With Coley Porter Bell being a design agency, inevitably, we print things. A lot. Our recycling bins fill up very quickly. Recycling’s great, but how about the other R, re-using?

We decided to take printed paper that was no longer needed and turn it into A5 notepads. By folding the pages inwards and ring binding, we’re left with fully blank pages ready to be scribbled on. An energetic painerly stenciled version of our logo adds colour to the covers. They’ll only ever be for internal use and thanks to the help of our ever enthusiastic placements, Hannah and Carina, all our desks are now graced with one. With printing not likely to cease any time soon, there will be plenty of paper for replacements too. Then of course, we can recycle the first ones!

BRANDZ has released the 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2009. I will skate over and around the methodology for BRANDZ - you can read all about that on the website, here - and instead offer a couple of interesting, top-line snippets.

Inspite of the recession, the value of the top 100 brands increased by 2% to $2 trillion. This means that brand share is a greater percentage of total company value.

This is an excellent example of how to present information in a compelling way. It is a piece called Shift Happens by Karl Fisch. It was originally put together as a faculty presentation on what was new and different in the the Colarado school where Karl worked. This is the updated version. The music is nice. 

A company called XPLANE helped with a redesign. XPLANE refer to themselves as “the visual thinking company”. They use visualization to make complex ideas, processes and information clearer, and in turn making better decision-making. Their CEO, Dave Gray, also has an excellent blog (amongst many) called Communication Nation, which is dedicated to helping us improve our communication skills.

Last night’s episode of The Apprentice was one of the most cringe-worthy yet. The task involved each team creating a new children’s cereal brand from scratch. They had to devise the name, the packaging including a character and a TV ad in the space of 48 hours. (CPB helped with last year’s task to create a tissue brand and it really is an overnight job.)