June 2010

The Logical Choice
Thursday, 24th June 2010

Zube are pleased to announce a branding makeover for the Logic Vehicle Preparation Centre.

Logic Vehicle Preparation Centre are an award winning vehicle body shop located in Statford upon Avon, Warwickshire.

At Logic they pride themselves on providing an unparralled service to the trade and public in high class vehicle bodywork repairs.

Logic carry out insurance work on behalf of many leading insurance companies. They are also an approved accident repair centre for leading car.

Logic has built up an enviable reputation providing vehicle body repairs for main dealers, leasing companies, fleet operators and insurers alike, whilst still remaining flexible enough to care for the individual.

Check out the Zube branding portfolio for more examples of our branding design work.

Aylwin Property Brochure
Wednesday, 16th June 2010

Zube have recently completed the marketing brochure for the Aylwin Property project on behalf of Shape Construction Ltd.

Aylwin is an 18th century school listed building which Shape Construction have converted into four apartments, along with 9 cottages that sit in the grounds of the school.

The new build behind the listed building will be called the Mews and has 9 plots.

The target buyer is a middle age and upwards couple or middle age professional who want a quiet life in East Sussex.

The village is associated with Saint Dunstan. The saint, formerly a blacksmith was working at his forge when the Devil paid him a visit, disguised as a beautiful woman, with a view to leading him astray. However St Dunstan spotted the cloven hooves beneath the dress, and grabbed the devil's nose with his red hot pincers! thus foiling Satan's evil intentions.

According to another legend, Satan returned again as a weary traveller in need of a horseshoe, Dunstan saw through the disguise once again and beat the Devil until he pleaded for mercy, and swore never to enter any house with a horseshoe above the door.

To see more examples of Zube print and brochure design check out the Zube print portfolio.

Mutton Dressed as Lamb
Monday, 14thth June 2010

Zube have produced a new logo and branding design for The Shoulder of Mutton, Eating House.

The Shoulder of Mutton is a fantastic country pub set in a delightful village in Warwickshire. British pubs have come a long way since the dark old days of 'warm beer and cold food,' richly evidenced by our approach to the pub experience.

This charming pub and restaurant has all the traditional bits (of course), mixed with plenty of modern touches. It combines unusual, high class food with the finest wines and beers, all against the background of a perfect country pub atmosphere.

Customers at the Shoulder of Mutton say the food is tremendous, both in quality and value. They have a great cellar stocked up with cask ales and wines from around the world. As their food menu and winelists show, they know a thing or two about great pub food and drink.

All this in the beautiful setting of the Warwickshire countryside - we think you'll like it.

Check out the Zube branding portfolio for more examples of our branding design work.

A Signal of Hope
Friday, 11th June 2010

The branding for this year's Fifa World Cup had to satisfy not only the demands of the governing body, but the cultural and sporting aspirations of both the host nation and the continent of Africa itself.

The process
The 2010 Fifa World Cup branding by Johannesburg consultancy Switch was born of a pitch organised by football's governing body. A longlist of some 30 members of Think - the South African Design Council - was whittled down, after a credentials presentation, to a handful of consultancies including Black, The Brand Union, Grid and HKLM as well as Switch.

Fifa has come under a lot of criticism locally for the restrictions it placed on designers, insisting its own logo takes up 40 per cent of the design and is placed in the bottom right-hand corner, and its high-handed attitude to even the smallest producer using 2010 in the context of football. But it was an exemplary client in the way it ran the pitch, says Veejay Archary of shortlisted Johannesburg consultancy Black. The process that started some five years ago effectively kicked off the successful anti-free pitching movement in South Africa.

Each of the consultancies on the shortlist was paid to submit five designs, incorporating the Fifa logo and looking at Africa as a whole, not just South Africa. 'It had to work from Cairo to Cape Town,' says Switch founder Gaby de Abreu. The design also had to work at all sizes, in black and white or colour, and be capable of realisation in print, embroidery and a host of other media, and for Fifa communications as well as within sponsors' promotions.

The final submissions were assessed by a panel including Ravi Naidoo, celebrated founder of Design Indaba and Interactive Africa, and former South African Justice Albie Sachs, who played a seminal role in the commissioning of the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, among other cultural innovators.

Archary maintains, though, that the project was 'not based on creativity, but on legal protection' - in other words, what Fifa could claim as its own.

The concept
According to de Abreu, the big challenge was the relatively small space left to be expressive and portray celebration and African-ness once the Fifa logo had been incorporated. But as it roughly followed the shape of the African continent, he took this as his cue. 'Africa is the one continent, apart from South America, that you recognise instantly by its shape,' he says.

The image of the footballer is inspired by traditional rock painting and shown executing a difficult bicycle kick to represent the 'flair' that is the essence of African football, de Abreu says, with the ball appearing as the African sun. The typeface created for the project is 'commercial, legible, but still African'. 'It looks as though it is chiseled into rock,' he maintains.

To emphasise South Africa, de Abreu chose the nation's flag, used in an abstract way to follow the contours of the continent. The footballer kicking the ball upwards from the bottom of the flag suggests celebration emanating across Africa from the south, he says.

He admits reaction to his design has been mixed, with a 50/50 split for and against within the local design community. But he accepted the constraints placed by Fifa on the design. 'Fifa designers in Zurich are strict because they have to combat pirates,' he says.

Switch has also taken the branding through to Fifa merchandising and clothing such as T-shirts. It also won the job to create a poster that, again, uses the African continent and South African colours, with a human face raised optimistically towards the football-cum-sun. Johannesburg ad agency Joe Public, meanwhile, created the website.

De Abreu hopes the story the branding tells, and the World Cup experience generally, will dispel some of the negative perceptions people have of South Africa and the African continent, in the same way the 2006 World Cup helped to unite its German host nation. For him personally, it brings together his twin dreams of branding a world event and being a professional footballer. 'It had a story because of my first-hand knowledge of and passion [for football and South Africa],' he says.

Good for Business?
Tuesday, 8th June 2010

Only time will tell whether the tax cuts announced in last week's Emergency Budget will offset the impact of the draconian spending restrictions also put in place by the Chancellor.

The business tax breaks in Chancellor George Osborne's Emergency Budget have been welcomed by design industry observers, but are only providing a temporary distraction from the eye-watering cuts set to hit the public sector.

A series of tax breaks and entrepreneurial relief measures led the Forum of Private Business to hail last week's Budget as 'small business-friendly', but this optimism is tempered by the spectre of cuts potentially as high as 33 per cent to Government departments including Business, Innovation and Skills, which administers design at central Government level. The full scale and detail of the cuts - which will go across Government with only health and international aid spending ringfenced - will become clearer with the Comprehensive Spending Review in October.

The Cabinet Office has already frozen all non-essential advertising and marketing spend - having set up the Efficiency and Reform Group in May in conjunction with the Treasury. The ERG is tasked with slashing £6.2bn of Government spending. Roger Proctor, chairman of the South West Design Forum, describes the procurement freeze as 'huge news and very dangerous', adding, 'I think this is the biggest threat to the design sector at the moment, and in the next few weeks we will see a number of redundancies.' Proctor says a straw poll of consultancies in his region suggests the move has forced some to consider closing down completely.

Mat Hunter, chief design officer at the Design Council, says, 'The balance of cuts to tax increases in the Budget is 77 per cent to 33 per cent in favour of cuts - that's pretty strong.' He adds that in such an environment it is obvious that design will be a hard sell to under-pressure procurement officers, adding, 'I think the people who get design will continue to grasp it even more, but those who don't will push it away.' The Design Council, which receives central Government funding through BIS, is moving into a position to deal with potential cuts to its own funding, says Hunter, who adds, 'We have already streamlined costs by 10 per cent, and will continue to make a case for what we do. We have a very strong relationship with BIS - and a very intelligent one. It completely understands the value of design, and doesn't just take a top-down numbers view.'

The Design Council is already facing up to one challenge, hoping to secure the future of its Designing Demand programme, which aims to promote design to business through workshops, mentoring and other services. The programme is currently administered through regional development agencies, which the coalition Government has now announced will be scrapped and replaced with local enterprise partnerships.

The Design Council says it will continue delivering Designing Demand, using whatever mechanism replaces the RDAs. Hunter says, 'The future landscape is unclear, but we have an effective product we will continue to deliver.'

Against such a backdrop, these positives in the Budget might seem difficult to pin down, but Esther Carder, partner at accountant Kingston Smith, says, 'The Budget is about as good as it was ever going to be - Osborne did the best he could have done with it.' She adds, '[The tax breaks] have really hammered home the message that the Government is not targeting people trying to run successful businesses - this sends out the right message to them absolutely.'

And taken on their own, these policies do seem welcome. Changes to the Capital Gains Tax system have been hailed in the creative sector particularly. As Carder says, 'Most businesses in the creative sector are small to medium-sized enterprises, and most SMEs will think of selling up one day.' Although the CGT rate has been raised from 18 per cent to 28 per cent, this is lower than expectations, with some observers having predicted a 40 per cent rise. But more significant is the rise in the entrepreneurs' relief limit from CGT, which has gone up from £2m to £5m. Carder says, 'This is the most exciting part - for SMEs, most people's entire gains would be covered by this relief.'

The drop in Corporation Tax - set to fall from 27 per cent to 24 per cent by 2014 - is also welcomed. Kingston Smith says a 24 per cent rate will be among the lowest in the G20 countries, with obvious benefits in attracting international companies to the UK. Nicolas Mamier, managing director of consultancy Appetite, says, 'The lowering of Corporation Tax is welcome, and in small businesses like ours where everyone enjoys a share of the profits, it provides a good incentive to keep motivation high in tough times.'

The VAT rise - from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent, effective from January 2011 - is 'almost inevitable', says Carder. 'It's going to bring in £13bn a year - it was always on the cards,' she adds.

Carder says, 'The VAT increase will primarily affect businesses selling directly to consumers. The brands design groups are working for will be hit harder, but there won't be such a direct impact on the design sector itself.' Retail and packaging experts may disagree, but at least they have six months to prepare themselves, and can enjoy a presumably lucrative Christmas under the current rates.

As autumn's CSR cuts start to be implemented, they might find themselves the only ones celebrating.

Source: Design Week