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!

So following on from each of our previous posts about our bag designs we finally took a day out from Hoffi and visited the lovely people at PrintHaus to silk screen the bags. After a few false starts (Andrew) and trying to remember back to our student days we finally got in the swing of things. We had a 100 bags to print each and we mostly came back with a 100 each!(Andrew didn't). It was great fun taking the time out do something different, check out some images below of our progress:

Below are the finished products, these are available to buy now on our Etsy shop, the "shopping robot" bag is looking cool I think... feel free to let us know which one you prefer.

Following on from my previous post showing a quick preview of the new signage for Rubicon Dance, below is a quick snap of it up on their building. There is a little bit more to the sign that is shown here, so watch out for a new case study on Rubicon Dance on our work page soon that will reveal everything!

Also on the same day, the new t-shirt and hoodies arrived, here is a quick picture of me and Elin modelling a couple of designs, I think wearing this t-shirt will make a better dancer*

* others will disagree

We have been working with Rubicon for a couple of years now slowly developing a new brand for them. Over the last few months we have slowly introduced their new brand on some communications to the public, but over the next month or two, there will be a new website, more communications, t-shirts and hoodies for the pupils and of course a new sign for the building. I popped over to the signage company this morning to get a sneak preview of the sign, installation will be next week and we are really looking forward to seeing it in the night!

Last night Renato (follow him here @Kyanos)twittered a link to Yowayowacamera a Japanese photographer that takes pictures of herself levitating (and some cats). Amazed by how eerie her pictures looked (and egged on by Renato) we decided to have a go for ourselves

Above are her efforts, and below are ours :)

We have probably mentioned it here before, but a couple of months ago we all went down to IGfest's games festival in Bristol. The festival is full of street games, outdoor spectacles, mass social interaction, the reclamation of public urban spaces for play and adventure.

The highlight of the festival is the 2.8 Hours Later game, 2.8 Hours Later is a chilling night-time street game with 300 players. We had to survive a night in Bristol, running between eight movie sets without becoming a zombie and save the city from apocalypse.

We just found the below pictures of us, stuck in the hell that was, Bristol shopping centre!

Oh and if you fancy trying something like this yourself, then why not try Cardiff's very own street game, Everwake

everwake the game trailer from playARK on Vimeo.

So it's the end of day one of experimenting with writing a story on twitter, here is mine and @allie_arklab progress up to now...

@allie_arklab
once upon a time there was a sneaky boy called @julian_Hoffi...

@Carwyn_Hoffi
he had long flowing blonde locks and arms like tree trunks...

@allie_arklab
and legs like chicken nuggets...

@Carwyn_Hoffi
while his legs slowed him down, he made up for it with grace and posture like a swan...

@allie_arklab
the ladies would swoon and dream of the time when he would whisk them away and ride off into the sunset whilst the men...

@Carwyn_Hoffi
would fear him like like tiger that hadn't eaten for days, his pungent sexual aroma would make them...

@allie_arklab
One day a stranger arrived at the village, who had arms like tree trunks and strong legs like an ox...

@Carwyn_Hoffi
@julian_hoffi feared this man, he couldn't let this man take his place as the village seed giver, something had to be done...

@allie_arklab
So one day @julian_Hoffi decided to confront this mysterious stranger and challenge him to a duel...

@Carwyn_Hoffi
he needed weapons though, he decided on a trident, a bottle of acid and a nail gun...

@allie_arklab
so at dawn on one wet and windy day @julian_hoffi met with the mysterious stranger on the heath...

@Carwyn_Hoffi
armed with his trident and umbrella, @julian_hoffi charged forward, his little legs had never run so hard...

@allie_arklab
he ran so fast that his little chicken nugget legs fell off...

@Carwyn_Hoffi
lying there, legless, @julian_hoffi, pleaded with the stranger and offered to trade his chicken nugget lets for...

@allie_arklab
a ride on...

Follow us on twitter to see where this goes...

Yesterday me and Andrew took a day out of the office to go to The Royal Welsh Show, the biggest agricultural show in Europe. Officially we were up there to see some of our existing and new clients, but we also took the opportunity to sit in some big tractors and pet some goats. After being distracted by some big boy toys we managed to catch up with Calon Wen, who had a great stand, selling their newly packaged milk, cheeses and new milkshakes, they also served us a great coffee as Calon Wen milk makes great coffee!

Also up in the show were Menter a Busnes with one of their projects, Energy Saving Trust with their Ynni'r Fro project, West Wales Eco Centre, for who we designed and developed the Climate Change Wales website. We also managed to catch up with some possible new clients as well, so all in all, a good day out.