This week we have mostly been overdosing on workshops. At the beginning of the week I attended a workshop with the Travelling Pantry. The workshop is part of a RSA research project designed by Tessy Britton and David Gauntlett. I was invited to attend due to the work I have been involved in with ARK LAB, but above that it is always good to experience workshop approaches, to see how they can be developed into branding and research workshops for Hoffi. The great thing about the workshop is it was an open workshop which means that you can take the theory and practical of the workshop and try them out in your work.

The half day workshop had some fun activities/exercises and there was a great knowledge transfer section where we learnt about some of the latest community based projects from around the world. For those of you in the community arena and looking at bottom up enterprises there is a few listed below that are really interesting:

- PIE LAB
- Mensheds
- Learning Dreams

As well as that I got to play with LEGO which is always a bonus. I think the idea of SERIOUS PLAY is crucial as a concept to future creative thinking and developments.



As well as the Pantry workshop we also held our own workshop for a potential new venture in Wales. At the moment it is under wraps but the workshop went down well, with a number of outcomes and possibilities identified. The workshop in question is called 'Climbing Everest', it generally takes around half a day and we recommend using it at the beginning of projects to either be used as design research and identify new directions, or to create a brief for a project. At the start of next year we will also be starting a mini version of this for people to try out so if you want to get some creative directions explored in your company let us know.

For many years now Cardiff has seen a variety of markets take over various parts of the city. With the development of High street into a pedestrianised zone the markets have been spreading to these areas. Craft Folk who have been organizing and running the markets have introduced wooden sheds for the stall holders. Which is alot better than the old metal frames with plastic walls that they had previously. When I say previously I think they have been doing it now for over ten years. In fact about seven years ago I took over one of the stalls with a friend to sell one off t-shirts, jewelry and ceramics.

It was a great although sometimes cold experience. We managed to sell some things and it was great to meet the people who were actually going to use the things we were selling. I remember the people we were next too as well. There was a person selling crystal ornaments and a family from London selling a balaclava/scarf thing. So more recently I have become much more aware of the community of Cardiff and it's shop owners and the big chains that have been introduced to an ever greater degree with the recent developments in places like St. David's 2 and this anonymity of place has been bugging me for a while now with regards to these markets.

My thinking is a follows:

- The markets create a novel experience for the holiday periods for people who come to visit Cardiff, but are they Cardiff?

- I wonder how this affects local shops. Does it help them? Or does it take from them?

- is the quality of these markets good enough? I mean should anything be allowed to be sold?

- should we look more at foreign markets coming to Cardiff to educate and experience new things? Similar to the French market in Cardiff bay that has been coming back year after year.

It would be great to find out how much impact they do put into the local economy, and to know how much they pay the council for the privilege.

Over the last year Andrew has attended a few meetings surrounding the redevelopment of the Sell2Wales website. Each meeting was chaired by Richard Gaunt, acting as an independent research consultant, in order to gauge opinions from users of the Sell2Wales website.

Tuesday saw the last of the user-group meetings, where a representative of Sequence attended to run through the proposed redevelopment including the changes made from the users feedback. Lots of emphasis was placed on the search facilities, by providing a much more user-friendly approach to the core functionality of the website. CPV codes have been pushed to the background to be replaced by a much more intuitive keyword based system of searching.

Andrew and the others attending the final meeting had a quick walk through of initial visual concepts proposed for the website and it was out with the red and blue and in with the lime green and black, with a beta version of the site proposed for March 2011.

With many if not all SMEs relying on the website for information on public sector contracts, it will be interesting to see what impact the changes will make.

Since 2007 we've been working with Cardiff Design Festival, producing printed materials and developing their website, providing tools to allow agencies and individuals to submit their work to the Best of Welsh Design Awards.

This year was much the same, until we decided to try something a little different. As well as a fabulous illustration produced by Matt Joyce to really make this year standout, we introduced a five star voting system to the Best of Welsh Design online showcase.

Perhaps its not ground breaking, but it did generate both new and return visitors to the website. In the two months leading up we saw 10,000 visitors to the website and another 5,000 during the festival, with the online voting system logging over 1,700 individual votes.

The Best of Welsh Design is presently shown in order of the highest vote, so congratulations should go out to Kutcibok for being the most popular with their work for Gower Cottage Brownies.

Over the last few years we have been working in branding and branding strategy and have followed the thinkers of the day as to how to approach this. People such as Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin have been hugely influential in our thinking. Indeed Seth's notion of permission marketing is a great concept and one we have used to great success on a company level. More recently with the depth of our branding project's becoming more and more about the strategy and how people interact with the brand. It has become interesting to see the marriage between permission marketing and service design. While they are indeed different there are a number of elements that are the same. It will be interesting to see how this develops in the future. Particularly in terms of developments such as apple's app store.

These new platforms are allow for companies such as MUJI to develop new offerings. But what I question is this NPD? is it permission marketing? is it service design? is it branding strategy? in a way it is a bit of all of these. It seems that more and more people/brands will be extending their offer through things such as these apps to give better service that transpires into permission marketing that then transpire into branding values being represented.

A few weeks ago our very own Director Julian Sykes was interviewed by LS:N Global about his involvement in a new local development called thinkARK. The article unfortunately is on their paid section but here is one of the quotes taken from the piece.

‘Urban squares have got to come back to being community spaces,’ Sykes says, ‘where you’re not going to always be pushed to buy.’

Disappointingly, ICANN announced that the .cym has been reserved for the Cayman Islands.



Since Hoffi began in 2006 we've been quietly behind the campaign having signed and got others to sign the petition to get a Welsh TLD (Top Level Domain); something that would define welsh businesses on the internet and extend the Wales brand overall.

We've now got to be patient and wait once again, whilst supporting the guys over at dotCYM Cyf. in the proposal for an alternative name. Suggestions at present being .Cymru .Cwl (Quite amusing) and .Wales

I just wonder if the Cayman Islands have a little more persuasive power over Wales, being a tax haven to the rich and famous...?