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.

The lovely Paul Lambert passed this round this little peach from the wonderful David Shrigley.  It’s more commercial than I would have expected from him and more edgy than I would ever have credited Pringle with.

I love it.  See what you think.

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.

Ok, last week four of us turned up to work wearing grey.  A bit odd, but we thought nothing of it.

Then today, Mike, Katie, Stuart and I all appeared wearing purple.  It’s starting to freak us out so we’ve decided to document it, just in case this happens again.

So folks, today is St Andrew’s Day and we’re pledging our support to Scotland through the medium of colour, the colour purple.

Enjoy.

…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.

View Larger Map

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:

View Larger Map

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

For a little bit of lunchtime inspiration and a ‘oooh, let me see yours’ banter, we all had a go at a few of the online psychology tests listed in this New York Times article.  The You Just Get Me site offers you a summary of your personality, brought to life in the form of  a series of bubbles.  Any guessing whose this one is?

Working for Lactalis McLelland and Orkney Cheese, Stand developed some key promotional activity for Orkney Mature Cheddar in a bid to raise awareness of the award winning island cheddar cheese and gain customer loyalty. Stand came up with the catchy call to action ‘Taste a little piece of Orkney’, and the wider brand message ‘Orkney cheddar - out on its own’ as well as designing the supporting materials.

The activity kicked off at the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh last month, which saw sample packs of cheese handed out in lovely bags, along with some grapes, Nairn Oatcakes, and money off vouchers. Even Nick Nairn wanted in on the action - which the ladies who visited the stand were very happy about!

The activity was a roaring sucess, and there is every chance that Lactalis McLelland might consider taking this on the road to other events before the end of the summer.

Following on from last years success, Stand were invited to develop NHS Health Scotland’s stand for the NHS Scotland 2009 conference that is currently taking place at the SECC (16th - 17th June).

There are seven Health Improvement Heat Targets in total, each representing the following health subjects: Oral Health, Child Healthy Weight, Alcohol, Suicide Prevention, Smoking Cessation, Breastfeeding & Heart Disease.

With a reduced budget, and a requirement for the heat targets to be portable and easily constructed, we created an idea that utilises a cost effective modular system, sits well within the target concept, which is nicely topped off by some shiny balloons!

Despite the hot weather I managed a respectable 4:52:00, with a 10k time of 1:00:03,
and a 1/2 marathon time of  2:12:00.

Thanks again to all those that sponsored me, and those that didn’t - well you still have plenty
of time to get on there and sponsor me, all proceeds go to Macmillan.

www.justgiving.com/mikegbrooke

 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.

Over the past 5 months I have been training for the Edinburgh Marathon and have endured cold mornings, driving rain, gale force winds, angry dogs, dog sh*t, angry neds, and most recently I have been unwittingly eating flies, gnats and midges by the bucket load!

So after  already covering 376 miles I only have just 4 weeks to go until the big day, with just over 96 training miles left to do, and 26.2 miles on the day itself - lets just say I can’t wait till its over!

I am running the Edinburgh Marathon on Sunday 31st May in aid of Macmillan Cancer support, so far I have raised a respectable £480.00 but would love to hit the £1,000 mark, and with your help I reckon I can do it!

So please, please, please go to my sponsorship page and donate to this worthy cause. http://www.justgiving.com/mikegbrooke

I’ll let you know how I get on.