a look.

The gestation period for a female human is 266 days, 38 weeks or 8 days short of 9 months. The production of our latest work for Silver Cross took considerably less time, but it was still filled with late nights, minor temper-tantrums and a few headaches.

A huge amount of time and effort went in from a lot of people here, so it’s nice that it’s been equally well received as the last Little Book of Silver Cross, Goo Goo Gaa Gaa (which we recently found being flogged on eBay by some Dutch chap for £10 a copy). A special mention should go to our client Jason, who had to endure a particularly stressful 72-hour ‘labour’ over in Poland, dealing with the printing.

As with the last book, it’s filled with Silver Cross’s prams, pushchairs, car seats, home accessories and those regal perambulators you might have seen J-Lo pushing around recently. This year we updated the content with a family guide to music festivals, recipes from innocent and The New Covent Garden Soup Co, sections on heuristic play and baby sign language, plus a nice spread about Grandparents’ Day. (It’s on 22^nd September this year – make sure you send some love.)

There are probably too many people to mention individually, but if you helped out on the project – you know who you are – thank you.

The book’s available to order from the Silver Cross website, so if you have friends or family with a small bun in the oven, we’d recommend ordering a copy asap. Just please don’t flog it on eBay (or if you do you could at least have the decency to send us a few quid.)

Not the most profound of questions, really. In this case it’s definitely the chicken.

We posted a month or two ago about Anna “call me Anna” Siedlikowska’s excellent viral work for Nando’s. Anna’s been working with us full time for the last few months, but earlier in the year she entered the idea into the Student D&AD awards and picked up a mini pencil for her efforts.

Well done Anna. Now get back to work.

When we do Love trips abroad we come back with loads of stories.
We thought the same would be true for STA’s global travellers.

5th- 11th May was Warburtons National Bread Week. The sun was equally excited by this and came out to visit all week. So, sandwiches in tow, we took our hamper and had a jolly great public picnic, hopefully the first of many this summer.

Interestingly, it seemed half of Manchester was also out that day munching on their sarnies. You can add your own picnic pictures here.

Special nod to The Neighbourhood for their very British filling of choice: curry 

Packaging has got a bit of a bad reputation recently. It’s generally held solely responsible for climate change, destruction of the rainforest, the UK’s landfill problems, binge drinking culture and probably the credit crunch too. So when Silver Cross asked us to redesign their packaging for their prams and pushchairs we wanted to show that a box doesn’t have to be something chucked away at the end of the day: a box can be a house, a boat, a helmet or even a rocket.

With over 12,000 entries for the contest last year, DM Boot Design returns this week and this time we’re looking for designs for both the 1460 (8 hole) and the 1914 (14 hole) boots.

There’s a judging panel who will choose from a shortlist of the top rated designs (so get voting) plus lots of new features on the site including design of the week, a new and improved “love it or hate it” voting system and loads of new drawing tools.

We’ve had some good news. Our University of the Arts London Prospectuses have made it into this years D&AD Annual.

This is quite hard to do - like being able to do 60 press-ups in a row, so we’re very pleased.