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Gracing The Walls

Over this week I’ve finally had the chance to fire a couple of design pieces up on the bare office walls, both old and new. One is an early gig poster I designed about 5 years ago for our punk rock band Illreceived. A2 in size, and hand screenprinted (3 colours) by Jared Davidson. I don’t think the colour would fade on this thing in 100 years!

The other poster I purchased from New York designer Alonzo Felix. I love the message and the typographic treatment, and the detail is fantastic. It too is a screenprint (2 colour) and 18″x 24″ in size.

Got something cool on your walls you want to share? Comment below and pop a link in.

Cheers.

Migrating North-West

Not much happening on the blog front as of late. That’s simply because we’re too freakin’ busy, which is great! We’ve put a couple of sites live recently, signed off on a number of new logos (to be revealed soon), shot a bunch of photos, and kept our awesome clients’ branding and collateral up to date.

In the background of all of this we’ve recently shifted the office space from Andy’s house in St Albans out into the suburbs — Bishopdale namely. A few benefits have already come to light, more space, less noise (if you’ve been to Bishopdale you’ll know what I mean), and Reality Bites Cafe boasting a great coffee to keep the design decisions sharp.

Another interesting piece of news you might like to know is we’ve expanded our team from 2 to 3. Big steps… Phil Lord is getting behind a couple of projects and giving a hand with the current workload, he’s a great designer with a real flair for branding/identity. Check out his personal portfolio here.

Right, back to it…

Brand Lift Comp Winner

Brandlift March/April Competition Draw from Andy Brown on Vimeo.

We’re pleased to announce the winner for our first Brand Lift competition — Nat Halliday from Skate Further (www.skatefurther.com). Toby (my 2 year old son) recorded above making the draw. (Filmed on our Nikon D7000 & 50mm f1.8 lens)

It was a competition to help out a local organisation get back on their feet post the February quake. As it turns out they’ve been very quiet since then focusing on realigning things back to the new normality, so hopefully a fresh new logo and business card design, and 250 prints courtesy of Print Monday will help get these guys back into action.

Thanks to all the entrants, we certainly gained some insight to some cool companies around Christchurch we didn’t know of. I’m sure we’ll run something like this again in a few months. Keep an eye on our Facebook page for details.

We’ll also be posting a design process blog as we get stuck into this, so keep checking back to see how it all unfolds.

Brand Lift Competition March / April

Hi all,

Due to the earth tearing up our city of Christchurch, we postponed our original free logo & business card design comp. As part of the rebuild of Christchurch, we’ve modified the rules a little, and given the comp an official name (Brand Lift). All you need to do is be a business/band/organisation in or around the Christchurch area, like the Enquire Design Facebook page, and be in need of a logo update. This can be a design from scratch for a new company, or a redesign of an existing logo. Submit your details by following the link below, easy as that!

The lucky winner will receive a logo and business card design on the house from Enquire Design, and 250 copies of their new business card printed courtesy of Print Monday. To kill any possibility of rigging the draw and to add to the fun, the winner will be drawn out of a hat by my 2 year old son!

Entries close at 5pm, Friday the 29th April 2011.

Cheers,
Andy

www.enquiredesign.co.nz
www.printmonday.co.nz

Our Temporary Digs

Edgeware Road minutes after the earthquake

As many of you are probably aware, Christchurch was rocked by a violent earthquake on Tuesday the 22nd of February. This is my quick recollection of my early finish from work that day.

“I was being absolutely immersed in designing a web page, hearing about 1 second of rumble, pausing, and thinking

“Hell, this is going to be a decent aftershock”.

After feeling the first powerful jolt I dived for cover under my desk. For about 20–30 seconds the room moved violently in a lateral direction, engulfing us in a roaring noise. Shelves tipped over, doors opened and slammed, I felt my 27″ iMac slam over on the desk right above my head, as I scrambled to hold onto my desk as it slid about. Once the moving slowed enough, the eerie floating feeling accompanied with dogs barking and alarms filled the air. (more…)

Free Logo & Business Card Design!

DUE TO THE EARTHQUAKE TEARING UP UP OUR CITY, WE POSTPONED THIS COMP.

We’ve given it a new name and modified the rules, check it out here!

First Full-time Morning @ Enquire

Early morning

Here’s a shot out of my new full-time office window, 5:11am

A Showcase On Unify!

My web content editor of choice, Unify have kindly showcased my site on their home page… very cool. Check out their site to see why Enquire Design likes Unify so much.

Old School

Whilst rummaging through some old photos during a back-up session, I came across this—my desk, taken in my final year at CPIT School of Art and Design. All the essentials were there, stereo doubling up as a lightbox, workbook doubling up as a mousepad, coffee… what a magical workspace/environment it was!

2010… The Big One O

A new year, big new challenges, less mistakes than ’09, and a fresh outlook after a much needed break. It was really nice to get away from the screen and chill with my kids at Orana Park and do something that doesn’t involve fonts, coding and colour spaces. It really is a good reminder that keeping regular sessions of breathing space, I believe, allows for a fresher, more productive designer. Complete contrast to that of about 2 weeks ago.

On another note, although it seems like much longer, Enquire Design is now 6 months old—still crawling but gathering speed.

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