What we got up to in October

October – when Facebook went Meta, Adobe unveiled new tech to strike someone else’s pose, and we learned that concrete can, in fact, grow. 

It’s also been a big month for us here at Blue Stag…

Welcoming a new member of the herd

This month, we welcomed Jake Neale to the herd as our new Graphic and Motion Designer.

Jake recently graduated from Cardiff Metropolitan University with a First Class Honours degree in Graphic Communication. He’s a talented guy with a broad set of interests. He’s got great creative ideas, and knows how to apply them to help our clients achieve their goals. We’re really excited to have him on board, and can’t wait to see what we can create together.

You can follow Jake on Instagram.

A new brand of international exchange

Welsh Government’s new international learning exchange programme will look to fill the hole left by Britain’s exit from Erasmus+. The scheme will allow people to live, learn and work abroad, on a reciprocal basis with our international partners. It will seek to engage people from disadvantaged backgrounds, who may have felt unable to access similar initiatives in the past.

International exchange opens up opportunities for learning and living that can change the course of people’s lives. So we were delighted to be chosen to create a brand and website for the programme. Our first task is to build a proper understanding of our audiences and how best to communicate the value of the programme to them. More in the next round-up!

Sharing social creativity

Large-scale creative campaigns increasingly rely on partnership working, between teams, agencies and sectors. This brings a number of benefits, but also has its challenges. One of these is how to ensure creative consistency and quality across the campaign, while allowing each partner to customise assets for their own needs.

This has cropped up in several recent projects. Many of the existing solutions simply don’t have the right balance of control and flexibility, particularly in the context of bilingual campaigns.

So we built our own. Brandbag allows partners to access and customise creative templates for a variety of formats and materials with no need for any graphic design expertise, and it works in more than one language. We think it strikes the right balance between customisation and creative integrity, allowing campaign owners to quickly and simply distribute materials with peace of mind.

This month we’ve launched the product for Keep Wales Tidy.

We’re pretty excited about the potential of the platform, and can’t wait to develop it further over the coming months.

A melting metaphor for the climate

October saw Climate Cymru achieve its goal of gathering 10,000 messages from all over Wales to send to the crucial COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.

True to our word, we took those voices to the steps of the Senedd in the form of a heart-shaped ice sculpture. As the ice melted before our eyes, on an unseasonably warm October day, politicians from each of Wales’ three largest parties spoke of the strength of their commitment to meet the challenge laid down by the people.

What happens in Glasgow will go a long way to deciding whether or not we can meaningfully halt the progress of the climate emergency before it’s too late.

Celebrating kinship families

October 4 saw the beginning of Kinship Care Week, raising awareness of the incredible role kinship carers play in children’s lives and in society and celebrating their stories of love, friendship and support.

Kinship carers are those who take on the task of looking after children full-time when their parents can’t. Around half of kinship carers are grandparents, but aunts, uncles, older siblings, family friends and neighbours can all be kinship carers too.

There are around 200,000 children in the UK living in kinship care, and the fabulous charity Kinship is working to ensure they get the support and recognition they deserve.

For Kinship Care Week, we worked with them to create a digital campaign and microsite, allowing kinship carers to share their stories. We were inspired by the strength, commitment and love of those who got involved. It was a privilege to be a part of it.

A natural home for natural burials

Organising a funeral for someone we were close to should be an intensely personal and meaningful experience. But traditional funerals can sometimes feel rushed and somehow empty, leaving us numb and unfulfilled in our desire to say a proper goodbye.

Leedam Natural Burials – family business to our very own Rhi Leedam – offer a sustainable alternative. Their beautiful, rugged, natural burial grounds provide places of peace and wellbeing – unspoilt landscapes, free from clutter, with nothing to jar or disturb the eye.

Their new website tells the stories of these special places and offers reassurance and simplicity for people in search of a natural resting place.

Furnishing the offices of the future

As we emerge from the pandemic with new ways of working, our office spaces will need to be as flexible as we are. Innovative furniture brand Bisley worked with classic British lighting brand Anglepoise to create a solution ready for the new working world.

Their Quarters product is designed to provide a haven away from the hustle and bustle of a busy workplace, providing a private place to take a call, a secluded spot for focussed work, or a comfortable space for creative collaboration. Offered in a range of shapes, sizes and configurations, Quarters offer a simple way to create a dynamic and multifunctional space from scratch.

We worked with Bisley to create an interactive digital brochure showcasing the benefits of their solution and allowing the reader to explore its features in more detail.