The Future is Ship-Shape campaign launched (excuse the pun!) earlier in the week to support the recruitment campaign for a thousand new jobs to engineer and build new ships in Scotland, specifically the production of two of the biggest aircraft carriers ever built in Britain.

The site is aimed at school leavers, adult apprentices, graduates, skilled workers and parents with specific areas for all audiences. The site includes career path advice, case studies and excellent industry contact details – this is a valuable resource for all those considering shipbuilding as a career.

You may have seen the Scotsman article and so you’ll understand what a challenge this will be!

What they’ll build a battling behemoth

DISPLACEMENT: 65,000 tonnes. Length: 280m (similar in size to QE2). Six metres taller than Nelson’s Column.

SPEED: 25-plus knots.

CREW: 1,500 officers and men and women.

AIRCRAFT: 40, such as F-35B fighters. Or 25 Chinook helicopters.

PROVISIONS: 1,000 tonnes of food – enough to feed crew for six weeks.

FLIGHT DECK: nearly 13,000sq m – equivalent of 49 tennis courts or three football pitches.

HANGARS: 29,000sq m – equivalent to 12 Olympic swimming pools.

SCHEDULE: HMS Queen Elizabeth expected to enter service around 2016. HMS Prince of Wales two years later.

CONSTRUCTION: Four main companies involved – Babcock Marine, BVT Surface Fleet, BAE Systems Submarine Solutions and Thales Group.

SCOTLAND: Work in Govan, Glasgow, will be worth more than £650 million, and work in Rosyth, Fife, more than £675 million.

www.futureshipshape.com

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.

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.

Well, there goes my YouTube virginity. For better or for worse we’re indulging in a bit of radical transparency on a project we’re working on at the moment. Dilettante Music is, primarily, a social network for lovers of classical music and those new to it. Blonde have been working with Dilettante to take their project to the next level. No, that’s not a Warcraft reference.

Radical transparency is, simply, about people in companies not being afraid to tell the truth about the way things get done. Warts and all. Or should that be “baldy head, jowels and all”? In this case radical transparency means a video blog of the production process. The arse-scratching and swearing has been sympathetically edited out but it’s still pretty transparent.

Cross-posted to my personal blog.

We’re thrilled to have been appointed by Dilettante to handle their Phase 2 site design and development.

Dilettante is a classical music social network and we’ll be developing a range of Web 2.0 consumer-facing tools, boosting the site’s usability and finessing its look and feel.

The finished site will integrate social media mechanics, e-commerce and expert content.

Dilettante visitors will be able to chart the progress of Phase 2 development via series of video diary posts on the site.

Dilettante adds to our niche expertise in using digital channels to promote the arts – we already work with Sadlers Wells and the Edinburgh International Festival.

We won the Best E-mail Creative award at the DADI’s last week for work done in promoting our Grolsch Coincidence campaign.

The Coincidence campaign was also commended in the FMCG category.

The motley crew shown above went down to Leeds and apparently monopolised the dance floor for much of the evening. As usual, Nick’s doing his “look at me, look at me” routine. Only Fraser is listening, however.

Q. What do a Grolsch glass, various sex toys and incontinence pads have in common?

A. They’re all items that have been sent to an unfortunate lady in Oldham as part of a distressing campaign of harrassment against her.

Apparently someone has been signing this poor person up for all sorts of offers and samples, the result being that she is being bombarded with unrequested stuff.

As a result of the inclusion of the Grolsch glass in this campaign, a promotion that was fulfilled from the Grolsch site, one of our producers found herself helping police with their inquiries. We’ve provided them with as much information as we can about the source of the sign-up and hopefully it will be of use in identifying the culprit(s).

It’s been a while since we posted in this category.

This one has been hanging around since the Summer Party. Finance Director Keith was in the Geeks group.

Pete and I were making a credentials presentation the other day. In preparation he’d counted up how many active clients we have at the moment.