We’re always interested in working out how to help people talk about products, services and ideas we care about. Carbon Brilliant (or maybe just Brilliant?) is a little idea we had. It’s really just another carbon offsetting service. The major difference is that we invented this one (although it’ll probably never actually see the light of day). It’s a little bit viral too.

Here’s how it works:

Someone pays Brilliant either £20, £30 or £40 (depending on the size of their car) and Brilliant offsets their emissions. In return, they get a sticker to put on their car windscreen that tells the world that they’ve offset their emissions for the whole year. (Based on the Road Tax Vignette principle).

The sticker scheme works because it’s a mark of pride. It shows that the user cares, but it isn’t just about bragging; it’s a way to share the idea, spread the meme and support the cause. It’s a social object that’s inherently viral - you can see whole groups of friends picking the idea up and running with it.

Oh, and the message, call to action and pricing are all super-simple. That’s important.

We’ve written before about working for Dunadry Hotel; an idiosyncratic, strangely beautiful place with history coming out its ears. Until recently, Dunadry Hotel had always been talking about itself as if it’s just another off-the-shelf hotel (sorry Hilton, Radisson etc). Over the last year, we’ve been helping shape their message. We summed it up like this:

A place of shared stories; old and new, rich and beautiful.

The Dunadry is (and always has been) all about stories. Their staff are some of the most helpful, friendly people we know and just about every nook and cranny in the place has a story attached to it.

We commissioned photographer Gordon Ashbridge to take a look around for us, and we’re really quite pleased with what he came up with. Here are a couple of his shots:

I’m not sure if this is universal, but most car parks (parking lots) here in sunny Northern Ireland work a bit like this…

1. Drive up to the ticket machine/person
2. Press a button (or talk to a person)
3. Receive a card/ticket
4. Drive to your parking space

So… if we were designing the most remarkable car park in the world, it would have to have Flavo(u)red Parking Cards.

I think the folks at Moto might be able to help (more here).

Our terribly clever friends at Concentrate now have their wonderful Fruit-Friendly Food for Thought Lunchbox (pictured), Bottlecoolerpenholder, Chairpadbookbag and Lunchbox Coolerbag stocked at John Lewis.

Read about why these products are so clever on Concentrate’s site then go and buy them all!

Belfast’s legendary Linen Hall Library asked us to do their Summer Events Guide, so we thought we’ve have some fun with it. We’re big fans of the library, and we tried to incorporate a feel for this marvelous place with lovely vintage summery illustrations that captured the sentiment of the booklet.

We’re not fond of blowing our own trumpet, so we’ll let the library’s Director of Arts and Cultural Programming, Hugh Odling-Smee, do it for us.

“...our best looking events guide thus far. I really like the way you took what was a fairly loose concept and delivered a cogent and aesthetically beautiful document that dovetailed nicely with the needs of the users. There is a particular finesse in Atto’s work that I haven’t seen in other designers, lifting it from the usual design that we see in the arts in Belfast.”

Aww. Thanks hugh.

Congratulations to our Image Consultant friends over at Cleland McKnight on winning the NTCM Small Business of the Year Award. We’re particularly chuffed that the panel commended them for their creative marketing approach.

We’ve been involved with Cleland McKnight since day one; helping frame their message, build their brand and design their web site and print material. They’re a true anomaly in their market; genuine, honest, ethical people who want to have a positive effect with what they do. We wish them every success as they continue to grow.

We just got this back from the printer’s, all delicious and copper foil-y. It’s one of the first bits of printed work for our brand re-think for Dunadry Hotel.

For the last few weeks, we've been working on a walk-up animation for Invest NI's Innovation Week. Commissioned by our friends over at AV Browne, they took care of the design, voiceover and the lion's share of the storyboarding, so really we were just making it move a bit for them.

Oh, and we did the animation last year too.

The 2007 Animation is here (Careful now: It's 101mb. You'll need Quicktime 7)

and last year(2006)'s offering is down here (Careful now: It's 90mb. You'll need Quicktime 7 for this one too.)

We had the lovely (and ever-thoughtful) Rachael Gardiner in for work experience with us over the past couple of weeks.

We knew she had a great whimsical illustration style (she wooed us with a beautiful, hand bound cv/portfolio) so we chained her to the desk and made her churn out some gorgeous, quirky designs for potential Henry Pancake wedding stationery. She fitted in to our wee team very well and we know she’ll do fantastically well in her final year in Leeds. Keep an eye out for her work ...

We had a lock in day for a new brand job on Friday and we ended up working until just after 2am. There was office swimming, face painting and several bouts of uncontrollable laughter as we tried to stay awake and get things done.

As with all of these things, it wasn’t much fun at the time, but we look back on it with fondness already. The only thing remarkable about this is that it’s remarkable i.e. we don’t do it nearly as much as we used to; we’re getting old.

It looks like all the cool kids are doing it these days (ok, years), so we decided to start a blog and see if it takes. 2 main reasons:

1. We’re always super-busy and never ever (ever) get around to updating our own web site, whereas it takes 2 minutes to write a post.
2. It’s a good way of communicating our company’s soul without gushing to much.