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Ignite Cardiff

Last night we went along to the Wales Millennium Centre to watch the 5th Ignite night. There was a paper plane making competition at the end to win a lovely box of chocolates, an opportunity to good to miss, above is Julian constructing his monster (which flew sideways by the way).

National Museum Wales Wedding Brochure

We have just received some file copies of the a recent wedding brochure we designed for National Museum Wales. Designed to mirror the beautiful surroundings of the Museums, it is finished with a foil block and semi transparent paper.

National Theatre Wales - E-mail Newsletter

Over the last few hours we've been putting the final touches together on an e-mail campaign for National Theatre Wales' first performace: A Good Night Out in the Valleys.

The send button has been pressed and the e-mail sent to their e-mail marketing list, with one date already sold out I'm sure it will not be long before the others follow. A Good Night Out in the Valleys will be performed at venues throught the South Wales Valleys.

You can view the e-flyer on their website:
http://nationaltheatrewales.org/eflyers/01032010/index.htm

National Museum Wales celebrates 250,000 visitors to Origins Exhibition: In search of Early Wales

Poor El

Elin is working hard putting our latest promotional piece for Hoffi together, she usually smiles, but not today.

If anyone would like a copy of our latest 3D promotional piece, please drop us an email shwmai@hoffi.com

Photographic History of Hoffi

Today i realised i had used about 300gb up of my hard drive through photography, so while sorting out the photographs I came across allot of Hoffi photographs. After looking at a few and laughing at myself i decided to put together a chronological history of Hoffi through the Photographs, ill start with the earliest i have!:



24/04/2008
Aw bless!



07/06/2008
In June we decided to revamp the office. Someone suggested pulling down the ceiling, yeah good idea...oh and have a look at Julians safety goggles!



18/06/2008
Mid ripping the ceiling down the electrician popper by and gave us some new lights!



19/06/2008
How much bloody cable was in that one room! NASA must of rented it before us!



21/06/2008
That home made bomb I had been playing with went off by accident.



04/07/2008
We asked Andrew to pose for his bio picture, this is the pose he decided on, hmm



04/07/2008
I'm not really sure what me and Julian are laughing at but I imagine we had just downloaded Andrew's bio picture!



06/08/2008
We 'popped' to the Eisteddfod in Cardiff, 5 ours later, we were still there! Here is Andrew sporting our Silibili Brand on his chest.



30/01/2009
The day we took new photographs for our website bio's, this one did not make it! The real ones can be seen on Hoffi's website



10/02/2009
Hoffi is 3 years old!



29/05/2009
A trip to the Eisteddfod!



29/05/2009
And this is where we ended up after the Eisteddfod! I burnt my nose that day.



26/06/2009
No, they are not playing spot the ball, this was a photo for a tender, can you guess what for?



10/10/2009
Andrew planning out where the light switches should go on some display board we were designing for Wyeverne Electrical



17/11/2009
A little workshop for the branding and food packaging for a new client



12/01/2009
A workshop for the re-branding of Menter a Busnes

I'm sure there are more photographs around, hopefully i can track them down and update this.

Lost the plot

I can't revel what job Julian was working on as it's still to go into production, but this sums his day up. I think this was taken after he had been sitting there for about 5 hours cutting and gluing mock ups for our client to take to a focus group.

Piqué?

I'm not sure if this is technically a Piqué, but, today i was trying to photograph a pull up banner we have produced for Rubicon Dance in Cardiff. Seeing the banner inspired Julian to pull a move...

The missing one

The final one now onto some other details.

Work in Progress

One missing but nearly there...

Belated birthday to Hoffi

We are four.

New Welsh Blog launches

As many of you know Hoffi setup a website some years ago called Naked Wales. The website aimed to be a hub for people in the creative industry to write articles, share examples of things they love. Post job opportunities and place their own directory listings. Over the years NakedWales published it's own magazine and also arranged a number of events centered around bringing people in the industry together. While never earning any money from it. We enjoyed the conversations and people we met through the whole process. There was one issue however regarding the site, and while it seems to not be a huge thing it is when you are trying to get in contact with the right people. The main issue with it was the name. With ever increasing complex spam filters. Our email's never got through to many of our potential sponsors or people who had signed up to be kept informed.

After many months of work we (more Andrew @Andrew_Hoffi), has been working on a new venture which hopefully means we will get our emails to everyone, and we may (fingers crossed) be able to get a bit of funding to launch a sustainable (if it can ever be) range of events. Which will grow a strong community to improve awareness of the creative industries. I am sure Andrew will write a bit more on this later but for now please see what you think. The new site is found here

Hoffi gang explore the climbing world

We managed to get to Boulders Climbing Centre last night and Carwyn and Andrew experienced their first climb. We didn't get too many shots as I was concentrating on keeping people alive but here is one of Carwyn showing us how to do it.

Community and cadbury's

Source: star1950's

Many people have written and spoken about the recent take over of Cadbury's by KRAFT. For us at Hoffi it has brought something really interesting to light, and backs up thinking that we have been trying to implement recently either personally, with clients and/or internally within Hoffi. As Chris Riley comments in Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility. Businesses/Brands were originally set up to answer a problem and not ultimately make millions of pounds. In the same way John Cadbury setup Cadbury's to move people away from the dangers of drinking Gin. As the business grew this social responsibility moved on to building a community for it's workers which became known as Bournville, which included homes, parks and sports fields (no pubs).

The investment in the community we employee seems to be separated in todays society, more bolt on's. I personally hope to bring community to the fore of most of our jobs in the future. Times are tough and it is easy to avoid this and not invest, however I feel there is almost a 'karma in business', that needs to be really utilised in successful future businesses and brands.

Sneak preview Photo shoot

The snow has gone and people have slowly been getting back to work. This week we have been on a photo shoot now for the last three days. The photo's are fantastic and the project is really coming together, only a few more things to do now and we should be able to show you a bit more work publicly, but for now you will just have to have this teaser. We have been working with some great people on the project from our client themselves right through to our food stylist Howell Foods and photographer Phil Boorman.

Calling Action script developers

We are looking for an exceptional person to help us out for a few months. See below for further details:

Job title
Senior Actionscript Developer

Length of contract
2 3 Months

Purpose of the role
You will take a lead role in the development of Flash based web applications
using Actionscript 3, working in a small but efficient team of designers and
web developers based in Cardiff Bay. You will have the knowledge and
expertise to produce simple flash based solutions from complex requirements,
combined good communication skills and have the ability to relay information clearly
to both fellow team members and clients where required.

Key requirements
- A minimum of 3 years working experience of Flash Actionscript with
advanced skills in AS3 is essential.
- Experience of Integrating Flash with server side technologies, XML, PHP,
progressive and streaming flash video.
- A good knowledge of current web trends and developments.
- Good communication skills.

Desired requirements
- Experience with the Google Maps Flash API.

Qualifications
- A relevant degree would be advantageous, but not essential.

Contact us on shwmai@hoffi.com
Quoting Ref: Action01/10

Menter a Busnes - Rebrand

We are delighted to announce that we are going to be working with Menter a Busnes on their re-branding. At the moment we are working on their positioning and strategy. We will keep you informed over the next few months how the project is evolving, it will all be ready for their 21st birthday.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone. Hope you all had a great holiday period. We will be putting a few new case studies on the website over the next month or so. So keep coming back to see what we have been up to.

Christmas - Secret Santa

Today we did our Secret Santa's. I think everyone was suitably impressed with their gifts.

Hoffi last day in 2009

Our last day this year will be on the Friday 18th December and we will be coming back on the 4th of January. It's been a really challenging year for us, but one that we have been fortunate to be involved in some great projects. We have launched a number of new brands through our strategy and identity services. Also digitally we have managed to design and build a number of websites that have been hugely successful in terms of traffic and also through the development of technology involved. 2010 is going to be a big year for Hoffi as we already have a number of projects that are set to start as soon as we get back. We have also got a number of other ventures that we will all be working on over the next year.

Wyeverne Electrical advertisement

It's been a long week but we finally managed to get some shots of some branding and advertising for Wyeverne Electrical. We used a shop front on North Road, Cardiff to advertise the flagship store in Roath, Cardiff. Not 100% finished yet but getting there.

Eco Network event - Central Library

I went with Elin to the third Eco Network event at Cardiff Central Library, yesterday. The event is an ongoing project by Ecodesign Centre, the design community and the Welsh Assembly Government with the ultimate goal of moving towards sustainability in the future. This event was based around a workshop facilitated by Ed Gillespie from Futerra.

Hoffi and National Theatre Wales website get a bit of press

We were delighted to be told that we are on Creative Review's blog with a great article about the design of National Theatre Wales website this week. We also got a write up on creative match and we have just published a case study on drupal to get feedback on the technical aspects of the project.

Chapter Launch

Me and Carwyn managed to get out to the re-launch of Chapter Arts Centre last night. It was absolutely packed and as ever a great place to people watch. There were a number of performances both dance and music and the traditional speeches. We also had some free cup cakes which were been handed around by one of our clients soft spot. Although the Centre has been open for a number of weeks before the launch the feeling was a real celebration atmosphere and to be honest it seems like they are going to need to make it even bigger as it seems to be getting more and more popular.

Cardiff University Sustainability week

It's nearing the end of Cardiff Universities first sustainability week. At Hoffi we were approached to produce the Online quiz for the weeks events. As someone who is interested in the issues of sustainability I also managed to get to the debate 'eating our way to sustainability'. The event was well attended with some very high profile people on the debating panel. Consisting; Jane Davidson, Minister for the Environment, Sustainability & Housing, Steve Garrett, Chair of Riverside Community Market Association and Dr Pam Robinson, School of Social Sciences to name a few. It was set up in a Question Time style but as with Question Time we seemed to run out of time very quickly, just as it was getting interesting.

The event itself was good, but I think the thing I took most out of it, was a comment from Steve Garrett, when talking about Social Enterprises. He spoke very passionately about how these enterprises have to make money so they are sustainable. Rather than relying on funding, they have to be commercially viable schemes above all else otherwise they shouldn't be done. This reinforced my recent thoughts on work I have been working on with ARK and something I am glad people are beginning to accept and openly talk about rather than being vague about the commercial nature of the projects.