Pete Coe
Art Direction and album artwork

Pete Coe is a folk singer who has been touring the folk clubs and festivals for the past 40 years. He approached Design By If to create artwork for his latest release Backbone and we were thrilled to help out! The album was launched this year at the Sidmouth Folk Festival and is going down a storm.

Fabulously talented illustrator Harriet Gray provided the stunning pencil work – have a look at some more of her work here.

Album Artwork

Fancy Pants
Clothing retail

We designed these lovely pants just for a bit of fun! For your own piece of limited edition designer pant wear nip down to www.soupa.co.uk and browse the shop. There are lots of beautiful and handmade gifts and home-wares waiting to be bought!

Design By If has been a member of the splendid creative network in London for the past year, you can keep up to date on design news on the Soupa blog and also find our profile here…

Fancy Pants

Gift Package

Wireless Grids Corporation
Branding and website design

Wireless Grids Corporation (WGC) has recently completed a merger with Varsity Media Group Acquisition Corp., of Austin, TX. They specialize in developing cutting edge software for next-generation seamless media and file sharing across the range of mobile and fixed operating systems.

Their growing team is currently engaged in a new phase of research and development and they are evolving their prototypes into commercial products.

This progress has encouraged the team to look into their own company brand. Design By If were commissioned to re-design the company’s logo, develop their branding and then apply this to the company website.

Logo Design

Brand Creation

The Demon Barbers
Album artwork

The Demon Barbers have recently released their 3rd full album ‘The adventures of Captain Ward’, with the help of the genius Tony Hall, Design By If produced the artwork. The band have been described as ’slightly unhinged’ with ‘maverick tendencies’ – what more can we say?!

You can buy the album direct from the band here

Album Artwork (cover)

Damien O'Kane
Brand creation, album artwork and website design

Damien O’Kane has recently been taken on by Pure Records. He has been performing for years with his family and various bands but Summer Hill, produced by Pure Records is his first solo album. Pure Records needed a brand look for Damien as a solo performer and we were happy to oblige!


Summer Hill Album Artwork
Cover of Damien’s debut album Summer Hill with stunning photography by Sarah Photo Girl. You can listen to a few snippets on his website, and buy his album from the Pure Records shop.




Website Design and Development
With help from one of our web guru’s Tom Pitts we built Damien a shiny new website. It was important that Damien, Emma and other colleagues at Pure Records were able to easily update and amend the website on a daily basis so each have their own log in codes and now have full control of the site. Please visit the site here.

Damien Barber and Mike Wilson
Photo shoot with Mark Howe

Damien Barber and Mike Wilson, nominees for Best Duo at the BBC Radio 2, Folk Awards 2010 released their album ‘Under the Influence’ in 2009. You can buy the splendid album here and listen to them here.

We are currently working on a new look for Damien and Mike starting with stunning photography by Mark Howe. Damien and Mike sing old traditional English songs with an honest, gritty approach. The photo’s are no frills representations of the guys and what they do. The photographs were taken at Kelham Island, an old industrial part of Sheffield. The featured pub regularly holds a folk club where the duo and many of their contemporaries have played. We wanted to show the Duo as they are and as they are seen by their fans.

All change!
Hello faithful blog followers! Sorry it's been a while since we updated you on goings on in the studio. It's been a busy few months so we're about to inundate you with new projects and news... Our new website is about to be launched which will provide a more formal setting for showcasing our work. We enjoy the informality of the blog however so will be continuing to run this alongside to offer more of a continual dialogue of current work and news.

Can't wait!

Time Gentlemen Please
What better way to entice me back to work after 2 weeks of Christmas laziness than a new dance show! Time Gentlemen Please is a show based largely on English traditional dance forms written and created by Artistic Director Damien Barber and Choreographer Bobak Walker. The musicians and traditional dancers are taken from The Demon Barber Roadshow, winners of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, Best Live Act 2009. Here's a bit of their official blurb...

'Used to pushing the boundaries of English traditions the Demon Barbers take a further step and invite three young hip hop dancers for a night out at their local pub ‘The Fighting Cocks’. Clog, Rapper and Morris meet B-boying, Popping and Krump in this humourous and unmissable visual feast. Think Riverdance with a false moustache, Stomp with bells on and both sitting in the front seat of a Bugatti!'

The show will be launched in Leeds at the Carriageworks on 15h May 2010.

Promotional Image
These past two weeks I have been working on a promotional image for the show. Something that shows traditional dance but firmly placed in a contemporary setting. This image will be used for dance company and theatre programmes, posters, fliers and all other supporting literature.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Well what a splendid year it's been... From new logos for school dinners to websites for global retail brands, we've been kept on our toes! But that's the way we like it.

So far 2010 promises to be even better with many more exciting projects lined up already. We are looking forward to meeting as many new clients, suppliers and friends as we did in 2009 (if not more) so see you all then!

Happy Christmas Puddings!
++

ASDA Marketing Academy

Great news - we've just won another great job for Asda. We'll be working with our trusty web team developing an intranet site for Asda's marketing team. Over the next couple of months we'll be designing and building an academy the marketing team can use to train their new and existing staff in a simple and structured way.

We're looking forward to starting the project... will be hefty but the web team will get their teeth into it in no time!

Academy Design Phase

We have now completed the initial design phase for the Marketing Academy. Keeping within the strict Asda brand guides is always a challenge, however after a few meetings and discussions we agreed on this basic look to the Academy header. We are not able to show you any official content so have mocked up all text and headers. They're big fans of green over at Asda!