This is what Sharp’s joint Managing Director had to say: ”We set ourselves the objective of finding a top class design company in Cornwall. By restricting our search just to Cornwall the worry was that we would need to compromise. With Nixon there is no compromise, I am sure that we have found one of the UK’s best design companies on our doorstep in Cornwall.”

Oh, and here’s an insight into behind the scenes at the brewery:

One of the leading exponents of recumbent cycling, they asked us to rebrand the company so as to broaden its appeal as far as possible and reposition it at the forefront of the market.

We also designed a brand new website incorporating the rebrand and helping the company achieve its goals. The site was then built by the very talented team at Buzz .

The great news is that all our efforts and not least their investment in design has paid off handsomely, as Ben Rotheray from ICE explains:

“Good design is a good investment; our new branding and website have helped us double our sales. Nixon’s clear methodology helped us develop a great brand look and feel which all the team bought into. Our rebranding project has supported our new product positioning which has helped us to grow the business and drive incremental revenue.”

Thanks to the team at Heligan for making this project so fun. Special thanks to Sarah de Courcy for sending us this quote (which made us blush a little):

“We are absolutely delighted with our brand new website created by Nixon and are looking forward to sharing it with our online visitors. We were keen to update the site and make use of new facilities by offering podcasts and videos to further engage our online audience. Working with Nixon over the last few months, to get things just right, has been a real pleasure. We always enjoy working with local companies and supporting the community around us, but it is also important to know you are getting the best results possible. By working with Nixon you know that you are getting the best of worlds. We also greatly value the working relationship we have developed with Nixon over the years, which allows us to trust their understanding of our product and branding whilst aiding its growth and evolution.”

The first one up is from the German arm of Toyota, this app lets you print off multiple markers and lay them out in order to build a little course for your Toyota to drive around. They even include a nice community element by allowing you to upload your video to the website for others to vote on. Check out the video below and the app itself here

The second app I found is actually another print and augmented reality integration; this week’s Grazia magazine has been realeased with multiple augmented reality markers allowing you to interact with the magazine content. Interestingly, this also extends onto the iPhone so you can interact with the content on the go too. Check out the video below for more details from Grazia

Coffee time at Click

Darren, Chris, Jonathan and I attended Click 09 London last week. The event was organised by Creative Review and hosted at LBi’s offices in Brick Lane,  it brought together some of the leading digital, design and advertising agencies in the world to network, discuss best practice, and review the current trends in digital work with a special focus on how the future looks in this rapidly evolving and increasingly multi-media digital world we all live in.

It was fascinating to hear the likes of Nik Roope from Poke and James Hilton of AKQA talk in detail about their latest work, and how they see the sector shaping up. Several agencies are developing digital ‘products’ in close partnership with their clients, some good examples of this emerging new practice are the Eco:Drive project from Fiat developed by AKQA, see: http://www.fiat.com/ecodrive/

Nokia’s work with R/GA on their viNe application is also worth checking out at: http://vine.nokia.com/

In December we’re back in London attending ‘The Edge’- an event centered on the links between taking risks, creativity and success. Organised by the Design Business Association it should be great fun and we’ll report back in more detail soon.

The results of holding your augmented reality copy of Esquire up to your webcam.

Although Esquire are not the only people using this technology online, tobi.com are using a shopping system with augmented reality that allows you to virtually try on items of clothes and using social media allows you to get your friends feedback on items you like!

The future integration of print and web is actually quite interesting, you could hold a DVD case up to your webcam to reveal hidden content, promotional products for events to get hidden information or a catalogue to see what that sofa would like like in your living room. The latter has been suggested for the furniture giant IKEA in the document below, the 2009 Future Lions winning campaign.

2009 Future Lions winning campaign, “IKEA Augmented Reality”, by Gian Jonathan and Wai Wa of Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts

They won two gold medals at the British Cheese Awards, two at the World Cheese Awards, two at the Taste of the West Awards and two more at the Bath & West Show.

Yarg is a delicious semi-hard cheese, creamy under the edible stinging nettle rind and slightly crumbly in the core with a young, fresh, slightly tangy taste. Lynher Dairies also produces Wild Garlic Yarg which is covered in wild garlic leaves which impart a delicate garlic flavour quite unlike any other cheese. Their dairy in Ponsanooth, near Falmouth, now processes two million litres of milk a year, making just over 200 tonnes of cheese. The cheese is distributed nationally and to the US market on a weekly basis.

We wish Catherine, Ben and all their team many congratulations on their fantastic award winning success!

Catherine and Ben Mead from Lynher Dairies

To find out more about Lynher Dairies, their full range of cheeses and to purchase their cheese online visit their website: www.lynherdairies.co.uk

For more from the Web 2.0 Summit TechDusts has a nice round up of it’s top 6 talks.

Email is a great way of marketing and works wonders for the big media companies. But how effective is it?

Email marketing only works if you have permission of the recipient, otherwise it’s junk mail. Print can go anywhere without permission, so that’s one up already. But email marketing costs little money compared to print which makes economic sense, plus it’s greener; or is it?

In recent years print has changed dramatically with everyone aiming to be as green as possible. All the printers we use are now responding to the market’s expectations for them to take environmental issues seriously. They use non-toxic vegetable inks, use local resources to cut down their carbon footprint and all the paper they use is either 100% recycled or from sustainably managed forests.

The linked article shows that in the America, print still has has more of a presence than viral marketing. Three quarters of people prefer printed matter to electronic communication. Email these days is so quick to the inbox but let’s not forget, if it hits a junk filter, the respondent is on holiday or is deleted, then it is very quickly gone too. With printed material, it is looked at and held onto for much longer. How powerfully the message gets across is down to the designers. More thought has to be put into making print effective, but the returns can justify the greater costs involved in producing it.

Print vs Electronic Media