‘A Journey Through Borderlands’ is the title of a new recipe book recently designed for the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, a charity working with people suffering from oppression and persecution around the world.

As the title suggests, the book is more than just a collection ofrecipes. It includes stories from the remote ‘off the radar’ areas that the charity works in, including places like East Burma, Nagorno Karabakh, South Sudan and East Timor.The recipes included give aninsightinto thefascinatingcultures that the charity works with.

The book has been designed to show the journey in a travel journal style, with many full page photographs and passport stamps and graphics illustrating the journey the book takes around the world.

The book was printed in both hard-back and soft-back formats, the proceeds of the book used to support their work.

A selection of various page designs can be seen below:

Find out more about HART UK here.

A new website has been recently launched for Italia Nostra, an Italian restaurant based in Norwich.

The website launch coincided with the development of a visual identity for the restaurant, which included a new logo, advertising, menus and stationery designs.

A key aspect of the new visual identity is the watercolour background textures and silhouettes. So in order to make the most of these and display these in an interesting way, an extra wide horizontal-scrolling format was developed. This allowed all of the website sections to be displayed on onecontinuousbackground, with automatic scrolling aiding the navigation of the sections. The website visitor then feels like they are being taken on a journey through the website in a visually interesting way, rather than having to load new pages for each section.

Why not see the website for yourself at www.italianostra.co.uk

Food seems to be a bit of a theme for the last couple of journal posts – this time it’s a recipe book recently designed and printed for the London based youth charity Time & Talents.

All of the recipes and content within the book were researched and written by the young people, who receive an AQA qualification and a certificate for taking part.It’s great working with young people on a project that helps them develop their skills and widens their learning.

The project started with a meeting and discussion with the young people, where we talked about what they liked and wanted to see in their recipe book. We then came up with the idea of featuring different kitchen ‘scenes’ on each page, where we could display some of the equipment andingredientsin a top-down viewpoint. Some rather complicatedPhotoshop work ensued, and voila!

All of us involved would love to hear your thoughts on the project and design! (Click here see the larger image)

We have recently launched a new visual identity and website design for Paolo’s Restaurant in Norwich. So just to warn you, this journal post may make you hungry…

The brief was to create a fresh, informal yet modern-Italian identity and website design. So based on this, we came up with the concept of using a combination of hand-drawn elements with bold typography, a strong colour scheme placed on a chalk-board graphic background.

The website is fully integrated with social media so that visitors can share content, menus and promotions with their friends. This works well alongside their active social media engagement (@PaolosNorwich).

To make the user experience as easy as possible it is nowpossiblefor hungry visitors to make bookings online, where they can also choose toreceivefuture email promotions (see our email marketing section for more information about how this works).

You can see the new website design below, or by clickinghere.

In future posts we will be writing about the new designs for the menus and leaflets,explaininghow we used QR codes in our print and online promotions. So be sure to check back again soon!

We have recently redesigned and launched the new website for the executive chauffeurs ‘Air Drive Direct’ who are based in Norwich.

As part of a wider marketing strategy, the new website is designed to integrate with various online, print and email marketing campaigns.

It features a content management system that allows new content to be easily added to the website in future. This means that content can be kept up to date and tailored to cover specific events throughout the year.

You can view the website at: www.airdrivedirect.co.uk

Those that have been following this journal over the years (thank you!) may remember a website we originally developed for a company called Music and Events. It’s been exciting working with Music & Events and seeing it really take off and establish itself as a leading resource formusicians and entertainers (or anyone involved in the music, entertainment and event industry).

To cope with the growth of the business and to set it up for the future, the website has recently had a extensive redesign with a new content management system implemented. The new website now allows users to add their own listings, adverts, articles and event information to the directory. Bands and performers can create their own page, where they can feature images, audio tracks, videos and integrate their listingwith social media so that listings can easily be promoted through a wide social network.

Music and Events is one of the fasting growing entertainment directories in the UK today, so if you are a band, performer or venue you really should check it out at www.musicandevents.co.uk

It’s been great working with Hollington Youth Club over the past few weeks. The youth club, based in Camberwell in London, works with 8-19 year olds and provides a wide variety of programmes and activities.

The brief for the new logo design was to create a logo that appealed to young people, was energetic and illustrated the wide variety of activities and type of young people who use the club. The result was a bright and colourful logo, with many over-printed colours and ‘ripples’ that merge together to form a wide spectrum of colour.

Having this many colours in a logo (thousands!) is quite unusual, as traditionally logos would tend to feature 1-3 colours in order to keep printing costs low. However more modern full-colour digital printing techniques can be very cost effective and allow for more flexibility when approaching a project like this.

The leaflet design also takes on this concept of ripplesoriginating from the logo, giving the leaflet a real sense of energy and movement.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

If you were watching cartoons in the 80′s and 90′s you may remember cult cartoon ’Rude Dog & the Dweebs’ about a trendy pooch who drove a pink Cadillac in Beverly Hills.

Rude dog is now set to return to a supermarket near you, with a new range of dog food called ‘Rude Food’.

The graphics on the front of the bags have been designed to look like they have been painted directly onto the bag and feature the Rude Dog cartoons anddistinctivebranding.

The new annual report entitled “A week at the Salmon Youth Centre” was created for the centre at the end of last year. The report is presented in a notebook/diary format and takes the reader on a journey through a typical week at the Salmon Youth Centre.

It’s playful approach to an annual report and features page tabs, painted stencils and hand drawn notes and doodles from many of the young people. To give it a natural finish, the annual report was litho printed on Revive 50:50 offset by Robert Thorne (a FSC certified paper, 50% recycled).

An online version of the report was also created which you can view here (as it’s too big to show all of the pages here).

A logo and identity has been designed and developed for the Spotlight Youth Centre in Tower Hamlets, London. The new youth centre is being set up by Poplar HARCA, who are working with young people in the area to develop the new building and associated activities.

Young people from the area have been closely involved throughout the design process – one of the key briefs from the young people was that the new identity needed to be different to the existing ‘youth’ style logo designs around – one that appealed to young people and could stand out from the rest.

Inspiration for the logo was taken from a spotlight lens, where circular patterns intersect to create shifting patterns. This was combined with a variety of colours to give theillusionof shifting colours and to create an interesting visual effect.

This new identity is currently being worked into the design of the new building, with metal and glass used to form intersecting circles and shapes.

Find out more at the Spotlight Youth Centre Facebook pagehere.