So, as we saw it, it would be a good idea to look back at how we started so for a limited time only we will be showing our first piece of print on our brand new website. We are really happy with the new site, but what do you think? let us know your thoughts. We will be adding more projects in the coming weeks so keep your eyes peeled.

Well it seems a day ago that we setup. However five years have passed by and we have moved from a bedroom, to a small office, to our current studio based in Cardiff Bay. We have employed Elin who has been with us for well over two years now and we have had many students come for work experience.

We have learnt loads in the last five years, Some things we didn't really want to learn (TAX returns), through to developing new ways of working and improving our knowledge and skills within design. For us though, we think that the best thing about our five years has been the people we have met and become friends with. We hope that the next five years will be even better.

So thank you to everyone who has been part of our last five years.

P.S. Look out for a new development in the next few hours.

As Hoffi's fifth birthday is coming up very soon, we have been working really hard on a little gift to send out to all of our lovely clients!...Keep checking the post in the next couple of weeks!!

Hoffi announces more FREE seminars for Welsh Businesses

Following the success of our last two seminars, which covered branding and online strategies, we have been working on the arrangements for our third seminar and have a date confirmed. In this seminar you will discover why your brand is the most valuable part of your business, and why a good brand can benefit you.

Taking place on Thursday 14th of April, at Enterprise House, Cardiff Bay *.

We will be there from 8:30am where you will be able to get a coffee and a bit of breakfast, before we start at 9:00am.

The initial seminar will run through some examples of what branding is and what it is not. After a short break we will then continue to look at why having good branding is valuable for your business and what the key ingredients of a good brand is, we will be particularly concentrating on how to use your brand to position itself in the marketplace.

This will take us up to 12pm, when there will be around an hour or so for networking (we will be around afterwards should any of you wish to chat about any particular issues you have.)

We hope you are interested in attending the event and look forward to seeing you all there. Please note places are limited so book early to avoid disappointment.

For your place at the seminar please email elin.williams@hoffi.com quoting reference: brandemail

* Enterprise House is located opposite the train station on Bute St, Cardiff Bay.

The Training Room, Enterprise House,
127 Bute Street, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff CF10 5LE.

Look forward to hearing from you

Image for illustrative purposes only and does not include whole market.

We have had a number of conversations in the office recently about the development of branding and the products and services it offers. There seem to be a number of branding and business ventures that are coming together to create a rather different type of output.

Firstly lets look at some history. In the Western brand scape it has been quite rare for a brand to move to different markets or sectors. There are probably two that spring to mind that have challenged this view. Virgin and in a similar way EasyJet. These brands have managed to create a strong brand over a range of sectors yet kept their core values in these new ventures. However if we look further afield to the Asia market and in particular the Japanese market. Which for years has had companies that diversify from it's initial product/service to encompass many other products or services. Some examples would be Mitsubishi (air conditioning through to Cars), Or MUJI (electronics right through to the food market). Another line of branding and business strategy is the well publicised Starbuck's strategy of opening as many coffee shops as it can in the area to then drive out other competitors. So for a short term loss per shop there would be a long term gain for the brand and company.

So if we look at companies are combining these two strategies and using this within one market sector. The theory being swamp the market with different brands offering the same product but in a different way, whether that be different through look, age range, values etc. An example close to home is Admiral. A Welsh based company that has a huge protfolio of insurance options. for example Admiral themselves provide car insurance, then there is confused.com that also provide car insurance then there is also elephant who also provide car insurance, Diamond who also provide car insurance, I think you get the message. So each brand is targeted at a specific area of the marketplace, and all of them owned by Admiral.

In the same way, but with a slightly different approach is Ariel who have for many years developed their washing powder range to be the next best thing for cleaning your clothes. Recently they have stretched their brand to Stain removal products. So extending their product range within the same market.

So what is happening?

This scatter gun approach to business seems to be at first highly self defeating (being expensive to develop a brand, and setup an infrastructure for a new company), yet if we look at it another way these companies are already very established within their market they are invariably one of the leaders in their marketplace and they are vigilant about threats and other companies challenging their market share. So instead of fighting through just one offering why not make the offerings multiple and make the offers niche or bespoke to markets within markets?

The rule seems to almost feel (in the Case of Admiral at least) become large and dominant through a wide brand offering (Admiral) then diversify into smaller conversation offerings for smaller groups and niches (confused.com, Elephant etc). This can also be seen in other companies such as Google who have grown into the largest company in the world and now they are refining and developing new ventures that are aiding in the development of niche responses to their market, and also fending off other companies which maybe trying to break into these markets.

Andrew and Carwyn, went to visit Sainsbury's today to take some shots of Truly Scrummy Organic in-situ. It was great for the guys to see them on the shelves after all the work that was put into them from us and the Truly Scrummy team.

Filming in the CIty Centre from Hoffi on Vimeo.

We have been working hard since we got back on new projects and this year we are going to be showing them in different ways. This was a small clip of a piece we are working on at the minute for one of our clients. More to come soon.

Well when we started back in the day we had loads of experiments on the go. Playing with materials and looking to use them within projects. Recently we have been working flat out and the experimenting has reduced so this year we will be resurrecting this. This is El putting one of our first concepts to the test. Keep your fingers crossed for us. As IDEO say Fail Early Succeed sooner.

This is not really a new thing but something we are going to see a lot more over the next few years. Ever since the Wii came out in 2006, the games console world had been changed. Now with the likes of Microsoft, launching it's kinect add-on to the XBOX games and the physicality of these games consoles are going to be more and more influential in day to day life. Combine this to the development of Augmented Reality and it looks like we are going to have a very different experience of computers of the past.

Our second what's new for 2011 is an internal development. Hoffi has been going now for nearly five years (birthday in February, and we welcome cake). Over that time we have gone to see a few exhibitions and visited a number of events.

Well this year we have decided to make it a bit more structured in what we do. So we have developed trip days that will work hand in conjunction with our knowledge transfer monthlies. The trip days will be anything from going to see and exhibition to taking part in a fun run!!!!. We are aiming to get the planning book out this month to plan around three of them for 2011. More than likely we will be putting the plans on the blog before we go so if it sounds interesting we might even see you there.

So What's new in 2011, take time out to experience new things that re-inspire and invigorate you. That's the plan.

So in our first What's new for 2011 we thought we would go straight to eating. Thinking you still want more we came across the top ten trends that we should see in 2011 according to Leatherheads food research.

TOP FOOD TRENDS IN 2011

Reformulations and stealthy reductions. (Initiatives such as the removal of artificial additives and ingredients will continue into 2011).
Sustainability high on the agenda
Health and wellness
Riding out the recession
Ever-expanding tastes. (Cuisines from regions around the world).

Provenance. (British will be the core focus for consumers when demanding provenance).

Small indulgences ( Consumers to forgo large expenses in favour of 'treats' in inexpensive forms).
Frozen foods market beginning to thaw?
Less is more/convenience. (Consumers will continue to demand convenience to fit in with ever-busy lives).
Obesity to get bigger. (innovations within the ingredients sector will allow companies to explore the addition of fibres and proteins and their effects on satiety).

You can see a larger article here

Five down this is number six. for many companies this is so hard to do and it is so tempting to do other things. This is what we have learnt in the last five years but slowly been introducing in 2010. Be excellent in one aspect of business (in our case design).

Niche is key to the future development of your business. If you can identify your key beliefs and values and only approach projects that fit this then in the long term you are going to be better off. Your projects will be more enjoyable and fulfilling, because you believe in it. They will also be of a better standard.

This is very appropriate given the weather today. With the ease of communications both on and offline, it is almost impossible not to get to the people who want to listen and talk to you. I have been trying to find out what the trains are like for the last 30 minutes no luck. Surely there is a good channel to access for this?

However what we would say is that it is very important to provision this aspect of your strategy. Do not set up a twitter account or facebook page if you are not going to have time to use it and respond to people's queries. It's not yellow pages where you put your advert in, because everyone else has one. It is about what you can offer and how your offer is unique and authentic. It has to be integrated within the whole brand and business strategy.

Number 4 in our what we have learnt is about guardianship and confidence. Brands are more and more being moulded and created by the user whether that be a customer of the brand or an employee as we learnt in a previous post. But what is key is to have ownership of your brand so you can develop it with confidence and without having to constantly be asking for assistance.

This ownership is key if a brand and brand strategy is to be embedded within a company. It was great to see this christmas card from the people of menter a busnes and to see how already within a month or so they are feeling confident enough to play and evolve the brand. They know we are always on the end of the phone so they are happy to play and experiment with their new brand.

Our third instalment in what we have learnt this year. Transparency and openess. In the social media scene it is no longer possible to hide behind a door. Brands have to be person and have opinions. The more open and candid you are the better.

By being personal you can react and evolve inline with your listeners.

This years biggest none listener was Steve Jobs and the infamous 'hold it differently' for the signal problems of the new iPhone 4

During this year we have been involved in a variety of projects. Some big, some small. Some print, some digital. Some brand, some not. But the main thing we kept on coming back to again and again was that branding is about people. And people are shaping your brand. From the employee of the brand to the user. It has to start from a person perspective.

Our first thing we have learnt this year is more like what we have introduced in 2010 and hope to continue into 2011 and hope to expand to involve other companies.

What we have learnt - Number 1
Introduce a time for skill transfer and knowledge exchange. We have played with a few versions of this in 2010, and are getting there. It's all about keeping on going and experimenting until it's right. So in 2010 we have introduced a monthly workshop or presentation where a member of Hoffi exchanges knowledge to the rest.



The video above is a very quick film created through a workshop this morning using After Affects. A bit festive snow for everyone.

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.

The First week is almost over. While I would have liked to have visited a few more events, the ones I have got to have been really interesting.


Pecha Kucha ran another evening. This time the people I think were the most diverse yet. From a scientist who is planning/designing the fastest car ever right through to a fun packed talk about 'crapestry' which as the names suggests is basically crap tapestry.


Last evening was Momentum's open night highlighting some of the new spanish designs that have been launching in the furniture market recently. It was nice to have a look at the new lines and ranges. The food was great as well. And for my entertainment what do you think about the man in the back with the boller hat.

At the end of this week the Cardiff Design Festival will be once again upon us. This year a two week jam packed event with more things going on than hours in the day. You can pick your highlights on the website and also by downloading the pdf of the poster. So if you fancy going to see what architects are thinking about, or what the latest thinking about eco design is there is something for you.

We normally arrange something during the festival but due to the amount of events and workload getting the design work produced for it. It seems like we missed the boat this time but perhaps next year... For us it seems like it's the first year that the public will be in touch with the festival particularly through the use of the empty shops within Morgan and Royal Arcade which should bring a wider audience. Well hope everyone involved has a fantastic time and the events go without a hitch:

Events to watch out for:

The Launch

ARK in the PARK - games day

Pecha Kucha

WonderCulture Market

E:DN Futures Seminar