Seems like a bit weird to be designing Christmas promotional items in the middle of spring but just finalised some of the promo work for The Holiday Inn in Jesmond Newcastle. Christmas Party anyone?

The new blackswan website designed by Foundry34 has been live for over two months now and is really beginning to take shape.

Content driven sites always seem to (naturally) seem empty until real content is added and users begin to engage with the site. Over the coming months the design and development built into the site should really pay off allowing non-technical users to easily add content to the site, helping users intuitively navigate some great business advice and discussions while linking up neatly to blackswan’s product range.

Like many creative agencies, Foundry34 did it’s fair share of free work in the early days, trying to build up our folio or simply trying to get our work out there. Unfortunately free work does usually generate more … requests for free work.

The problem tends to be that rather than clients having an appreciation for the service they are getting for free, the service becomes devalued and we guarantee if you are going to have client relationship problems, it is always with people who do not value your service.

Fast forward a few years and we don’t have to offer work for free but, as always, the team have discussions about the direction of the company and our ethical policy. Although we work with charities and social enterprises on a commercial basis and make donations to charity (our chosen charity is the British Red Cross) we have discussed the idea of helping an organisation out with their advertising on a pro bono basis.

Step forward James Hirst who is about to do a worldwide cycling tour in the aid of Cancer Research. James is a friend of one of the team who mentioned it in one of our discussions and the timing seems to be about right. So James will be off on his tour next year and Foundry34 are going to be helping him out with his website (The Ride Round) and marketing to raise the profile of his undertaking. It gives us a chance to do some experimental work, help out with some great causes and show advertising isn’t the root of all evil.

Finally this month will be the last for the current Foundry34 website before we launch our new and improved site. To finish us off we have the ‘Foundry34 adventures in design’ homepage, next month will see a new site with a range of new features and a much improved client showcase area to show exactly what we have been up to. Keep checking back!

So it‘s basically an open-ended brief, which is far too tempting for us! You can find our entries below, mocking the iPhone’s versatility as there is an App for almost everything (even for dealing with classic villains such as Darth Vader), and Greggs’ hard-to-hide irresistableness even to celebrities such as Gordon Ramsey and Tiger Woods.

Remember work experience? Two weeks spent making cups of tea and doing some oh so interesting filing or lifting boxes? The time of year has come around again when we start to get calls from eager school kids or even more eager parents and teachers looking to arrange work experience.

Here at Foundry34 we try to make life a little more interesting, giving placement students daily briefs that teach them different aspects of working in the design industry. These can include typography exercises, non-literal shapes, photography and Photoshop. After a week of this, if they’re on any longer, we give them the chance to work on an imaginary brand identity brief which can include putting moodboards together, designing logos, and whatever else inspires them. In the space of ten days, these kids can learn as much as they would in a year at school.

For us though, work experience can be a real headache. For starters, there can be a full day of simply doing health and safety. Then of course there is having to take time out of busy schedules to set the kids up with what work they’re doing that day and helping them out when they get stuck. But if we didn’t think it was worth doing, we wouldn’t do it.

It’s an invaluable opportunity for school kids, whether they come to our studio or anywhere else! Work experience is a chance for placement students to be treated like a grownup and a professional, and nine times out of ten they respond very well –it’s great to see someone who is struggling at school fit in and show their hard work and dedication. For us it is about offering an opportunity and showing some trust rather than the work they produce though it is great to see the ideas they come up with. Or at the very least, we can still get a few cups of tea from them!