Tuesday, 26 June 2012

Foraging




With recent trends pushing towards sustainability, food miles and the upsurge of foraged foods being served in restaurants & bistros.I thought I'd give it a go; so last weekend I headed off to a stretch of the River Lea near Stanstead Abbots with my son (10 going on 18) and my dad (64 going 16) and we attempted to catch a foreign invader to our waters; the American Signal Crayfish. Since being introduced in the 70's they have set up homes in the lakes and waterways at a devastating cost to the native White Clawed Crayfish, reducing their numbers to a point where they are now a protected species. 


Anyway back to the river bank. With our sophisticated fishing equipment; a bike wheel with spokes removed and netting tied in place and primed with our most tempting bait (streaky bacon), we threw the wheel into the water and pulled it up after a few minutes to great success, 15 in the first haul. We repeated the process for about an hour (until the 10 year old got bored) and we had caught around 180 cray fish to take home.


You MUST purge the crayfish in clean water overnight before cooking them, or hope you have an understanding boss when you ring in with food poisoning. But the next evening we sat down to platefuls of delicious crayfish, cooked simply by quickly boiling them in slightly salted water and then lightly sautéing in butter and garlic served with thickly cut crusty bread (and some homemade chilli sauce, but that's another blog, maybe). These mini lobsters were a real treat and tasted even better because we'd caught them.


A great way to spend a couple of hours with a delicious outcome in the end. Although don't catch more than you can eat as there's a £1,000 fine per crayfish you put back.


Steve Humber

Tuesday, 19 June 2012

Design Zat Works!

Efficient German design from the Bauhaus (school of design 1919-1933) has had a massive impact on the modern world. Famous for purely functional designs that could be mass produced, always void of any emotion or ornamentation. Sounds boring... but it‘s why today we don’t get lost in airports and the signage below doesn’t have bells on.

(above) DIN :The official EWYE font, born out of the German Railway system. Pure function!


The point is... Good design looks how it does, because it’s doing its job ...and the Germans knew it!


Good design simply solves a problem and does its job. Great design can go further by creating an emotional response that inspires us, makes us smile and say ‘I love that!’.

We're great at injecting personality into brands and engaging customers... we call it adding value.

It's great to make design more engaging and 'human'. Sometimes an emotional response isn't part of the design brief, but it can be accidentally added later if people really love your product enough - see how we turned the VW beetle into a symbol of peace - after Hitler made it!

Function from the Führer VS 60's love bug and new Beetle with dashboard mounted hippy flower vase as standard!





The VolksWagen (People’s Car) Beetle was designed for the common man, affordable transportation from Hitler - thanks Adolf!

Love it or hate it... who cares, it’s the most-manufactured car of all time - FACT!

It’s popularity is thanks to how amazingly simply it works. It’s lovable curves are essential for feeding the engine with cool air. You don't have to put any water in it and you can perform roadside maintenance yourself (if you’re a 1930’s common man). The public could even collect stamps that would eventually pay for the car, how’s that for a loyalty card!

The world's largest loyalty card reward

Morgan Musselle

Tuesday, 12 June 2012

EAT WITH YOUR EYES NEW WEBSITE - COMING SOON


It’s really weird designing your own website. You are hyper critical of everything you say and design and intensely aware that it has to be the best thing you’ve ever done. It has to be a benchmark and has to reflect the very best of everything you do...No pressure then!

The flip side is it’s an amazing blank canvas, no clients with strong opinions and it’s a fantastic opportunity to do what you do best, create something that perfectly embodies the personality of the company. If you love design it’s the dream project really. Here's the new home page...


Creating the new site has been a great chance once again to rationalise and enhance the strategic process we go through. This is evolving all the time with our experiences. We develop our processes every day to create better end results but we rarely stand back and look at the approach that got us there... when it’s at the very heart of what we do. Cataloguing this is expressing who we are. It’s really exciting how systematic and scientific it actually is creating a brand that works. Here's a peek at the science behind our brand...


Updating the site is also a great project because all our stories are about creating new brands and injecting new vigour into existing ones. This gives us great content to work with. It’s quite pioneering and exciting.

The people that make up who we are all really creative, so the by product is a quite interesting bunch of characters inhabiting a unique environment. We think we are interesting anyway!

You’re all obviously dying to see the new site now, but it’s a long process though so don’t expect the finished article in the next couple of days...or weeks... maybe three / four weeks? ish...ha ha


Steve Oakey