HO! HO! HO... here we Go! Go! Go!

We'd like to wish all our clients and friends a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and thank you all for their support throughout 2012.

Check out our all singing and dancing e-card here and if it gets too much, just click on one of the swinging red baubles to escape!

More "Keep Calm"

This beer mat caught our eye: ticking all the boxes for Great Britain in 2012. Union flag? Check. Keep calm? Check. Celebrating the war? Check. Olympics 2012? Alluded to. Conclusion: This beer's a Great British winner!

Omnishambles

According to the BBC website, "omnishambles" a word invented by the writers of The Thick of It has been voted Word of the Year by the Oxford English Dictionary. Read more here.

BRAND NEW WEBSITE

Visit my new website: www.northlondoncopywriting.co.uk

Enjoy. x

I need my own space!

Only this morning, I was thinking about having my own website, building my own client base and coming out from the shadows of Hughes Design. I mentioned this in passing to Mike, who happened to be sitting next to me, and before you could say "North London Copywriting" I had my own website. Perhaps he's looking to cut me loose...

So, have a look and see what you think - the URL is www.northlondoncopywriting.co.uk

In the meantime, I thought I would leave you with a copywriting rule of thumb:

Copywriting Top Tip
With web copy (and in my view, copy in general), less is more. Write in plain English, keep it short and simple. Try to keep to a word count of under 250 words, with sentences limited to a maximum of 20 words.

A colour study applied

While playing around with some colour palettes and shapes, we deconstructed an inital geometric pattern until it was barely unrecognisable and then applied to a series of homeware and clothing products - now available exclusively through Café Press.

Logo Website and Stationery project for a start-up business training consultancy in Kilmarnock, Scotland.

Below are some of the images of the development work.

Electrik Elf website

Electrik Elf are a predominantly dark & emotive electro combo fronted by vocalist Miss Juice-Tea and lyricist Blaine Fontaine with his eloquent vocal rhythms.

Hughes Design provided the Electrik Elf logo while illustrator Paul Shotbolt created the elf character - who captures this Act's "graphic novel" dark and decaying urban vision of society.

TIGER CHRISTMAS

Our favourite Danish retail outlet has published its Christmas catalogue which will be available instore from 26 October 2012.

Here at Hughes Design rewrote the whole thing for the UK and Scottish markets.

Pick up a hard copy at your local Tiger store.

GUESS THE TV SHOW T-SHIRTS

When we were growing up, vehicles seemed to play a big role in al the best TV. You knew a character as much by their catchphrases as you did by their distinctive choice of transport.

Can you guess you from the collection Hughes Design shirts below what shows they are from?

No prizes, just a bit of fun. Although I think we might just put the green number 2 shirt on Café Press...

It's all happening here...

Tiger - our favourite Scandinavian homeware store - have, with a little help from us, produced these striking artworks recently. 

The Panorama at the top can been seen in Stratford Shopping Centre next to the Olympic Park and is celebrating not just that "big" event, but the all the amazing things that are happening here this summer in UK, along with the Euros in Poland and Ukraine. 

The bottom two artworks have been used in store to promote their £1 shakers, we were particularly pleased with the headline on that one! The other is for new store openings as Tiger continues it's expansion across the South East of England.

Also, we'd just like to say a huge thank you to Tiger England, Scotland and Ireland for all their support over the last 12 months!

Check our hipster style website...

North-London-Graphic-Design.co.uk

This is an experiment we're trying whereby we bought a "search friendly" url that was relevent to our business and we have designed a single page site containing all our important info along with a selection of logos we've designed.

It's still us, Hughes Design, but a bit more now.

EXCLUSIVE! HOUSE BAND'S NEW TUNE

East Finchley Festival 2012

We've just put the finishing touches on the East Finchley Festival programme - which is being printed by local East Finchley printer JG Bryson.

Big thanks to all the advertisers for their contributions and to Robina Spinks and Rob Robertson for their efforts in getting all the material together to meet the print deadline.

Best wishes to everyone involved and hope see many of you readers there and catching the performance of our favourite local band Spring Park Motel!

Football advert - Barnet Sunday Football League Cup Finals 29th April 2012

Practicing what we preach, we recently sponsored the Barnet Sunday Football League Cup Finals 29th April 2012, this is our football themed advert with "pundit style" copy, as seen in the match day programme.

A Hughes Design Original...

Here's a t-shirt to for the 'techie' this summer. Theme: "What's the IT guy thinking when he fixes your computer...?". You fill in the blank.

Get yours here

A good time to be Hughes Design!

It's been a busy few months - we've moved to a central London office, new and existing clients are keeping us nice and busy and we've got plenty work on the horizon. Hopefully this trend will continue.

We've just completed - along with our digital partner DJA - two websites, one for our PR pals at Trinity  and another for italian politician Renato d'Andria promoting his book on his life in Italian politics. Our first site all in Italian.

We've also got 3 brand exercises in development - for a jewellery business, a social network and an orchestra - details of which will be posted when appropriate.

Of course we're always on the look out for new challenges so please get in touch to discuss your design and online needs.

Olympic Posters

The Olympic folks put up a huge banner outside the East Finchley tube station asking if we are ready to be a good host...

That got us thinking... 

In the spirit of "Keep Calm and Carry on" variations of which are just about everywhere at the moment, we knocked up our own Olympic posters instructing Londoners how to behave during the games... 

Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story

Enjoyed this talk no end. Hope you enjoy this as much as we did.

When debate breaks down

While reading the comments regarding a video on the TED site, we came across this, which made us smile.

To be worn with some irony...?

After flying the other day with the "orange alternative" and landing at London Luton Airport, I got to thinking about the airline no one seems to say anything positive about and why I only use it reluctantly. It got me thinking, this airline is in need of positive PR - especially when faced with an online anti fan sites or BBC Panorama's programme. So we thought - for free - we could invert the negative and crete a feel good message and emblazon it on some merchandise. So we fused the brand name with a Milton Glaser heart and voila! Either completely unsellable merchandise, or cult hit to be worn with an ironic smile...

Ferguson Hill Launch FHOO9 Home Theatre System

After much fine tuning Ferguson Hill launch the long awaited FHOO9 Home Theatre System to rave reviews.

This stylish addition to any home won 5 stars in a 3 way test in iCreate Magazine and was equally well received in the Daily Mail, the former saying "The clarity of the Sound is amazing" and the latter saying "The best home cinema speakers ever made"

Read more reviews here.

Hughes Design have been working with Ferguson Hill for many years supplying creative direction. Aside from Copywriting, Art direction packaging design, together with DJA online we recently updated the Ferguson Hill website.