It is not even December yet but unlike last year are are getting prepared nice and early for Christmas. Our party is booked (please talk quietly on the 11th), we are drawing the secret Santa later this week and most importantly our Christmas cards have been foil blocked and delivered! 

This year we are keeping the established theme of simple seasonal graphic illustrations which are then white foil blocked onto the darkest colorplan we can find. This year snow was designed and drawn by Magnus, nice one fella.

One of our favourite design blogs, SeptemberIndustry, have featured our new site within their review of interactive design. To check out other posts from them click here

We recently commissioned Gary Smith to photograph a series of abstract forms to be used within a literature system for one of our clients, The Novak Druce Centre. As always Gary added to the original brief and the results were even better than we had hoped for, we hope you agree. To see more of Gary's work go to his website. 

Alan Cook always produces lovely mailers and his latest piece, portraits,  which arrived this morning keeps up the high standard. If you want to see more from this series why not go to his equally lovely website?

We have just finished designs for our 2010 A1 calendars which will soon be going live on the Justgonesix website. Prices are yet to be confirmed but we are looking at different production processes this year in order to get costs down. We hope to have them ready for sale by the end of November but we'll keep you posted on the blog.

The corporate reporting season is well underway and as part of our new business process we have just produced a small book profiling our corporate reporting offer and how we differ from other agencies.

If you would like a copy and are a prospective client please give us a call and ask for Catherine.

Another month goes by and we are pleased to welcome another new member to the SampsonMay team. Peter joins us as a senior designer with a strong background in corporate reporting having designed reports for Anglo American, Unibet, Vodafone and 888 to name but a few. He is also a very keen cyclist so the queue for the shower has just got longer!

The SampsonMay team are off to the Capsule launch party tonight which should be good fun and the opportunity for a beer or two. 

One project we always look forward to is the Rolls-Royce calendar. We are about to go to print with the 2010 edition and so are currently conducting some print tests with Westerham. As soon as the calendar is published we will post some more of the beautiful images but until now we are enjoying the latest test which has passed with flying colours.

After a few weeks with us on a placement, we're pleased to welcome Alex on-board as a new Account Executive. Due to the summer holidays she has well and truly been thrown in at the deep end but has coped admirably but it remains to be seen how she will cope with Andy's singing when he gets back!

Next week we are all off to one of our favorite galleries, the Kemistry Gallery, to view the new exhibition, Typographica.

According to Kemistry, Typographica is the first exhibition of the eponymous graphic design journal.  Ground breaking when first published in 1949 and now considered legendary. Typographica showcased the very best in worldwide visual arts.  The journal was founded by Herbert Spencer at the age of 25, who went on to become one of the most influential British communication designers and typographers. 

Typographica's pioneering content included concrete poetry, avant garde type experiments and photo-documentary, which all highlighted Spencer's ability to fuse images and words in meaningful new relationships, and featured the work of, among many others, Dieter Rot, Robert Brownjohn and Alexander Rodchenko. 

In its production the journals stand as a high-water mark for mid-20th century publishing - their use of contrasting papers,  multiple textured stocks, gatefolds and varied printing processes served to showcase the capabilities of the publishers, Lund-Humphries, as well as Spencer's imagination.

If, like us you can't wait, you can buy a copy of Rick Poyner's book, Typographica here.