Modern Art Oxford have chosen TAK! to be their print & digital marketing agency for the next year. This coincides with a gallery re-opening and new website — which we are currently working on.

We're excited to be working with Modern Art Oxford across all aspects of their marketing; we will work with them to develop a new identity reflecting the gallery's new vision, print and digital marketing and a new social media strategy.

It's a great opportunity for TAK! to showcase out abilities across the board with a unique client who has a rich heritage.

Modern Art Oxford is one of the UK's leading galleries for the presentation of modern and contemporary art. Past exhibitions have featured Stella Vine, Tracy Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman (check their current video - woah) and Yoko Ono amongst others.

The gallery is closed during March and re-opens early April. Follow their activities via Twitter @weloveoxford

Way, way back in August we presented a pitch to the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA) for a new company website and brand strategy. Just before Christmas we were asked to further develop the idea and in January we presented our vision.

We're extremely pleased to announce we won the work and will be working with them on a new website, graphical identity and print marketing.

This is great news as this full service offering is something we have pushed for many years. Our recent acquisitions suggest our combined abilities across print and digital are now being recognised.

Some new work announcements. Before Christmas we pitched for the redesign of the Midlands Architecture and the Designed Environment's (MADE) website. We recently found out we won and have started working on delivering the project.

MADE champion creativity and best practice within the West Midlands region in the fields of Architecture and the Environment placing themselves strategically between architects, clients and the public.

Our proposal was two-fold. The first part stuck to the brief and outlined our ideas for the new site. The second part outlined a future digital vision for the company with the focus on a unique idea for their industry. MADE bought into this thinking and are currently taking this strategy to the Arts Council for funding. The funding will be used to trial the idea and should it work then we will be heavily involved in the development of the future project.

Exciting stuff. Expect things soon.

If you want this kind of approach to your project, product or company, contact us.
 

Last year we won a pitch to redesign the Musuems, Libraries and Archives Council's (MLA) website.

The MLA promotes best practice in museums, libraries and archives, to inspire innovative, integrated and sustainable services for all. MLA are a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB), sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) launched in April 2000.

The MLA have been involved in many national arts projects and we are both honoured and excited to be redesigning their website.

This time we will only supplying design and pass the development work to the super fantastic Codehouse.

Just before Christmas when everyone was snowed in, we headed down to the New Forest to Artsway — a small gallery with a strong reputation. After an in-depth conversation and credentials presentation we headed back to Birmingham with some new work in our pockets.

We're currently defining the new Artsway website and digital brand identity. Artsway are well known for recognising the best new talent and showcasing new artists before the move on to bigger world domination.

We're very excited to work with Artsway to offer them a new strong online presence. Website due Spring 2010.

Hubero Kororo designed this interactive CD cover for the band Uceroz. When you open the CD packaging on the side, ink is set free and bleeds into the cover, creating a unique cover for each CD. Really nice.

Discovered a new framework for creating creative and dynamic solutions a la processing via Fabio. If you're into illustration or just into to creating some very cool looking flash works of art - I'd say the HYPE actionscript framework is for you.

Dr. Woohoo --> HYPE --> AIR --> Illustrator from Joshua Davis on Vimeo.

Last year we worked with Thomas Tallis to produce a new brand identity for the school. This project is now complete and you can see the results over in our portfolio.

Moving in the opposite direction of that last blog post, we have some great news to announce!

Last night, the Pre-Raphelite Online Resource pipping Channel 4 and Teachers TV to win a highly covetted BETT Award for best Digital Collection and Resource Banks.

The BETT Awards is an annual scheme that highlights exemplar digital products intended for the education marketplace. The BETT Awards is produced by Emap Connect, the organisers of the largest educational technology show in the world - BETT. The BETT Awards is made possible by working in association with Becta, the Government's lead agency for ICT in education, and BESA, the trade association representing the educational supply industry.

The site was primarliy designed for use in education, so to be recognised and awarded by BETT is a massive, honorable achievement.

We've said it before, but we'll say it again, this is soley the result of trust by the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery's project team in our ideas and decisions.

It is very rewarding to know that the site will be used for a worthwhile educational purpose.

Well done all.

* EDIT * The original post on You Thought We Wouldn't Notice has now been removed and replaced with an apology & correction.

The Good — contact sheets from the BDE 2010 photoshoot

The Bad — the imagery which we 'ripped off'

The Ugly — BDE2010 is a bi-annual event showcasing dance from around the world. We won the pitch to brand the event back in February 2009. Our approach was to use the technique of Light Painting with dancers expressing movement and form. These forms would ultimately create the final identity mark. What interesrted us about the idea, and ultimately what captured the BDE team's imagination was a logo being made from the movement of dance itself. Over the following 3 months we conducted a photoshoot and produced the final identity for the festival.

To be honest, we saw a dilution of our brand, but BDE 2010 is just a project and we'd already moved onto the next. End of.

Until today.

Today we were made aware of a post (no longer available) on You Thought We Wouldn't Notice blog by the (re)traces photographer claiming our brand identity work for the British Dance Edition 2010 (BDE2010) is a ripp off the (re)traces project. Ummmm, ok - this is getting serious.

How many people have seen that post already? How much damage has been done? What if we hadn't seen this and it grew to become something far worse? Already a response had been left from Artsadmin an established arts organisation of over 30 years with no doubt wide reaching connections. I didn't like the assumption that the original poster was in the right and we in were the wrong. And talk of compensation? OK - maybe it's time to clear up some things.

So my reply followed and clearly states our position — essentially that of we were unaware of the (re)traces project and our only inspiration was the concept of Light Painting itself. It also states that our work precedes theirs by at least 6 months — so perhaps it's us who should be crying copyright infringement? Maybe we should be kicking up a fuss? It's certainly not the first time we've been copied both visually and verbally.

But we don't care. We're more than a one trick pony. We're also assured in the knowledge that our renderings are clearly better — this goes without saying if you consider the talent involved in the project.

Unfortunately the article lays the assumed copyright breach on our good friend Chris Keenan who we commissioned to take the BDE 2010 photography — so he looks like the bad guy in all this and we sincerly hope this does not affect him in any way.

It's all too easy to slander people on the Internet and this is a prime example of how someone who clearly has an issue has caused an issue without really thinking.

We'll take the Pepsi challenge over this should push come to shove because we know our work was in no way influenced by (re)traces. If we take consideration of the dates, at best it's coincidence on their part.

I hope this makes our position very clear.

For those interested, you can see a short documentary on the identity project here.

Nice mix of drawing/animation styles, and good music to boot!

Welcome to 2010 everyone, hope you had a nice break and are ready for a new set of 10 years. We wish you all the best. To kick it off here's a lovely link to some great museum posters from the mighty typographic graphical land known as Switzerland. Enjoy.

Cardon Copy takes underconsidered flyers and posters, (we've all seen them… hand scrawled notes stuck to trees, shop fronts, pinboards) redesigns them and then replaces the originals.

(l-r: @neiltak, @lspurdle, @petetak, @domtak)

We published this on our Twitter feed as it happened last week so Flim Flam is playing catch up this time (lost my camera's USB cable).

Anyway, the news — last Thursday we attended the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) Awards representing our goodselves, BMAG and the wonderful Pre-Raphaelites. We were honored to be shortlisted for the Best Arts & Culture Website category.

The competition was pretty fierce and we really weren't expecting a win; making the shortlist was good enough for us humble folk. So, we were incredibly excited when our name was announced as the winner.

Someone in the crowd yelled "YEAH TAK!!!" as we headed to the stage to collect the award. It's fantastic our project which was up against others ten times the value won. Well done to everyone involved.

The rest of the evening was a blurry drunken mess