Blonde is involved with another Edinburgh festival. One that is close to our 2.0, socially-networked, micro-blogging hearts.

We’re delighted to be the official “badge” sponsor at the forthcoming Edinburgh Twestival (EdTwestival) .

There are Twestivals happening all over the world to raise money for charity. The Edinburgh event takes place on 12th February and, at the time of writing, tickets have nearly sold out having gone on sale less than two hours ago. Anyone who is anyone in the Scottish Twitterati will be there.

Along with everyone else who’s heading along we’ll do our bit to light up the blogosphere with Twestival content during and immediately after. Watch this space.

So the story goes something like this:

Blonde design / storyboard viral application for client.

Client likes design, but isn’t sure about the name.

Client’s fantastic project manager (FPM) at Blonde decides to open an internal competition for Blondes to suggest new names.

Some silly [and inappropriate] ones were suggested and when Blondes voted, it seemed that silliness got the better of the poll.

FPM took executive decision to remove silliness from poll and focus attention on some sensible options.

Such decisive [and responsible] action was interpreted as censorship of creative input by a Certain Individual in Blonde.

Fight breaks out.

Certain Individual posts Twitter rant on censorship.

FPM replies to Twitter rant with a formal blog post that admittedly would only make sense if you knew the context of the original debate.

Unfortunately FPM makes political statement in blog post that may not sit well with the political alignment of all Blonde clients.

Certain Individual censors FPM.

Moral of the story.

What goes around comes around.

Whilst I’ve been writing these posts, can’t help wondering if we should have weighed Blondes before the vending machines moved in (last week)….

….and then weigh them again in a few weeks.

Oh aye.

They [the techies] say that the intensity of programming sometimes means that developers need to break from their work now and then and explore a more playful way of thinking.

Indeed.

Thank-goodness for Project Managers.

The power and autonomy of CMS (content management system) publishing can be daunting for those used to operating in an offline environment. Not so for Robertson who have embraced their CMS, actively updating projects, news, job vacancies and continually look for ways to appeal to a broader audience online.

Blonde were briefed to provide the Robertson Group with a new website, accommodating 10 sub-sites for all of the individual companies within the Group.

The Group site holds all the information for Robertson’s core business, with the sub-sites holding information specific to their companies and regions.  All sites carry consistent branding and functionality, with a multi-level CMS (Content Management System) designed to support the different access levels of Robertson employees.

Much effort has been invested in achieving a highly visual site that carries a life of its own and aims to be much, much more than simply an information hub of a bricks and mortar business.

After the lengthiest recruitment process in history, Frances has joined the Client Services team as our brand new shiny Web Producer.  Getting the right person for this job has proven rather tricky, somebody with the right balance of skills, approach to work and team mentality – and at last we’ve found her.

Frances will be working on a number of Blonde accounts including Business Stream, Scottish Enterprise, Velux, EIF and Buchanan Galleries. She joins us from Whitespace with excellent public sector credentials having worked on the NHS Health Scotland and Scottish Government accounts, amongst others. Having originally trained as a Graphic Designer, Frances brings a unique and valuable set of skills to the creative development process.

We’re delighted to have Frances on the team, she’s settled in well at Blonde picking up the complex nuances of the tea round within hours.

Hi all,

I thought it would be nice if we stuck our feet up for 5 minutes for a little chat about one of my favorite subjects Typography.

Come on, you love it! You do, you do, you do. You just might not know it. But what happens when it goes bad? How do we know if it’s bad? How many times have you been tripped up when reading your favorite publication (For me it’s Gardeners weekly, bushes and shrubs special edition) when, out of nowhere good crikey, a tricksy letter leaps out of the page and says “hi there, I’m down here being all out of place and ugly among all these pretty other letters”, or a rogue ‘O’ sits too near / far from a ‘P’ (or other straight sided character for that matter) and you just want to tumble dry a beaver in despair! And it’s not just the fake crappy ones like ‘comic-sans’ that are at it either, oh no! It seems that even the really really brilliant typefaces can have their own equivalent of ‘Christmas Jumpers’ tucked away at the bottom of their little typey closets. Ever noticed the disastrous Question Mark in Futura?, the odd protrubance and bulginess of the ascender on the lower case ‘f’ of Adobe Caslon Pro? or the, and my personal worst offender, descending Tail of the capital ‘R’ of Bembo (however, this point of view does sometimes upset people).

However, lovely people, help is at hand! Love him, really love him, hate him, entirely ambivalent of his existence on this good earth, or just plain don’t know him from a squished dormouse, Massimo Vignelli has published an amazing 96 page book on better understanding typography in graphic design. It must be stated that this book comes entirely from Mr. Vignelli’s opinion of a ‘better understanding of typography in graphic design’, and for those of you who do know Massimo from a squished dormouse will of course appreciate that he has rather opinionated.

The book gives specific details on Vignelli’s methodology and approach as well as how he decides on typefaces, grid systems, paper sizes and stock. Which is slightly ironic as the book is not out in print, but available as a PDF download here. It is well worth a peruse over a nice hot cup of tea, I assure you. Do make sure to look out for typos.

Bye Bye

It’s not just policemen that are getting younger. Teachers are judging by the last couple of parents’ evenings I’ve been to. And so are No 10 Downing Street aides.

On the 10 o’clock news the other night Gordon Brown emerged from No 10 followed by what can only be described as a boy. He was wearing a suit (but no tie), but I doubt he has to shave more than once a fortnight.

Seeing this prompted me to think again about the people behind the No 10 Twitter stream (@10downingstreet). Is it the men in ties or the boys in open neck shirts?

There has been a lot of talk recently about how Gordon Brown has found his voice in a time of financial and political crisis, but where has the @10downingstreet Twitter account found its voice?

Here are some examples of the voice in question.

I’m sure that as the Cabinet meeting in Liverpool wrapped up, the PM’s mind would have been on things other than a patchwork of mudflats. Not so “No10 admin” who, as you can see, can be relied upon to add a bit of romantic, poetic colour and context to the most unlikely of settings.

What, or rather, who do we want No 10 to be on Twitter? I asked them who they actually are and got the following reply.

I guess that the civil servant reference means that the Twitter stream is not meant to be a marketing tool for the current administration. If not a marketing tool then presumably an of-the-minute, by-the-minute information source.

In which case how should we feel about such an obviously jaunty, open-necked tone of voice? Choosing a tone of voice is a crucial component of communication strategy for any brand. It means something. It affects. It positions.

Ergo it markets?

Whether it’s intentional or not, there is a piece of positioning going on here. Using words like “snazzy” on a platform like Twitter says with-it, modern and down with the social networkers. It’s all very Blairite and not very Gordon Brown.

To give these civil servants the benefit of the doubt it could just be a function of believing that not only is the medium the message, but also that the medium and its audience should dictate the tone of voice. An easy trap to fall into. Many times during my career I’ve had to urge brands to sound like who they are rather than who they’re talking to. Such dissonance is transparent and not sustainable.

Should you be so inclined, feel free to Tweet about this post by copying and pasting the text below into your Twitter tool of choice.

No10 – waxing lyrically. But dissonantly – http://bit.ly/GbO

Phil D and I met with Juliet Blackburn at the AAR yesterday. She was generous with her time and constructively critical of our agency positioning and credentials in all sorts of useful ways.

She knows the digital agency scene inside out and went out of her way to understand and interpret what we’re about in a competitive context. Thank you.

She also has a thing about robots.

A long long time ago I had a student job working on the fish counter at Sainsbury’s on Cromwell Road in London. I was part of the Thursday and Friday evening crew that gutted and filleted trout, sea bass and every variety of flat fish for the well heeled dinner party set of South Kensington.

We also provided more mundane services such as measuring prawns, mussels etc into pots. At the time these pots were sold at 2oz, 4oz or 8oz sizes and the scales weighed the contents to the nearest 1/8th oz.

After a while we all became very good at being able to judge, just by holding the scoop in our hand, when we had exactly 4oz. Not 3 & 7/8  or 4 & 1/8, but bang on 4oz. We’d all be able to do this eight times out of ten. Customers commented.

It feels like Twitter is heading a similar way. Two or three times in the last few days I’ve composed Tweets in my head, typed them in and they’ve been bang on the 140 character limit.

No-one has commented.

Until now that is.

Am I guilty of Twonanism?