Dec 13 and we are all sat around the table here; some familiar faces and some new ones in the creative studio. A few hours, a long discussion and we are all very excited – 2011 will be very eventful year for Acuity Designs.

Acuity Designs has just expanded to include a whole new creative space crawling with all kinds – from graphic designers to web developers, from marketing specialists to usability experts; we have just included a whole bunch of new exciting people! Our new team members come from varied background and some of them have some very exciting brands and clients in their portfolio.

Over the course of 2011, Acuity Design will be focusing on its creative offerings, with the addition of 3 remarkable designers. From illustration to brand design, from web design london to customized design solutions, we hope to be creating award winning designs!

Another area of expansion has been the Online Marketing / E-Marketing offerings from Acuity. Now with a bespoke team of internet marketers putting their minds together to come up with online campaigns, search engine optimization and other marketing solutions through the digital world, our clients will receive a service (and of course the results) expected from some of the best in this field. Our current marketing team, led by a previous Head of Online Search of a large UK media company, has indulged with major brands and dot com companies.

And of course, we will be posting more and more helpful stuff here for all of you guys! Everything from design to development, you will find our articles, inspirations, solutions, discussions on these blog pages throughout 2011.

Watch this space – ‘Cuz we are stepping it up!

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Brazilian ad agency Moma has given some of the worlds most modern brands a vintage 60s sepia makeover for an ‘Everything Ages Fast’ campaign.

The ads, created by Moma’s Rodolfo Sampaio, have been running in Brazilian newspaper Meio & Mensagem to promote media seminars from Maxi Midia.

Sampaio said: “Maximedia is an event intended for people working in communications. An updating event.

“Being that one of the greatest concerns these professionals have is to constantly reinvent themselves. What’s new today, is old tomorrow. With this in mind we’ve developed this campaign, showing how the tools in communication are quickly outdated. We are greatly impressed and pleased with the feedback we are seeing throughout the world.”

Story via BrandRepublic

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Hi all,

Acuity Designs has just started a facebook group; giving you all another way to spread the word about our services and stay in touch with all things AD from our projects, to updates on fresh blog articles and posts!

Acuity Designs on Facebook

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Hi all,

recently we had the opportunity to respond to some questions put forward by Alex from Crazy Leaf Design… you can read the interview here:

Interview between Crazy Leaf Design Blog and Acuity Designs

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Royal British Legion have been very happy with our continuing work for them, view the latest print project on their website:

British Legion Print Project

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How essential is a design degree to a designer?

Having gone through the process of formal education in graphic design and illustration (and paid the accompanying expenses) Many designers have often had to ask themselves the question: ‘was it worth it?’

The simple fact is that, with the evolution of the internet to a level where intellectual and technical resources are freely available, those wishing to break into our industry have at their fingertips the necessary tools and know-how to make a start. Fortunately, the majority of professional designers aren’t selfish with their knowledge, and a huge number of blogs and articles will address issues such as common layout mistakes, and advice on getting work print-ready etc. So the theory of designing can be ‘self taught’ relatively easily, and it’s not just a case of accessing the necessary tools online, but not knowing what to do with them.

However. Something to be said for formal training is that you can learn a lot better by doing. You tend to remember methods of design practice if early on in your education a tutor has been able to drill it into your thinking. One good example being when I was studying for a foundation degree we had many sessions focussing only on principles of hierarchy. Nothing but old school cutting and pasting and enlarging on a photocopier. Ultimately these methods, which may have seemed tedious at the time cemented an understanding of hierarchy in my thinking that would never have stuck so well had it just been some advice that I read say, in a blog post. (think the karate kid, painting the fence.

Of course there’s a middle way between being completely self-taught and investing thousands of pounds and several years in a design BA. Many institutions offer short, part time courses or evening classes that can really be useful as they equip you with technical skills to make a success in the design world, but most importantly they provide the mentoring aspect that can help to establish good practice early on in a designer’s career.

Extra Links:

http://www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/courses/further_education.htm

http://www.chelsea.arts.ac.uk/shortcourses/

http://www.gold.ac.uk/icce/shortcourses/

Do you think you need a degree to freelance?

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Delicious 100

We have been gauging the quality of our articles by the number of people that delicious bookmark them, aswll as their features on other blogs etc. The article: What to Charge for Design Work? just reached 100 bookmarks the other day. Wooot!

Subscribers 50

Thanks to the loyal faithful who are subscribing to the blog, who have now reached an insurmountable 50 people! haha. Gives us an extra incentive to keep adding to the blog; hope more of you decide to join the club!

WDF Website of the Month Winner

We entered a website that we designed recently ( Fraffiti Resource into a monthly competition of web design on the Web Designer Forum and are winners for October. The results were voted for by the community of web designers on the forum.

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Prince’s Trust

We have applied for, (well, we are filling out forms) for Prince’s trust Funding. The Prince’s Trust is an organisation that gives grants to start-ups etc, so hopefully we get a nice injection of capital for equipment and marketing etc. Watch this space.

Portfolio Update

The Logo section, Web Section and Print Section have all been updated with one or two new pieces of work.

My Ink Blog Feature

Andrew, over at My Ink blog was kind enough to upload and feature one of our tutorials on his blog. You can see it by viewing this page. . Have a look around, it is a great site, we used this t-shirt article as reference for the designs we are creating for Graffiti Resource.

Graffiti Resource Poster No.1 of 10

We are hoping to create a set of 10 Posters for Graffiti Resource, for its online store. Here is poster number one’s latest draft ( any feedback ):

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Hi all.

As a side project, myself and Ashley had been working on a graffiti gallery / resource site to profess our love and opinions on graffiti on you all. Have a look, let us know what you think, and enjoy the writing on the wall.
Graffiti Resource

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Just keeping you guys informed on everything Acuity Designs related..

Illustrations for Children’s Book Published

A while back, illustrations for a childrens book commissioned by Macmillan’s Children’s Books were completed. We received the copy of the work this week, you can buy it here. Below are some scans, (sorry for the quality) that we took from the book to show you all.

Photoshop Creative Magazine

We entered the photoshop creative magazine forum competition where users where given the freedom to create any image around the title = “movies”. you can view my entry here. I had fun! They announce the winner soon, so we’ll let you know the winner etc.

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