We have just completed a rebrand of Umbro’s Teamwear offer aimed at the amateur football team market (Sunday leagues, pie eating pub teams, after work kick around etc). Umbro’s founding father (Harold Humphreys) believed that looking smart gives players a psychological advantage over their opponent and this insight is born out in these stylishly tailored football strips.

Our approach was to produce a game-changing piece of communication. Showing respect for the players who form Sunday league teams up and down the country by offering them product and communications that make them the hero.

47,000 of these large format brochures are now in circulation and have already started to cause a bit of a stir.

Thanks go to Steve Rhodes and the Umbro team, Tom Van Schelven, Tommy Cockram, Paula, Dani, Vicky, Harmsworth Print, Mum, Dad, Fabio, and Rooney.

To celebrate their big 5-0 on April 1st, Dr. Martens got 10 artists to cover 10 classic tracks and made 10 videos:  Noisettes cover Buzzcocks, DāM-FunK gets the Human League and The Duke Spirit do Sham 69, all with great videos by the best directors. So to show them off, we’ve built a website to be absorbed into Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Clipfish in Germany and Tudou in China. We wanted no barriers to it going global socially.

A week later, it’s got nearly 4,000 fans on Facebook and 50,000 people have watched the videos on YouTube, with lots more videos to come as the year goes on. There’s a blog written by passionate music journos Nina Manandhar and Nendie Pinto-Duschinsky, who just love their DM’s and want to see this go far, as well as the best-selling author Martin Roach and DM’s product designers.

Most of the time it’s not very exciting.  However, there’s been a lot of activity down this nondescript Northern Quarter alley way.

So much we started documenting it.

Here are a few of our favourites. In no particular order:

Man uses alley regularly as his bedroom

Bar men photo shoot (man still asleep in background)

One of many miscellaneous fashion shoots

Passenger with hangover being sick

Ian Brown video (not photographed out of our window but it’s our alley all right).

Well actually, our favourite was when a paraletic young couple attempted to have intimate relations in the middle of the road in broad daylight. More than likely students but we don’t want to stereotype. Unfortunately the camera was out on official LOVE. duty somewhere so we’ll leave that one to your imaginations.

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.

Manchester is famous for its football.

Manchester is also famous for its music.

This isn’t something that has gone unnoticed by the good people at Umbro, so in celebration of Manchester’s great cultural heritage, they are promoting Manchester City’s new kit using record sleeve visuals across the internet and across town. You’ve got the chance to design some of these sleeves. Here are a few examples of what we’re talking about…

The competition is open for anyone to enter and whilst there are no runner-up prizes, there will up to 10 winners who will have their artwork reproduced onto sleeves, posters and flyers.

They will also receive tickets to ‘Live For City’ at the City of Manchester Stadium on the 17th of July. If you’re sat there in your shiny red shirt thinking “That sounds rubbish”, you’d be wrong as it’s actually an exclusive gig with sets from the Doves, DJ Mike Pickering, The Twisted Wheel, Kid British and The Answering Machine. And you don’t even have to like City to appreciate that kind of line up. More details here and here.

Artwork should be “square” (according to one helpful designer here) and sent to hello@lovecreative.com before midnight on Sunday 12th July. A panel from Umbro, Anomaly and LOVE will be judging the designs, and winners will be announced on Monday 13th July. Sorry for the lack of time. Any questions, feel free to ask.

It’s music.

It’s football.

It’s a competition.

What’s not to like?

And the news blackout wasn’t because we did badly either: we had six nominations and we picked up five awards. Admittedly we were a little low on Golds, but three Silver and two Bronzes is pretty good for a night’s work. The winners (OK, technically we didn’t win) were:

LOVE: Silver: Best Website.

Warburton’s National Bread Week: Silver: Best Website.

It’s a Boy/It’s a Girl: Silver: Chris Bowen Award for Best Copywriting.

It’s a Boy/It’s a Girl: Bronze: Best Art Direction.

PSP: Bronze: Best Use of Illustration.

And the next day (Friday 1st May) we were informed by the powers at D&AD that we’d got three pieces of work into the 2009 book.

It’s a Boy/ It’s a Girl: Graphic Design: Catalogues & Brochures

It’s a Boy/ It’s a Girl: Writing for Design

Small Kids/ Big Boxes: Packaging: Packaging Design

Well done/hats off/pats on backs/high fives/up above/down below/you’re too slow to everyone who worked on the projects with us. And well done to the other Manchester agencies (Mark & Music to name two) who also had a healthy amount of work featured.

CAUTION: contains scenes of incredibly happy and beautiful models ‘unlocking their inner stamina’.

I wonder if you can change the voice that talks to you, like you can on sat-nav? You could have Lorraine Kelly, that Kirsty girl off the housing programme or perhaps we can interest you in Super-Nanny’s Jo Frost? Of course, for the ladies there’s Sir Sean, Daniel Radcliffe or even Jonathan Agnew.

If you’re a fan of duck-herding, ferret-racing, morris-dancing, welly-wanging, pie-eating and smoothie-drinking, and you weren’t in Regent’s Park at the weekend, you missed out big time.

After kind invitations from Dan, four of us made the trip to our capital city on Saturday for the innocent Village Fete. Despite a large downpour around one o’clock, we all had an excellent time. Except we don’t really have any good photos to show for it. Sorry. Here’s a picture of Phil after he tried to drink Tuborg through his eye.

And a close up of the table we sat at. You can just about make out at bit of Jo’s foot, top left.

If you’d like to see some slightly more professional photography from the day we’d recommend heading over to the Fete blog. A big thank you to everyone for the excellent hospitality.

An official statement from the LOVE management:

On 20th July 2008, at 1810 GMT the new LOVE website was launched.

Due to other commitments Boris Johnson was unavailable to attend.

It has been designed in Powerpoint.

It contains work designed by us over the last seven years.

There is still more work to be done on it.

We hope you like it.

You can turn the sound off if you want to.

If you don’t know who Russell Davies is, you can find out here.

Thank you to everyone who has worked on it.

Statement ends.