We were thrilled to hear that one our our clients, Organics for Kids, recently won “Best Organic Textile Product” in the 2011 Natural and Organic Awards. Hosted in association with the Soil Association and Natural Products Magazine, the Natural & Organic Awards, over the last fifteen years, have become a benchmark for excellence and set a standard for innovation, quality and commitment in the natural and organic sector.

Well done Jane, Diana and the rest of the team at Organics for Kids.

Tuesday 26 April – first day as Account Manager at Mzuri Design. 

7am – feel very pleased with myself as I get dressed into outfit I laid out the night before!!  Wonder how long this level of super-organisation will last!

8am – set off on journey to office…  I think I remember the way?!?  Made it! I did remember the way – yay!!

9am – am introduced to new colleagues. Must remember all these new names;  luckily there’s only 8 new names to remember, but hey, 8  is more than 1!

11am – head is spinning with bucketsful of information poured into me – lists of clients, updating blogs, email marketing, social media management (need I go on?) -  is it time for elevenses??

12.30pm – All this excitement is making me hungry. Time to delve into my brand new lunch box presented to me by lovely husband. Yum, yum – ready to get back to it again.

3pm – just finished writing a press release for one of our clients – feels great to be productive.  Bring on the next one!!

5.30pm – feeling tired but exhilarated by my first day. My new colleagues are FAB and am thrilled to be part of the team. I’m really looking forward to doing it all over again tomorrow!

I’m having a bit of a technology dilemma - do I stick with my Blackberry (or Crackberry as they are quite rightly referred to on account of their addictiveness) or do I flip over to the dark side and get an iPhone? I have to say that I’ve been frustrated with my Blackberry recently and particularly it’s slow browsing and the apps just aren’t as good (in my humble opinion). Any thoughts very welcome.

We’ve also been debating the relative merits of more traditional portfolio routes that lots of clients still like to see when we’re out and about at meetings, against the obvious benefits of a little communal iPad in the Mzuri offices for whizzier presentations when we’re not in our super dooper meeting room at the office. You can tell that women outnumber men in our office as the discussion about the business benefits was followed shortly by the fact that we’d have to ‘protect’ the new iPad arrival with the super sleek Sara iPad case from our lovely clients Orelia http://www.orelia.co.uk/jewellery-detail.php?Sara-iPad-Case-451. Any excuse for feeding our accessories shopping habit in this place!

The Sara iPad Case from Orelia

When meeting up with my family for afternoon tea to celebrate my birthday recently, my sister squealed with delight when presenting me with a rather sexy looking box of cupcakes! The delicious cupcakes were from the latest venture from designer Patrick Cox – Cox Cookies and Cake in Soho.

This is no ordinary, ho-hum, run of the mill cupcakery. In fact, Cox has taken the idea of a wholesome cupcakery and turned it on its head. The packaging is black, oozing luxury and fun. There’s the use of neon – in the shop, on the packaging and they’ve even given the Facebook and Twitter logos on their website the ‘Cox’ touch. The staff uniforms also tie in with the fabulous brand they have created – Cox says himself on his website “Cox being a designer, special attention has been paid to the staff’s attire – they wear studded black leather aprons and black jeans. This is anything but your girly, Notting Hill cup-cake shop.”

What’s so clever about the branding is that he has taken the same core product – the cupcake (which are absolutely delicious by the way) and given it and its surroundings a whole fresh new look. Breaking the mould of what you’d normally expect a cupcakery to look like. 

The cakes and cookies, as you would expect, are of a really high quality that you would expect from such a well established brand. Eric Lanlard is the master patissier - he apparently already has a reputation for breaking the mould in baking and creating some inspirational stuff, particularly for A-list celebrities, so it would seem it was a natural paring.

It goes without saying that even the cupcakes are given a bit of a makeover – ‘Bling Cake’ is a raspberry cake with a juicy raspberry compote centre, decorated with pink icing and sparkling sugar ‘diamonds’, the ‘Kiss Cake’ is a vanilla cake with a delicious blueberry compote centre, vanilla frosting decorated with white chocolate pouting lips, and the ‘Pop Cake’ is a vanilla cake with an oozy blueberry compote centre, vanilla frosting topped with a delicious white chocolate homage to Warhol’s Marilyn.

Check things out for yourself at www.coxcookiesandcake.com or follow them on Twitter. And if you’re in Soho why not pop in and taste for yourself – I can recommend the Kiss Cake and the Triple Valrhona Chocolate Chip Cake. Delish!

Just a quickie, and you’ll probably think I have gone soft, but I think this advertisement is possibly one of the cutest ever.  Let me know whether you agree!

http://www.thecoolhunter.net/article/detail/1868/volkswagen%3a-the-force

p.s. Cute it may be, but do you remember what it is selling?

We’re currently preparing for the forthcoming – temporary – departure of Kate on maternity leave at the end of March. Part of this of course is interviewing candidates who will be aiming to step in to her (supremely capable) shoes while she’s away. We’ve received some really interesting applications and are excited to see where they lead. 

Recruiting usually brings out the reflective side of me! It really is a time to look at your business, understand where you’ve come from, what you do and where you want to be. And in preparing for the interviews and reviewing the applications, it strikes me now more than ever that the growth of Mzuri has, of course, been down to our lovely clients but fundamentally has been down to our fantastic team.

I started my own maternity leave at the end of September last year (I know, there is apparently something in the water at Mzuri!). After an inital feeling of being a fish out of water (I have been at the helm for 6 years and am a bit of a self-confessed workaholic to boot), I relaxed, safe in the knowledge that we have a fabulous, capable, energetic team who are just as passionate about Mzuri and our clients as I am. Kate has very ably stepped in to various elements of my role, as well as taking on some of my clients on top of her already large list. Zoe has taken over the lions share of the clients that I managed and they love her. So much so, that I’m happy to say that Zoe has now joined the team on a permanent basis. Emma has happily taken on a broader responsibility for the day to day financial management of the business that I was more involved with before I left in September. Phil, Lara and Paul of course have all been brilliant too. So I really do have to say thanks to all of them for doing such a fabulous job.

Team work often comes up at interview, as one of the questions we get asked is ‘how we work’. And my feeling is that our work at Mzuri is very much a ‘team effort’ – we love sharing ideas, running things past each other, drawing on each others experience and helping each other out. We all get a buzz out of achieving great things for our clients and a passion for exceeding expectations. We don’t stand on titles – everyone’s thoughts and ideas count.

In interviewing for the new account manager position, it is clear in my mind that not only will the successful candidate have to have great marketing knowledge, buckets of experience and effective project management skills, but that they will need to be the right ‘fit’. For Mzuri, for our team, for our clients.

I look forward to introducing you to the new person very soon! Watch this space.

Every company will have print requirements at one stage or another, whether a simple business card or a complex brochure or mailer. We like nothing more than to flex our creative muscles at Mzuri and the process doesn’t stop at the design. We spend a lot of time pouring over fabulous print finishes and added touches for inspiration. There are a wealth of printing techniques that can give your print the extra wow factor. So, in addition to the straightforward litho and digital printing methods, here are a few examples to whet your appetite:

EMBOSSING – with the use of a metal plate, your design is embossed (or debossed) on to the paper or other material, such as leather. Not only does it look slick, the texture adds an extra layer of interest and exudes quality.

LASER – Ok, not really ‘print’ as such, but a way of bringing a creative idea to life nevertheless. Using metal, wood or glass as a base material, your design can be burned into life! There is no colour involved in this process – the design is basically engraved, the ‘colour’ is achieved by revealing a sub-layer of the material.

SCREEN-PRINTING – With this method, the final design is placed on gauze, which has a light sensitive layer. The gauze is then exposed to UV light, the ink is pressed through the gauze and hey presto, the image is printed on to the material. This method is highly popular for printing on to fabrics (a method used by our client Nikki Szabo for instance to create their wonderful fabrics).

EMBROIDERY – If it can’t be printed on the article you had in mind, or you just wanted a different type of finish for showing off your logo on a t-shirt or towel or canvas bag, consider embroidery. No explanation required really, but the more stitches and colours generally the greater the cost.

DOMING – this is a technique that creates a 3D finish on a 2D surface. This is achieved by using a resin layer on a sticker, on top of an image not only to add height and texture, but it also has the added benefit of protecting the image both from scratches and from fading due to light exposure.

While not an exhaustive list of all the fab alternative techniques for bringing items to life, we hope this has provided a little inspiration!

We do try to practice what we preach, although like our clients it is always a matter of making the time for marketing. So a task in hand at the moment is updating the design of our e-newsletter. The team are hard at work putting the final touches to the new design and content, and the first edition of the new-style newsletter will be winging its way into our subscribers inboxes soon.

Before we send it out, there has been some discussion recently as to whether or not we need to give it a name, other than plain old ‘newsletter’.

We’ve decided to run an internal competition to see which of the team can come up with the best name. We’ve started to get ‘entries’ (its amazing how enthusiastic they’ve all been, perhaps motivated by the prize for the winning name  - wine!!).

Not that we’re not open to ideas from outside the team, so if you have a lightbulb moment and want to send in some suggestions, just email us on info@mzuridesign.co.uk and a bottle of wine could be making its way to you if you come up with the best name.

If you’re intrigued and aren’t already signed up to our e-newsletter, why not sign up here

I’m looking forward to a trip to the cinema to see The Ghost Writer. Partly because I have a slight crush on Ewan McGregor, and then there’s the impressive reviews it has received (according to Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian ‘Roman Polanski’s deft take on Robert Harris’s political thriller is the director’s most purely enjoyable film for years’), and also the parallels to recent British politics that it is associated with and will be quite amusing to watch.

What is also interesting is how ‘ghost writing’ is becoming a more central part of our role with helping clients manage the implementation of their marketing. (more…)