Each year at Waxcrayon we try to donate our design services to a local charity and this year we were asked to help “Row For Life 2011,” a group of 10 men attempting to row 1 million metres during Cowes week and attempt to set a new British record, all whilst hopefully raising lots of money to help children in Africa. And somehow along with agreeing to help with their logo design and marketing in my spare time, also ended up agreeing to join the rowing team of 10! Having never rowed before a concept2 machine has been installed in the office and I have been hitting the training hard for the last 3 or 4 months! So, it has been an adventure so far and with 4 weeks to go to the big event, I feel the biggest adventure is yet to come!

Continuing our long running innovation in youth publishing projects, a while back Issue 2 of Tegumai Magazine was launched. Whilst we know it is a little bit on the ‘crazy’ side, we are really happy to say that our model is now being adopted by schools across the country who have been inspired by our work with the students at Westergate Community School in West Sussex. We would like to wish those schools the very best of luck.

2011 is seemingly the year of the Strawberry! The Waxcrayon garden is yielding mega crops of the tasty little fellers. And even better on today’s afternoon pick we were lucky enough to get an Isle of Wight shaped one, only thing is I am not sure if I can bring myself to eat it!

Isle of Wight Shaped Strawberry

Today's Strawberry crop

We were pleasantly surprised today, when a friend text to say that we had made the Isle of Wight County Press. We had been interviewed about the work we did for Hobbs Jewellers but expected to only have a quote or something used, not such a glowing report! So, nice! Check out full article here: http://www.iwcp.co.uk/news/business/gem-of-a-makeover-38656.aspx

This is a gem of a video which was put together by cycling enthusiast Dave Morgan, documenting his ride on the annual Isle of Wight 100k randonnee. Also, shows the magic of the Island en-route.

Hobbs Jewellers got in touch and said that they were looking to rebrand and “re-do” the exterior of their legendary premises in Ryde. The only catch was the business has been in the family for 3 generations and the client’s Grandfather designed the original logo and look 65 years ago. No pressure there then! So, we carefully went about creating a new logo and look for the shop, which included a new colour scheme, new blinds, new signage and new boxes and bags for the products plus a few shiny tweaks to polish up their social networking sites. It was fantastic to work with an Island company with such a strong history and to be able to hopefully help propel them into their next 65 years of business.

I started designing our new site back in November and now in April I have finally found enough time to finish it! The look has changed from the more creative site of last year (shown below), to a more clean and slick look for this year. It seemed to go that way for no other real reason than we fancied a change!

I also noticed when placing this post that the last blog post was last May! Pretty poor show I know but this year will be sure to see change there. More blog stuff I promise!

So, we hope you like the new site and keep your eye out for new and more frequent posts here.

As it has been a while we thought we would post up a few bits of our latest work. Here is the final logo design for fresh and funky new outfit “Refreshingly Village.” We will be posting up more on this job soon.

This is another of our famed “Youth Culture” magazines. After several months working with the students at Westergate Community School in West Sussex, we have recently published the pilot issue of “Tegumai Magazine,” printed as a newspaper magazine and with a readership of 80,000 plus we are proud to be working with such talented youngsters aged 11 and upwards and are looking forward to future issues!

We have realised that we have been a bit slack in uploading our work of late and as such decided to post a few bits up to show you what we have been up to. This was the Winter/Spring edition of the fantastic “Isle of Wight Health and Well Being Directory,” which spreads the word about all things that you can make you happier and healthier.

We thought we would show you a little bit of what we got up to in between designing stuff for our clients. For several years now we have dabbled with growing our own food and each year we have added a little more. But this year we decided to give full-on self-sufficiency a go, to give ourselves healthier, organic food and help the planet out a little bit at the same time, through cutting out harmful packaging materials and emissions from global transportation. But the most important benefit is fantastic tasting food which is the product of your labour. So, below we have posted a few photos to show you the progress so far and we will keep you updated as the seasons move along.

Waxcrayon Design Veg Garden 01/03/2010

Waxcrayon Design Veg Garden 26/04/2010

Waxcrayon Design New Seed Bed Before and After

We have been very busy being on holiday and then working really hard to catch up, so apologies for the lack of blog action. We have just finished creating an advert that takes a different approach to the mainstream corporate approach…we hope it does the job!

When we came across this crazy Japanese restaurant, we felt it had to be shared. A great and intrinsically Japanese creation, you visit a restaurant, sit on toilets and eat your meal from a selection of toilets, urinals and bathtubs! Creative thinking indeed, but how would it go down in this country? Would you book a toilet? Makes me wonder what the bathrooms are like!

It is not very often that you will find me talk about a shopping experience, let alone blog about one! However, I felt that this experience had to be shared.

I have owned many macs since I became a convert back in my early 20′s and I currently own 3. I have never had a problem in all those years, but randomly my Macbook Pro developed an annoying little glitch, where a strange mark appeared in the screen. It was only visible when I was working with a dark background, so with the warranty running out, I decided to pop over to the Apple Store in Southampton. I booked in my appointment online and arrived 5 minutes early, I took a seat at the Genius Bar which was located at the back of the slick, apple laden store. My personally allocated apple genius asked me to show him the problem, he filled in a quick form, said that they would replace the screen, I took my receipt and left. All in under 5 minutes. 4 hours later I received a phone call to say that the repair had been done and I could collect it when I wanted. – I went in with my photo ID, checked the repair over and left with £400′s worth of new screen and clam shell.

If you don’t own a mac I recommend you cash in your children’s savings, sell your granny’s silver or do whatever you have to to get one, as Apple do not stop at producing the best products, they carry that same innovative, eye for detail right the way through, ensuring the complete user experience. If anyone from Apple reads this and wants to send me some freebies for the PR job, please feel free!

We were very excited in the Waxcrayon Design office to receive our eagerly awaited Droplet 2 vinyl toy. We have been following the marketing genius of design hero Gav Strange and his alter-ego “Jam Factory” over the last 6 months or so and hold him in high regard indeed.

The product speaks for itself, but like all great products, every detail of the packaging and presentation showed the same high level of thought. The box is made from a beautiful offset, natural feeling material with a lovingly applied spot varnish which truly brings it alive. For those of you not aware of the droplet phenomenon or the mastery of Jam Factory then I recommend a trip over to http://news.jam-factory.com

Hello and welcome to our first new blog post.

For those of you who have visited before, you will see we have carried out a total refresh of our entire site. In accordance with our new look, we are taking a new approach to our blog. We will be using the blog to its maximum effect and will hopefully be able to offer something of interest to everyone. You will be able to find news on our latest projects, view our most recent work, read our thoughts and ideas on the world of design, see some of our personal work, self-initiated projects and follow our everyday adventures in the world at large.

We hope that you enjoy reading our posts and we welcome any comments and ideas that you may wish to contribute.