The clever bit about creating an app is not the design or the build. It’s making sure that it’s relevant to the brand it represents. The City of Nottingham has always stood for 3 things; safe, clean and proud. These are values that have come out of extensive Mori research with Nottingham residents.

The Clean Notts app not only directly supports these brand values - it empowers citizens to contribute. In the past people might see things like persistent dog fouling, fly-tipping or racist graffiti and think - that’s bad, but I haven’t got a clue who to contact to sort it out. With the Clean Notts app they can report things like this instantly.

The customer service part is seamless;
    -    the user specifies what kind of issue it is (and can include a photo)
    -    the app automatically logs the location of the issue
    -    the report goes the department with responsibility for that issue
    -    user gets an acknowledgement text
    -    and finally the user gets a text telling them when the issue has been sorted

End result - user feels empowered. They’ll do it again and tell their friends. Suddenly Nottingham has its own army of people helping to improve their city.

What’s this ‘Kiczi Haz’ I hear you say?

It actually means ‘small house’ in Hungarian, as well as being a rather magnificent furniture restoration business based in London. Sourcing unique, mid-century seating and other pieces from far and wide – in particular Eastern Europe – Kicsi Haz’s master craftsmen breathe passion, personality and new life into the homewares of yesteryear.

Our job was to do the same with their branding.

Starting with a characterful new logo, we created a consistent, quirky brand identity across business cards, letterheads, mailers and a brand new website.

We’re pretty chuffed with their cute little business cards too – white-foil embossed onto 540gsm Colorplan and die-cut to be ever so slightly smaller than your average business card. Quite literally, a kicsi haz!
 

Creating an identity for a company that owns a stable of international brands needs a balanced approach. It needs to have enough character to be an identity in its own right yet it needs to enable the brands under its umbrella to shine through. We've delivered the new identity through showcase videos, literature, ads and exhibition stands.

If you think it's a pain getting through the rush hour traffic to see your doctor, spare a thought for the people in the remote villages of sub-Saharan Africa.

It's impossible for these people to travel vast distances across rough terrain. So Riders for Health (Riders) have turned it on it's head by providing and maintaining motorbikes and vehicles for health workers. With Riders sorting out their transport needs, health workers can see six times more people than they could before – many in previously unserved communities. This translates into some staggering results, for example in Zimbabwe, 225,000 extra people were visited by health care workers in 2010 thanks to motorcycles provided by Riders.

But the charity sector is just as competitive as any other, so Purple Circle's Global HQ has produced a suite of materials specifically for use in different African countries. Riders have to actively sell their services in Africa, so we've taken the Riders message and brought it to life with benefit-led copy, clean design, tactile materials and the use of a special hexachrome orange to ensure that a Riders presence is never overlooked.

Smith Cooper is a firm of accountants with offices across the region. They pride themselves on offering a diligent, versatile and cost-effective, service – and delivering their advice with clarity and pragmatism.

Our job was to help them reflect all that ethos in their corporate materials, helping drive consistency across marketing materials. We started by getting to know the firm, helping to establish and define its core values and producing a user-friendly set of brand, tonality and design guidelines. Roll-out is currently in progress, with a suite of adverts and a smart new brochure next on the production list over the coming weeks.

Trent Bridge cricket ground is much more than a host for cricket matches. It’s a thriving, multi-faceted business – an important presence in the local community. To secure a busy, successful future for the ground, Trent Bridge needed the flexibility to adapt their brand for different events and with that, different audiences. Cue Purple Circle. It started with a visit to the ground, a fascinating chat with renowned cricket historian Peter Wynne-Thomas and a lot of research into Trent Bridge and cricket's long history.

The job as we saw it was to create a completely flexible identity that would position Trent Bridge as not just a world-class cricket ground, but also an ideal venue for all kinds of events - from music concerts to weddings. For us, the future of the brand relied on striking a balance between Trent Bridge's quirky British, historic charm and its very modern new outlook and architecture.

The Driving Standards Agency (DSA) are the people responsible for driving and motorcycle tests in the UK, as well as driver and rider safety.

They came to us for help livening up their staff magazine, The Standard – formerly a little outdated and corporate in look and feel. We injected personality and pizzazz into the publication by entirely rethinking the way it engages staff. Settling on a fun, illustrative approach, our design for each issue centres around a content-led theme; and to keep every issue feeling as fresh as the last, a different illustrator is commissioned every time. So far, we’ve worked with both famous and up-and-coming names, from the inimitable Spencer Wilson to Nottingham Trent graduate Sophie Garwell, who impressed us during her placement at Purple Circle in 2010.

Amongst the collection you’ll also find work by Damian Weighmill, Kipi Ka Popo, Ben Kirchner, Adam Sharp and David Sparshott.

Following New York fashion week, we were asked to create an eye-catching, premium-quality invite to lure the UK press along to Speedo’s West London showroom to review the new spring/summer range.

The collection featured a vibrant new range of swimwear that combined high technicality with high fashion, designed in collaboaration with Amir Slama, founder of Brazilian swimwear brand Rosa Cha.

The invite had to reflect the beauty and distinctiveness of Speedo’s Rosa Cha pieces and make an impact on the recipient – essential when you’re asking people to take time out of their busy schedules last-minute.

Britain’s favourite chocolatier, Thorntons, are celebrating their 100th birthday in 2011; and to celebrate, we worked alongside their in-house team to conceptualise and design a ‘fantastical’ theme which could be carried across a suite of delightful centenary-branded materials.

The branding centres around charming and intricate illustrations by Johanna Basford, whose “inky black and white wonderland” has adorned the Edinburgh Fringe festival programme, the iconic canvas fabric of Converse shoes and even the pages of Vogue.

It started with a detailed brief from Thorntons and a brainstorm, where we came up with a number of possible creative routes. This fantastical execution needed to be flexible enough to be applied across any size or shape – from tiny badges to huge pieces of 3D point-of-sale. The resulting work has been applied to all manner of items by Thorntons’ in-house design team – see it now in a store near you!

Greater Nottingham Partnership asked us to demonstrate the breadth of investment projects they’ve co-ordinated for the people of Nottingham. So we created this tactile, perfect-bound book, using four kinds of paper, a four-colour process, spot-colour, die-cutting, foil and spot-UV.

Now, have we missed anything? Oh yes - how could we forget? The book was a big hit with the client, helping them to secure a significant chunk of extra funding for future projects.

Photography by David Sillitoe and Hélène Binet.