After a three-way pitch, Stand won the project to create and apply a new brand identity for Columba 1400.

Columba 1400’s purpose is simple; to help young people from tough realities realise that they already have the inner greatness and confidence to transform their own lives.

Columba 1400 has been established for ten years, working from its headquarters in Staffin, Skye, and has recently added a second centre in a truly inspirational setting at Ardoch, Loch Lomond. They offer programmes for children and adults from the corporate world, sometimes working alongside to benefit each other.

Stand were present at the opening, along with the charities patron HRH The Princess Royaland a wealth of trustees, sponsors, supporters and graduates from the programs.

The new identity looked fantastic flying in the wind, and we look forward to rolling it outacross their website and other corporate materials in the coming months.

We thought this was a great, interactive way of engaging music lovers in a rock bar.  The concept is from Almap/BBDO in Brazil for Billboard Magazine.  The Flickr collection can be seen here:

Billboard Magazine video instalation from Marcos Kotlhar on Vimeo.

Why do Japanese DJs just make everything look instantly appealing?This engaging piece of film is to promote Nike’s new Free Run+ shoe which claims to be so flexible that it’s as close you can get to barefoot running.I’m off to Achilles Heel tomorrow to invest in a new pair of running trainers before the Women’s 10k next week.  I’ll see what they say about these bad boys.Oh, and I love how they had to put this caveat on the endframe: 

Spotted here by our in-house Japanophile, Mr Paul Lambert, check out the dedication of these Lady Gaga fans en route to her gig in Tokyo.  You gotta hand it to them, they know how to dress up for an occasion don’t they?God, I miss Tokyo, and feeling so plain and boring every day.

Well, Colin and I have had a whirlwind trip to Skye and back to visit the spiritual home of our newest client, the wonderful Columba 1400.   It included:

• 422 miles of driving,
• 2 (completely unnecessary) trips to McDonalds in Fort William (woops),
• a very warm welcome by the ever-enthusiastic Rhona,
• a famous Columba 1400 hot chocolate to sample on arrival,
• a fab tour around the Centre by the lovely Jackie,
• a great session sharing our ideas with the wider Columba 1400 team,
• a lovely dinner with some rather inspirational people,
• 1 bottle of red wine (no need really) while chatting to Sheena until midnight,
• an overnight stay in the beautiful Quiraing Lodge,
• Colin taking LOTS of photographs of the place

…and finally, a refreshed perspective on life and what really matters.  Happy days. View Larger Map

Time to move back to our old/new/own office.   Much as we’ve enjoyed the delights of lunch at WTMS and easy access to the shops at lunch time, we’re all looking forward getting back to normal, and to the charms of the team at Piece.

Hopefully there will be no more floods.   But given the track record, who knows.Anyway, we’re celebrating the return to our own place with a couple of exciting new client meetings on Tuesday and Thursday.   Life is good. : )

We’re like the littlest hobos these days with all these office moves.  But since our flood(s) have ruined our new office we are having to move out completely so they can take the ceiling/walls etc down so they can make sure it doesn’t happen again.Anyway, we’ve found a lovely new temporary place to ‘live’, at 126 West Regent Street, Glasgow.  It’s a serviced office in the Griffin Business Centre so it’s a nice, central location.We hope we’ll only be out of our own place for 4 weeks but watch this space for updates.The main telephone number will just be redirected to our new place so 0141 222 2999 is still the best way to get in touch.

Email’s working again.  The main phone line’s been rerouted to Athene’s mobile too so you can get through to us on the usual number.

Just trying to work out what damage has been done to the rest of the office.  : (

Our lovely, new office has been flooded (AGAIN!) so for the moment our mail server is down.  If you need to get a hold of us then please use the old fashioned telephone to call us on our mobiles.

Handily, our main phone line comes through our broadband connection, so helpfully when you dial 0141 222 2999 at the moment the lovely lady from BT says ‘the number you have dialled has not been recognised, please check and try again’.

We’ll let you know as soon as we’re up and running from the office again.  In the mean time, we’re all working from home.

…and we’re settling into our new home.  Our email now appears to be back to *ALMOST* full working order and the place is MUCH less cluttered than it was a week ago.  Feels like we’ve been here for ages already.We’ve made friends with the locals, found some great wee places for lunch, and managed to keep the business running despite our lack of email for so long.

Katie captured our (relative) progress throughout this past week on her iPhone, including our very first client meeting, with the lovely Kyra & Kate from VisitScotland.

Here are Katie’s snaps.  Proper, posh pictures to follow once we agreed where Tim can keep his bike, without affecting Maggie’s OCD

We’re moving to our own, brand-spanking new offices tomorrow.

After today our new address is:

170 Kelvinhaugh Street, Glasgow, G3 8PR

Don’t worry,  the telephone number’s not changing, so you can still get us on 0141 222 2999.

Once we’re all settled in, expect an invite to come round and have a few glasses of bubbly to celebrate.

 This is how the place looked when Google StreetView were out doing their thing.

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Here’s how to get to the offices, using the most environmentally-friendly methods:

By bus from Glasgow City Centre:

Get a number 9 or a 62 (First Bus) from the bus stop at the corner of Hope Street and Bothwell Street.  The bus will take 9 minutes to get to the bus stop you need to get off at, at the corner of Argyle Street and Haugh Road.  Here’s what you should be looking out for when you’re about to get off the bus:

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From the bus stop, walk the 520 steps (count ‘em) down Haugh Road, take a left down Forres Drive then a right onto Kelvinhaugh Street.  Our new office is on the right hand side.

By Subway, get off at Kelvinhall Subway and walk the 0.7miles (burning an average of  64 calories!) using these directions:

For any more directions, just give us a call or check out www.walkit.com or www.joinupmyjourney.com

We’re so proud to have designed this great cookbook for this amazing charity.  THINK PINK is a Scottish breast cancer charity with no admin fees - every penny raised goes directly towards new equipment at the Beatson.  It was set up four years ago by two women who had breast cancer and they decided to raise funds to give something back in return for the amazing treatment that they’re received from oncologists and nursing staff.  They set about with high hopes of raising £10K and four years on they’ve raised £200K.  They now have annual fundraising events and their new target is to fund a laboratory in the new Translational Research Centre in Garscube Estate.THINK PINK is a committee of five woman.  Everyone volunteers their time and expertise.

Lynn and Freda (our two ThinkPink ladies) have been a huge inspiration to us on this project – constantly upbeat about the work and heaps of compliments – a real pleasure. Happy days and lovely clients.

Thank you to Julie Fraser for getting us involved in the first place and thanks to Mr. Paul for the brilliant illustrations – lovely to be working with you again, Maggie

Stand are looking for a couple of really good designers.

You need to have about two years studio experience (minimum), easy to work with, a team player, totally committed, not itching to dash out of the door at half five no matter what. You also need to be really good with InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop and understand how artwork works. A bit of web experience would be good.

Last thing. You need to be pretty fearless, able to take on non print based design, 3D, packaging, point-of-sale, exhibition, brand experience are a big part of what we do.

Get in contact with me if you fancy a shot,

Stuart

stuart[at]stand-united [dot]co[dot]uk

 The Drum have now published this, this, this and this photo of us receiving our Scottish Design Awards on Friday evening.

Left to Right: Mike, Jane from IKEA, Tim, Maggie, Stuart, Nathan, Marie, Anna.

Good news folks.  Stand won 2 awards at the Scottish Design Awards on Friday evening:

Best Best Exhibition/Point of Sale for IKEA Catalogue Launch Roadshow

Promotional Literature for the Glasgow School of Art Undergraduate Prospectus 2009/10.

A good night was had by all at the awards.  Official pics to follow but in the mean time, here are some snaps:

Saw this t-shirt on my Threadless newsletter today.  It’s from their new range of Twitter tees.

Promise this one wasn’t me.  Honest, Stuart.

With about two hours’ notice, no make-up or wardrobe available and very little retouching time at our disposal, the lovely Paul Hampton took this shot of us for The Drum’s piece on us winning Design Consultancy of the Year.  Our Stuart (Gilmour, not Gilmore as the video states) even has a go at being interviewed on camera by Stephen Lepitak.

Stand have just been announced as this year’s winners of Design Consultancy of the Year.  We’re rather chuffed.  Maggie’s even been celebrating from the ski slopes of Switzerland and has vowed never to go to the lunch again since both times she’s missed it Stand have been winners.

More news, gossip and maybe even photos to follow.  We’re still on a high. : )

It has been more than a decade since Tennent’s Wellpark Brewery has had a signage make over and we got the chance to do it! Along with the Tennent’s team we were briefed to contemporise the signage without losing the site’s strong heritage. At first it appeared fairly straight forward, but physical scale, coordinating the build, securing planning permission, proved to be a great challenge - after 3 months build we’re sure you’ll agree it looks pretty impressive!

And following on from this… we’re again working with the Tennent’s team to create a new meeting and reception area at the brewery - what a great job, we’re really looking forward to it!!

Scary stuff.  It seems the bright young things at Google might be better at predicting how healthy (or not) we (or at least our pals in the US) may be at any point in time.  How?  Well read this and it all sounds very simple.

According to Google they can accurately predict how significant or not a breakout of flu will be by looking at the number of people searching flu-related terms via Google.com.  Then Google can accurately estimate current flu levels one to two weeks faster than any other professional report.

 I’d like to think that this was just a nice, helpful thing for Google to do for the greater good but no doubt it’s  the kind of time-critical information the Marketing people for Lemsip, Beechams and the like would be willing to pay top dollar for.