it’s going bananas.

it’s going bananas.

Response to the totalcontent monkey mailer has been phenomenal, and we’ve not even started sending out to the list of juicy prospects we’ve put together. Through the power of twitter and facebook, the posters were picked up by the popular design blogs acejet170 and formfiftyfive, and we’ve been getting over 500 hits a day on the web site. As well as wonderfully positive comments, we've been inundated with requests for posters from far and wide, so the studio currently looks more like a Royal Mail sorting office than the usual oasis of writerly calm. A gallery has even been in touch asking if they can exhibit our monkeys. Deborah is questioning whether stuffing orange tubes is in her job description, and my tongue is protesting at all the stamp licking. We got a rubber stamp of one of Rob’s monkeys made up, which we think works pretty well on our NB:Studio designed address stickers.

a chimp off the old block.

a chimp off the old block.

Finally. totalcontent’s very first mailer is drying off at the printers as we speak. It was designed by the good people at Elmwood, and features illustrations of monkeys by the highly talented Rob Ball of the Partners. Of course we’ll reveal all as soon as we get our hands on them, but in the meantime, here’s one of Rob’s excellent simian creations. Hope I wasn’t too much of a pain-in-the-arse client.

play your cards right.

play your cards right.

Came across this quite brilliant pack of typographic playing cards the other week. They’re the work of Jim Sutherland at hat-trick design, who I’m lucky enough to be working with on the 2010 Royal Mail Yearbook. Though they’re being used as piece of self-promotion for the consultancy, they’re actually an immaculately realized piece of personal work. The handling of the type is really witty and elegant, with negative and positive space used to act out suits, royals and numbers. Away from commercial and brand imperatives, the cards eloquently show a true love of type and pure graphics. Can’t wait to get my hands on a pack. There’s a YouTube clip here where you can see all 54 of them in action.