Its that time of year again when we have to say Penblwydd hapus to ourselves and divulge our age, but maybe you can guess how old we are? We would also like to thank all our customers, colleagues and friends over the last ...... years!

My weekend made me think about how we interact with people less and less while buying products or services. It seems that as new technology comes out the less it makes us need to speak to anyone else, I realised last night that I nearly went the whole weekend without hardly interacting with anyone.

Let's start off filling the car full of petrol, I'm able to use the 'Pay at Pump' feature at most garages. I can drive up, put my card in fill my care up and drive off without having to speak to anyone.

Next stop was the hotel, here I was able to use an app on my phone to pay for my parking outside the hotel and then check in to my room using their self check in service. I had already paid online so didn't have to make any transaction.

So I then needed to get to get into the city centre to have some food before seeing a show. Best way to get in was a bus and being in London I had my Oyster Card. My card was already topped with credit online, so I was able to jump of the bus, swipe my card, and jump off at my destination. I'm now 5 hours into my day and even though I have interacted with a few services I haven't spoken to anyone!

I was now hungry and I had to interact with someone, which was nice, being sat in a restaurant and having someone provide a human service, asking me how I was etc. From all the services I interact with, restaurant service is the one I value the most and can't see this disengaging with people and hope it doesn't, unless of course you love those vending machine restaurants in Japan!

Time for the show, so on the way there I needed to pick up some drinks (no way was I paying venue prices :) ). A quick stop off in tesco, pick up a drink and of course pay at the self checkout. Now i'm a fan of these when you want to get in and out quickly and buying one or two things, not your entire weekly shop! I really do think these have a place in our shops, except where you need to speak to someone for advice. Next stop was the show, I had already purchased the tickets online, printed them out myself and had them in my pocket. All that had to be done was for the door person to scan my ticket. Now i'm not sure if I'll count this as human interaction as the door person wasn't very talkative.

So show over, back to the hotel and of course, bus and underground it is with the oyster card, all the way back to the hotel and to bed!

Next morning, time for breakfast, I had already purchased breakfast online so no transactions were needed. It was all self service, so I filled up on as much as I could and it was time to go. We needed to check out and of course this was done without speaking to anyone, just drop the key card into the slot at reception. Decided to stay around a bit longer and see some Museums that day, so topped up the car parking with the app, jumped back on the bus and underground and visited Saatchi Gallery, V&A museum and the Science Museum without having to speak to a single person

After tiring myself out around all the museums it was time to jump back on the undergaround and bus, head back to the car, jump in and head back to Wales. Of course we had to through the Severn Bridge toll, but this was easily done by throwing the money the coin bin, then we were home!

I suppose you can choose to interact with people or not at certain points, such as petrol stations, tesco and the hotel but I choose not to. Is this a good or bad reflection on their service design? Is good that they have made things so easy for me that I can interact with them as quick as possible or a bad thing that the interaction is so quick they are not leaving me with an experience to remember. Personally I'm a fan of automated things, but only in certain places, but the trend is going that soon these places will also been taken over and we will interact even less with each other, sad times I think.

Another week and another launch, this time it was the turn of Rubicon Dance. We were invited along to Rubicon on Friday to help them introduce everyone to the new brand and website. It was great to see various people from the industry supporting Rubicon and they venture on a new chapter to grow and become even more successful, we even got to see a few of their dancers perform

We have been working with Rubicon Dance. for over 2 years now, initially starting with developing the class brochure and other printed work to rebranding them and developing a new website.

Rubicon Dance provide classes for all, splitting between part-time and full-time courses. Rubicon Dance wanted to develop their brand and also their brand elements in line with moving to a more commercially viable model (relying less on arts funding). We developed a number of elements that could be used to bring new audiences to Rubicon.

The challenge with Rubicon was to move the brand feel of community to one that still caters for community and in the same breath it is professional and produces great dancers. With the quality of the teaching being second to none. We worked to develop this slightly more grown up brand and produced communications to reinforce the two areas that Rubicon inhabits.

You can view some of the work we have done for Rubicon Dance in our Case Study

Yesterday was the first official launch of Coreo Cymru, Creative Dance Producer, Wales in Chapter Cardiff. Coreo Cymru is a new initiative set up to encourage and manage the creation and production of new dance activity, and to support the development of Wales based artists and companies.

Initiated and supported by the Arts Council of Wales, the three year programme is being developed in partnership with Creative Producer, Carole Blade and Chapter, Cardiff and also includes partnerships with Wales based organisations along with international partnerships and co-producers.

Coreo Cymru aims to connect with audiences by offering a mix of inspiring ways to engage with the programme, offering new and accessible ways of presenting dance.

Working with Carole over the past few months, we developed the name, brand identity, brochures, leaflets, banners, video sting and holding page (finished website to follow in a few months). As part of the branding process we came up with the concept for the imagery and set up a photoshoot. The idea behind the imagery was to show an emerging form ready to grow and develop, similar to the brand. We are really looking forward to developing the brand in new and exciting ways as the programme of shows comes to life. The brand will respond and develop to each of the individual shows within the programme over the next 3 years.

Below are some behind the scene shots of the photoshoot, it was done with a paddling pool, gantry system, lots of bath milk, luke warm water and very understanding model (Chloe Loftus) and a photographer with vertigo issues (Jorge Lizalde)

Morph was the small scale test!

Yesterday Carwyn and i attended a seminar by Ken Blakeslee a consultant from Web Mobility Ventures, Ken's a self proclaimed mobile fanatic and has specialised in the area for many years. It certainly came across in his talk, with is passion and eagerness to explain mobile technologies available to deliver content in innovative ways. I've been intrigued by Augmented Reality since Julian showed me some of Moving Brands work a few years ago, I've even played with a little using flash and some open source libraries, but I've not even scratched the surface; not even as a user of AR. Ken spoke about some AR examples that are available to us through products that we buy, like Marmite, KitKat and Walkers crisps, but until last night I was unaware of. So today I downloaded the Blippar app for the iPhone and just about scanned everyone's lunch from Cadbury's Dairy milk through to Heinz ketchup and discovered some games and no so great recipes hidden in AR.

Another of ken's examples was Esquire magazine back in 2009, when a whole issue was produced with extended content in Augmented Reality. It was a great evening presented by Software Alliance Wales and Dinamo Productions, one of hopefully many more that I'll attend.

Over the last few months we have been working with Cynnal Cymru-Sustain Wales to develop their digital brand experience. Utilising the open source content management system Drupal, we worked with Cynnal Cymru to produce a core set of tools that will allow their online brand to grow overtime, yet remain open and allow for flexibility should they require to change in the future.

Its still very early days in the development and positioning of Cynnal Cymru's online content, but we have good ground to grow from... www.cynnalcymru.com

So the end of 2011 went by pretty quickly. It seemed to be one of the busiest we have had. Which ment that we didn't get through all the 'What we learnt in 2011' post's we would have liked down to you.

So we thought we would have a quick look forward to see what everyone's new years resolutions are:

- Random act of kindness each month
- Start running / get fit
- Get Fit
- Go to somewhere new each month

We will pop some others once we get round to thinking of more.

Last year we spoke about implementing things to do outside of the studio to help with new ideas and generally just getting out there to be influenced by different things. So this year we have been screen printing, attended multiplatform courses, organised a design pub quiz, tried to make lunch, LUNCH (as opposed to being in front of a screen) and finally we learnt to float!!!!! (no seriously) We have tried to go to as many things as possible. It's a big change to make, but we are getting there with, and hope that 2012 we can do even more.

So if there is something to be learnt from this. It's the old "you have to speculate to accumulate" but this is NOT in money terms but in experience, knowledge and social terms. So here's to more events and unplanned trips.

Last year we wrote a few pieces about what we had learnt, and what we were thinking about implementing ready for the next year. It seemed to go down quite well so we felt it might be good to do it again.

So what have we learnt in 2011?
Well this year has been pretty incredible in terms of projects. We have rebranded, restructured and redeveloped some brilliant companies and brands. We feel like we have moved on again and our projects have become that bit bigger and that bit wider reaching. With this comes more pressure and more expectation. But what we have really learnt is that people are people. They laugh, smile and cry just like the rest of us.

So if you are thinking about doing something give it a go. What's the worst can happen?*

*Check out the guy from social network in the above Dr Pepper advert.

Earlier this year we helped Eco Design Centre develop an understanding of how they can share their data, convey confident communications about who they are and what they do as an organisation. Concluding with a number of 30 second ads made by the Eco Design Centre team, which was great because it really got the whole team thinking about who they are and what they do as an organisation.

Following on from the strategy project we have been working with the team over the last month or so to design and develop a new website that will allow them flexibility to explain their services, relationships with private, public and educational sectors and give them the tools to publish all that rich data online.

You can visit the website and find out more about Eco Design Centre at www.ecodesigncentre.org