Design in Danish

While in Denmark I was met with a rather different kind of challenge. ISU wanted me to design an A4 4 Page invite for one of their up and coming projects. In itself, it's the kind of job I'm used to. However, I was in Denmark and therefore had to use their computers. The operating system was in Danish and so was the design software. I surprised myself, I designed the whole thing without being able to read the software menus. I guess I proved to myself how well I know the software by using the shortcuts and simply remembering where things were in the menus. Danish isn't like French or German, it is quite different to English, so this was definately a challenge.

The end result was ISU being extremely pleased with the design makeover I gave their invite, aswering our question of "can we work together despite the language barrier?" and also me feeling rather proud of myself.

ISU have showed alot of interest in using me for other work. Fantastic, and they are also a great pleasure to work for.

Virksomhed Vollsmose

Virksomhed Vollsmose is a Danish project set up by ISU (Insitut Serviceudvikling a/s) and part funded by the EU. The projects' aim is to help asylum seeking women - who have come from various parts of the world and terrible situations - resettle and start a new life. Starting again with nothing must be an almost impossible task. What Virksomhed Vollsmose does is work with the skillsets that these women have, and then put them into a business perspective. For instance, alot of these women have children, and therefor have various family skills. Using this idea, ISU started the organisation Virksomhed Vollsmose. Two parts of the project are a catering company, and a sewing company. These women are now working in a friendly and safe environment, with likeminded women - using skills they are familiar with - All helping them earn money to get their lifes back together.

I was lucky enough to be commissioned to travel out there to take some promotion photographs. The images would be used in various things like posters, adverts and an exhibition. I was out there for a week in the company of these women, many of whom spoke no english. They treated me so kindly and even fed me free arabic and vietnamese food! I had a great time!

Rewkachu enters Europe

Over the new year break I visited a friend in Denmark. It was my first time over there, and it has to be said that it is quite an amazing little country. Not only did I have a great time while there experiencing how they celebrate New Year, but I was also asked to revisit them this month on a professional level.

I was asked to do several photography jobs by an organisation called ISU, Institut for Serviceudvikling.

The photography jobs included: working situations, employee portraits, various building shots and product photos.

Candour Illustration

I'm always extra thankful for these kinds of jobs. Ones in which I get to create artwork completely from scratch. In short, these jobs are a lot fun.

Candour, the advertising agency wanted an advert to show how versatile they are. The idea was to have a swiss army knife type device made from their logo. This would appear large on a simple full page advert in various art publications. My job was to create the device to be used. As I said, it was a lot of fun.

Doktor Power & JML

Doktor Power, yes that IS the correct spelling. Its a range of green cleaning products from JML. We recently won a pitch for this work and have been creating the artwork. When most people have several days off over the Christmas period, us creatives are working hard and long hours to meet the deadline for the Spring sales and new releases of products. It's the same every year, believe me I'm not moaning, I'd rather be designing in a vibrant studio than be sat at home eating turkey sandwiches and watching Mary Poppins (with bloody commercials).

I digress. JML, the owners of the Doktor Power brand, have been so pleased with our designs and concepts that they have also asked us to redesign their company image, brand and logo and bring it bang up to date.

Shooting the movie

Over the last couple of months we've been shooting the movie. Now I have time to breath I thought I'd post an update here.

We've done many hundreds of miles to Wales and back for the shooting of a couple of the main locations. This has been done roughly once a month for a long weekend. I can't stress enough how bloody tiring making a film is. None of us would have guessed. I think it's because it involves a lot of walking with heavy equipment and of course there's the concentrating for 18 hours straight, trying to make sure you get the footage you came for.

There have been production problems, mainly the British weather. I guess that can't be helped. But the project is turning out to be incredibly fun and educational. We've all learned so much. We've shot around 60% of the scenes so far, so we've done a lot but there's still several months to do.

JML go green

JML is a company that produce cleaning products for all kinds of things, cars, furniture, kitchen surfaces, gardens etc etc. The list is long. There is a wave of people around the globe now wanting to become more environmentally friendly. They are all jumping on the band waggon that I've been firmly on for 20 years. I was mocked by many friends and colleagues 15 years ago for these views and now it seems like it's fashionable. Every news story is about green this, green that... I have to say, I couldn't be happier that governments and populations have/are waking up. Anyway, I digress.

JML are releasing a new, much greener selection of cleaning products and we have been creating a pretty large pitch to try and get the work. The word on the street is that they have seen our progress and they are going to use us, they however want to see us develop the ideas before committing. It's always the way, but we're confident.