In 1982 Tim Waterstone was fired from WH Smiths and went onto establish a specialist chain of book Store’s named Waterstones. By 1989 WH Smith took shares in the new book chain and eventually bought the whole company by 1993. 5 years later Waterstones was sold onto the HMV Group who are still the parent company today.

Walking through town, Waterstones stands out against the crowd. A classy and traditional identity encompassing the very stereotype of what a bookshop is or at least used to be. Its not highly modern but it doesn’t have to be because it’s a stylish and prestigious brand dealing in products of the same nature. So what brought on the re-brand?

As HMV found CD & DVD’s sales decline due to MP3 and E-commerce they re-branded as an entertainment retailer rather then a music outlet. Books are now suffering from the same scenerio. Possibly the reasoning behind the re-brand was an attempt to shift into the future.

Out with the old and in with the new, the “W” has gone from an uppercase serif font to a lowercase sans-serif with much more dead space to create a cleaner and contemporary identity. The W itself is now so plain that it looses much of its character, becoming a little mundane. Is it a “W” or something else (looks like the HMV logo upside down). Likewise the typeface is neither here or there leaving it a little confused.

Its clean and simple making it recognisable and easy to use but also just a little generic. To overcome the monotony and extend the brand imagery they’ve done the opposite with marketing literature using various reworked versions of the logo to help add some spice to the brand.

Every business needs to keep ahead of the times but you just can’t help feel nostalgic towards books, bookshops and the Waterstones brand. Since the beginning of time words have been written as fact or fiction, entertainment or reference making them timeless works of text symbolising the very identity that Waterstones previously projected. However! Waterstones.com is a different environment where the logo fits much better.

The intentions behind the re-brand are understandable and the re-design was inevitable. The logo itself is nice but has it lost its soul? Conforming to the rest of the high street shops and now merely blending in with the crowd its become a trend based generic logo for the modern day. In doing so its lost its individuality and represents today’s fashion which will undoubtedly be old tomorrow.

Maybe its a premonition that Waterstones have made and decided to act on early, an attempt to lead the crowd rather then follow it in terms of booksales, a chance to capture a new youth into its target audience with a stronger online presence backed by highstreet shops but will it work. I imagine that people will generally warm to the design as time goes by but at the same time I see this as the first of many re-brands that Waterstones will undertake in the fourth coming years.

Overall its a good design with good intentions but not the best design for Waterstones.

A few months back Martin Astley from the Openblue Team wanted to pursue a new personal venture to coincide with the current Openblue offerings. Having successfully traded on the stock market for many years, they worked out a way to use their own experiences to educate others with Traders-edge.co.uk.

Traders-edge provide personalised training courses to anyone who has the want and will to learn about stock trading, backed up by mental coaching techniques to turn you into a disciplined and successful trader.

The brand and identity was to encompass the the stock market bull’s and bears but the logo itself was to be reflective of a forward thinking, successful but yet still friendly company. After hours of reasearch we found that the industry itself has very few but solid icons such as the line graph. Although it seemed like a common idea it was one which got the point across quickly and easily.

However! We weren’t ging to be typical about it, the logo had to be modern and advanced. After several ideas and revisions we developed a dynamic arrow using two gradients to symbolise both the line graph, fluctuations in teh stock market and the capable success of learning with the traders edge. Fitted with a suitable font it has slight warmth to it without being over friendly.


After establishing the logo we went onto design a great website with subscription and membership facilities as well as stationery, flyers and PDF book cover to promote the business.

Take a look for yourself at www.traders-edge.co.uk

UK owned and Tenerife based, Astliz Estate Agents needed a slight revamp to their marketing materials.  It was a case of capturing the Tenfrife life without being to typical but more improtantly it had to be professional.

We designed new business cards and E-Book covers.

At the beggining of the year Conceptstore were comissined by One Practice to handle the design of a corporate brochure for top London Porperty Investment firm Curzon.  By sourcing great images and narrowing down on the copy we create a 12page oversized A4 brochure for the company.

Following on we went on to design a huge corporate site encompassing a complete media section and an online flash presentation.  Check it out at http://www.curzoninvestmentproperty.com

No, this is not a tutorial for MS Word but a review on how to design a REAL invitation. Not just graphic design but taking it back to the ol skool and selecting paperstock, materials and binding processes. The type of invitation sent for a corporate event or wedding.

First step: NO boundaries.
An invite doesn’t have to be a single piece of card in fact that’s probably the most boring type of invite and to make sure you don’t do it you have to realise that there are no boundaries. Look for inspiration all around you.

A book cover, DVD case, CD cover, booklets, flyers, folders, envelopes etc. anything printed. Forget the design and print just look at the way it’s formed, cut and folded. Some have two folds, some have none, some are big some are small, some open like a book and some like curtains.

Step two: Paperstock

Search high and low for paperstock, you can get all sorts if you look properly. The thicker the card the better but keep in mind that thick card 300gsm+ won’t go through your average desktop printer, however 200gsm should do just fine.

Pick what you like, what looks nice but keep colours in mind, what goes together.

Step 3: Other bits

Pick up other bits of materials as well, ribbon, rivets, whatever you want.

Step 4: Sketch out a design. Where will cuts, folds, text go? How will it come together?

Step 5:Typography.
Look at fonts. Find one you like but more importantly one which fits the theme of the design. The invite itself has to create a mood and environment. The font will help to achieve that.

Step 6: Make it!

Printed on shimmering mauve pearlescent card and hand stitched to form a pocket envelope with three inner sheets of thick transulscent plastic.

Printed on a thinner pearlescent stock with a thick, textured, die cut peach stock laid on top. Stitched together to form a large landscape booklet and sealed with a sheer cream ribbon.

Produced with a thick, textured black stock with printed silver, shimmering transculscent stock on the inside and out. Bound with thick silver tassel ribbon.

All designed for Cupids Wedding Invitations.co.uk