A couple of weeks ago I went to Hampton Court Flower Show with my mum, we had such a lovely afternoon wandering round all the various exhibits, displays and garden designs, even the rain couldn’t spoil the day for us.  It was a day full of beauty and inspiration we both spent most of it trying to work out how we could re create some of the wonderful designs back home.

Out of everything we saw throughout the day, there was one exhibit that really blew me away and that was the wonderful creations from Jane Packer and her team of florists, or creators of beauty as Iike to think of them.  Take a look at some of my photos below, I’m sure you will agree that they look good enough to eat!!

Congratulations to everyone on the SHINE shortlist which has now been compliled after a day of judging.  Due to the amount of fantasic entries the judges found it impossible to whittle down to just 10 so this year the lucky 11 are…..

Mark Edwards                   Manchester Met University

Hayley Marie Radford       Somerset University

Stacey Copp                     Somerset University

Jonathan Hall                   Norwich University

Max Gallucci                    Somerset University

Jia Ying Gnoh                   Staffordshire University

Luke Francis                    Norwich University

Rob Day                           Norwich University

Nicola-Louise Thorne      Somerset University

Alexandra Delaney           Kingston University

Tim Sanders                     Kingston University

We will be in touch with each student individually to arrange a time to come into CPB with portfolios and set the creative brief to design next year’s poster.  The winning poster is picked at a reception held in the autumn.

Good luck!

This time of year is always an exciting time for a football fan, not only is it when players are bought and sold for millions, but it is also when teams reveal there new shirts for next season.Football shirts is big business, especially for the top teams with global appeal. So creating a design which is new and interesting, and significantly different from the season before can drive up sales and bring in big bucks.

Trends in football shirts are just like trends in any other fashion. Over the last few years retro shirts and shirts inspired by the past have become more and more popular. One example is the new Man Utd shirt, which is inspired by the teams shirt from the 1909 season and celebrates the centenary year of the clubs ground, Old Trafford.

I have been feeling a little stodgy of body and musty of head recently, and wondered if I could feel a little lighter in both areas by changing my diet. So I cut down significantly on my dairy and bread intake. It worked. But there was an interesting side-effect; I started eating much more ‘creatively’. Rather than just grab a nearby sandwich, I started to think about which foods might go together to create a decent meal. And though it took longer to get my lunch during the week, they started to get more interesting, varied and satisfying.

LS:N wanted to explore the impact the recession was having on design with another members networking event last night that took place in the ‘rising cultural hub’ of Kings Cross. In the courtyard of Rabih Hage Gallery we met seven practitioners that are influencing design in a wider context, and therefore have an opinion to share. Captured below are some of the sound bites gathered from the roundtable debates by those of us who attended.

Logic leads to simplification
Sam Hecht, co-founder of Industrial Facility, who has worked with clients such as Muji spoke about his common sense approach of how logic leads to design simplification. By examining what is fundamentally relevant to the user and rediscovering the mundane encourages designers to be creative and produce surprising results. He didn’t appear to feel that the recession has affected design. If anything, it could be argued that his works embraces the increased need for functionality and discretion in design, as evident in his pared back solutions, like the Jetlag clock.