Doodle days

Still doodling :)

Quite enjoying doodling the main theme of the day. One thing I have noticed is that Sunday's theme tends to be food related!!! Especially as we get closer to Christmas!!!

This week in doodles…

Monday - lots of bits to do which were all over the place
Tuesday - lists, lots of lists
Wednesday - paper culling
Thursday - time is flying
Friday - it's what Friday's are always about… Wine O Clock
Saturday - went on a bit of a housing hunting mission and found a loooooovely one
Sunday - a bit of a pre-christmas party at mum and dads - always yummy food and wine ;)

So, what's your week been like…

Carry On Doodling

I've been carrying on the #doodleaday which I'm quite pleased with myself for doing - I get bored/distracted VERY easily! Some of the doodles aren't anything amazing, but it's just the process of illustrating the general activity of the day…

This week…

Monday was all about decorating the office.
Tuesday I'd had too much coffee!!!
Wednesday was Lisa's birthday, so lots of cake that day.
Thursday there was a lot of Christmas sing-a-long going on.
Friday I was trying to feel inspired!!!!
Saturday - cleaning, in preparation for putting up Christmas decs.
Sunday we had the first turkey dinner of the month :) Yummmmmmm

Doodle Week

At the beginning of the week I embarked upon a Doodle a Day challenge, I thought rather than keep putting the doodles up on here every day I'd put all the doodles together at the end of the week.

I have been doing a doodle a day though - honest!! You can see the doodles on twitter, I did post them... @pikadoodles

Monday - Cold and tired = Coffee
Tuesday - Thoughts turned to having a stall at next Spring Handmade Nation fair
Wednesday - Lots of phone calls
Thursday - Lots of questions
Friday - Rushing around like a loon
Saturday - Rugby World Cup Final day - NZ v Aussies
Sunday - Long drive back to Warrington (5 hours!) tired eyes!
Today - All about Christmas decorating

A Doodle A Day...

Just because I like to give myself a challenge, and even more stuff to do, I thought I'd start A Doodle A Day #doodleaday

The doodles have to be a theme of the day, so the very first one I've done is the theme of "Cold" (because it's 0 degrees today!) and what more do you need on a cold day other than a lovely warm mug of coffee...

It would be great if you all wanted to join in on Twitter, I'm just going to be doing the hashtag #doodleaday

I'm not doing full on amazing drawings - just doodles.

The definition of Doodle:
1. To scribble or draw aimlessly.
2. A figure, design or scribble drawn or written absent-mindedly.

Doodles away :)

Present List

It's freebie list time!!!

I thought, as it's nearly Christmas - eek!! I'd do a Christmas prezzie list. Although, judging by some people's tweets, quite a lot of you have already got your presents sorted!!

Anyway, for those not as organised, like me, this is a list I use when I've got lots of prezzies to buy. Christmas being one time of the year and the month of May being another!! It just gives me a bit of creative license to think about what to get for someone if money was no object, then from that it creates all sorts of ideas of alternative presents...

CHOOSE & WIN

In the run up to Christmas a big mug of hot chocolate is what's required (that and a cheeky rioja!!) - but what to drink it in...

Well, we've come up with a couple of designs that will be manufactured onto lovely "hug-mugs" - mugs you can wrap your hands around and keep you warm (unless you've finished the bottle of rioja and are quite warm from the alcohol!)

However, there's just one more step to choose the design...

YOU get to make the choice and once the design has been chosen, a winner will be picked at random from the social media hat and receive one of the mugs in time for Christmas...

What could be better (except for that bottle of rioja!!)

These are the choices...

All you have to do is like the Pikadoodles page on Facebook here and let us know which you prefer... simples!!

Or leave your comments below...

Competition finishes on Monday 4th November :)

Change is good..

This month's freebie download is all about changing things.

The seasons are changing and the time is changing (don't forget to put your clocks back on Saturday night/Sunday morning)!

I've been reading a book about time management and changing things in your life to manage time a lot better. It gave me the idea for this list.

I love a good list!!

It's looking at the things that you REALLY want, and what you have to change to get it. So if I REALLY want to have all my products ready in time for the various Christmas markets I need to make the change of sitting watching Luther or Blue Bloods back-to-back!! As great a series as they are, it's not helping me manage my time!!!

There is a bigger version on the website here

Freebie Weekly Planner

Ok, so it's been a ridiculously long time since I last blogged, but I have been busy - not just making cake and drinking tea - honest!!

I finally set up the website... www.pikadoodles.com

I've been doodling, cutting, pasting and printing - all of which will accumulate into some products for the various Christmas Fairs that I'll be doing in November and December.

One doodle that I've done is this Weekly Planner...

It's a pretty big file size, so feel free to download and use it :)

I'm working on next months freebie download already :)

Enjoy x

Lino-Prints...

It takes quite a bit of patience to cut out lino, but I absolutely love it, and can easily lose an entire day cutting away.

The bit that I don't like is getting the print right. That bit takes nearly as long as the cutting.

How much ink to apply, how much pressure to apply...

That, I'm still working on, here's a couple of prints that are nearly right...

A cut above...

A new venture I've embarked upon (or should I say rediscovered) is lino-cutting, here's one of the lino-cuts I've been doing this month...

Based on a design I did for a friend who was moving house..


I have also been re-discovering doodling (lots of re-discovery going on here!!) and made these note books, which I might start using myself - as an obsessive notebook purchaser!!

Also, I have finally done something with my Lighthouse Keeper pattern that I did aaaaaages ago - I've turned it into a toiletries bin and a toiletries bag, and even though it's white it's still pristine...

Brand Values??

I was at a networking event recently and someone asked what it was that I did. When I said we were a design agency (giant plug... The Design Project NW) I could sense the confusion, so I then said that we specialised in branding... "oh, you mean like logos and stuff".

It occurred to me, whilst ranting on about valuing things (see previous posts), that quite a lot of people don't realise the value of a brand, to dismiss your brand as "logos and stuff" is almost like turning up to the royal garden party in your pants!

A brand is an image that evokes emotion with consumers - that's how important a brand is. Imagine getting that wrong, how many customers might walk past/ignore/throw business cards away because the branding is wrong or just totally confusing.

Remember when Coca-Cola did clear coke (many moons ago). It didn't last long did it?! The confusion between client, brand and what they were getting from the brand was just all wrong...
Brand said "Coca-cola", appearance said "lemonade" taste said "WTF".

If you get branding right and it creates the right emotion within prospective clients the possibilities are endless. The clients enjoy being a part of that brand (as well as your staff)!

A brand should reflect the company values and integrity. Even if you, personally, have no integrity whatsoever and your values are completely selfish, if the brand of your company reflects a value/integrity that the consumer can relate to it almost doesn't matter what you, as a person, stand for.

The consumer is looking to that brand for stability and confidence in the product/company. There will, however, come a time when you as a person may affect your company brand - just for being an @r$ehole, but that's a whole other blog post!!!

What is Value?!?

On being somewhat annoyed by the "I paid all that money and only got 1 logo" comment, I decided to have a look into why and how we put value on things?

Quite a lot of interesting things came up - not least someone suggesting money was "symbolic energy"!!! I don't know about you but I don't find money symbolic, or energetic!! Or is that just me??

The basic suggestion from a variety of blogs/forums etc was that things need to have value so we can trade them, which is why we put a value on something!

The part I found hardest to ascertain was the 'how' we put value on something.

For example, take 2 leather handbags, both made in Britain and finished to particular standards, one is £120 while the other is £540 -  (I'm not going to name names) the only difference is their logos.

So, this got me thinking - again... Branding, and the value of it?

A really fascinating article from The Guardian last year brings up this question for universities - who are relatively 'new' to the world of branding...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/apr/03/branding-universities

It raises the point of synergy in marketing and branding - a point that many people think irrelevant! What some people may also not realise is the productivity and pride that comes with a solid, distinctive brand. This in itself is worth hundreds of thousands!

People think they can design their own stationery, leaflets and brochures and they can market themselves, and to some extent they can. But to add that value to their company takes expertise - expertise that have been gleaned through years of education, learning and experience.

So, that's where the value is, but I'm still struggling with the how we value something.

It's a tough one - the problem is that great design looks effortless. Someone once told me that they'd created a full marketing strategy for a client, only to be told by the client "well I could have come up with that"!!! So why didn't they come up with the idea?!?

This is where the problem lies with valuing creativity.

I'm not saying everyone is like that - thankfully a lot of people aren't, and they realise the potential of creative input and the value it can bring to a project.

I wonder if I'm flogging a dead horse, trying to explain the value in creativity...

If someone doesn't see it in the first place, I don't think they ever will and that's such a shame - some people, I guess, see value as getting the most of something for next to nothing. It's a good job everyone isn't like that - Harrods, Selfridges and Harvey Nics would have gone bust years ago!

I'd love to hear other people's experience on being valued, or how they value something, such as creativity, ideas etc....

How Much?!?!?!?

Ok, so this blog post is for "nice stuff", but I really need to rant from time to time, and that time is now...

As well as doodling I also run The Design Project (NW) along with my other half Geoff. Because, clearly, I couldn't earn a living on my doodling!!

A person was heard moaning to someone that "I paid all that money and all I got was 1 logo". What they had clearly forgotten was the several variants of logo that were supplied. The brief was a very wide open one: "classic" and "expensive" - a case of the client not really knowing what he wanted, so the designs created were to assist in the filtering process. So this filtering process went on - not too long I hasten to add, it wasn't a nightmare client by any stretch.

So, what I'm ranting about is the fact that this person has "filtered" out all the behind the scenes work that goes into designing a logo. Not to mention coming up with the ideas in the first place, but also the years of experience in knowing how to bring it all together.

I'm probably also ranting about the way people under-value what designers actually do. It's one of those careers that people in general think is "easy" it's colouring in!!

A story I love is the guy that went to fix a boat...
He hammered a nail into the corner of the boat and then charged £1000 to fix it.
When the boat owner asked him how he could charge so much for just hammering a new nail in, the gentleman fixing it said "£1 for the nail and £999 for the experience and knowledge of knowing where to put the nail"

For a more comprehensive, and less ranting version of what you're actually paying
for check out these sites...

http://blog.steveperrycreative.com/hiring-a-designer/

http://www.matdolphin.com/blog/2012/01/25/how-lo-can-you-go/

New Ginger Nut Tree Book... Giant Tales

So, I thought I'd doodle an image for one of the other Ginger Nut Tree books (Frank Lampard has nothing on me!!!!!! Oh, apart from a hefty big contract, but hey!!)

One of the other books I did was about elves that look after a giant, and clean his house, clean him, and at night time clean his teeth!!

This doodle is from the part where they're cleaning his teeth...

Ginger Nut Tree Stories Continues...

Well, my 'January Resolution' is nearly up and I need to think of one for February - my plan was to make a new resolution to stick to each month, I figured it would be easier!!

So, this weeks blog I've done a doodle for The Ginger Nut Tree Stories, but it's for a part that's a bit further into the book. So it probably won't make any sense, but it was just the doodle that I had in my head at the time!

This part of the book, the little boy discovers a patch of grass that, at the stroke of midnight (it always has to be midnight!!), turns into a slide and takes him underground to a world of elves, fairies and, of course, SWEETS - I'm thinking Willy Wonka style :)

As January's resolution comes to a close, I'm thinking February's might be the same - to keep doodling
until I finish the book :)

Not quite there yet...

Ok, so , my resolution for January was to blog every week - by the skin of my teeth I've made the blog this week....

I've not managed to do much more doodling to go with the story of the book, but I've done fairies - fairies are always good in a book about a tree that grows ginger-nut biscuits and tells stories, don't you think...

I have to confess though, fairies are always my favourite characters.... the tooth fairy, the christmas fairy, the creme egg fairy (what do you mean you didn't have one of those)....

So, which one should be my creme egg fairy.... :)

And so it begins....

In my blog last week I mentioned a book that I was starting to doodle the pictures for, the words are written, I just need to make it come alive with images! So, this is my first attempt for page one - the beginning...

I realise this could be a very slow, painful process. I'm going to have to progress from just drawing ginger-nut trees, and get on with the characters that are to come - there's some elves in this story (there's always elves in stories with ginger-nut biscuit trees!!) Then there's a giant in the next book, and some more elves, so many elves, it's beginning to look a lot like The Hobbit!!

Anyway, hopefully I'll have some elves to show for next week.... no pressure then!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR....

Well, it's been a while since I last wittered on - the end of 2012 was quite manic, to be perfectly honest I think there was a time thief, as I'm not entirely sure where October, November and December went!!

October was full of birthdays, we moved house in November and spent the rest of November and December trying to find places for all the things we've acquired over the past several years!!

The decs on the tree have now come down, even though it only seems like 5 minutes ago since I was digging them out of the cupboard to put up!!

However, I have found time to doodle for a new set of books I'm working on...

The books are about a tree that grows ginger-nut biscuits - but only kids can get the biscuits. The tree also tells stories (as all trees in kids books do!!) but all the stories are made of rhyming couplets.

So that's this years mission - The Tales of the Ginger-Nut Tree!!

What's your mission this year?

:)