July 2010
It's great to be a graphic design company in Oxford. It's hard to imagine a place so buzzing with creativity in the arts and so chock-full of inspiration, both ancient and modern.

Lately, whilst continuing our traditional core of graphic design and print, we've focused heavily on web design, loving the way one project is an instant ad for the next. Our recent web design and CMS for Oxford University's Rothermere American Institute led straight to a new commission for the British Association for American Studies, which is in production now.

RAI staff said, "Thank you for the site, which looks most impressive." and "Brilliant, the site looks great and is very easy to use."

If you're not making money from your website, increasing your sales or attracting new business, call us now to see how we can help you do all that and more.

Why not sign up for Hidden Assets, the course specifically designed to show business owners how to get everything you can from what you already have.

The 2 day workshop runs over two consecutive Tuesdays - 21st April and 28th April 2009 and is run by our sister company Clear & Creative People

Oct 2007
The students are back. The Oxford streets, so quiet and peaceful during the 'summer' (only very rich tourists are coping with the price of Sterling) are once again thronged with earnest young minds piloting dodgy old bicycles.

And we've been busy working on their behalf. Next week the new Enterprise Insight booklet "Let Your Ideas Blossom" will be out, encouraging girls to start their own businesses. It's packed with positive role models and well-known celebs. Alex from EI said, "Fabulous! We think it looks great. We even felt inspired ourselves!"

Last month saw the launch of "Ultrapreneur - The Real Life Money Game", the brain-child of C&C co-founder Julie Gregory and creative thinking guru Ayd Instone. The game teaches the principles of business to students, encouraging them to find creative ways to make money.

Right - we're off to buy some cheap Northern Rock shares...

Apr 2007
We love Dragon's Den and The Apprentice. Hardly a surprise then that, when invited by Queen Mary University, London to be a judge at their Enterpreneurship Industry Day, C&C founder and Creative Director Simon Gregory was on the London train faster than you can say "You're fired!"

Twelve groups of students pitched their business ideas to the panel of bankers, lawyers and creatives. Some of then were so convincing we were almost ready to get our cheque books out.

It's good to see that some of the skills required to start a successful company are being taught in Universities, especially since next month we start work on a new campaign for Enterprise Insight to encourage students to form start-ups while they're still studying.

Meanwhile, Simon has no immediate plans to buy Tottenham Hotspur...

Jan 2007
A good time for looking back and looking forward (although too much of it can make you a bit dizzy).

Last year saw an increase in the trend towards user-generated content on the web, with MySpace and Bebo grabbing headlines with both fists. Simon and Matt spent much of the summer developing spiraluniverse, our first full social networking site. In the movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner is told 'If you build it, they will come'. Well, not on the internet, Kev - not without some decent marketing. We're pleased to report that the campaign is working, and a steady stream of virtual tenants are moving in.

While there's surely much to look forward to in 2007, we're entirely distracted by (ie drooling over) Apple's new iPhone - sadly not available here until autumn. That summer trip to New York is looking more likely all the time...

July 3rd 2006
We move into our swanky new studio without breaking anything, and wonder how we accumulated so much junk.

It's the end of an era for Clear & Creative. Since 1995 we've been supporting the work of Viva Network, and since 2001 we've shared office space with them. This relationship has been well beyond a client/agency one from the start, and we've been privileged to see Viva grow from a guy with an audacious idea into an international organisation helping millions of disadvantaged kids.

Next month they too move into their new premises, so we'll need to walk a little further to pick up our next brief. Meanwhile, take a look at their website to see how you can support their excellent work.

June 1st 2006
It's the month of hope at C&C. We hope Sven's men can finally put paid to forty years of hurt and make us proud (apologies to the non-English - may your team do as well as possible without winning). We hope fine weather will prevail. We hope our move next month will go smoothly. We've given up hoping with regards to tennis... oh, what the heck, "come on Tim!"...

April 12th 2006
Standing on the top of an Alp, with France to one side and Switzerland to the other, we fell to musing that business and pleasure don't have to be mutually exclusive. Now, for those of us who enjoy our day-job that's hardly a revelation, but finding ourselves in a ski party that included staff, clients, partners, friends and family, we realised that we were actually living our ethic: that business should be fun.

We enjoyed building the Ski Degrees website. They enjoy the increased bookings it brings them. We all had a great time skiing and snowboarding, and hanging out together led to new ideas for a summer alpine holiday company.

OK - not every project's as much fun as this, but you get the idea. We're currently looking for clients in the motorsports sector...

March 1st 2006
Well, the new site's finally up, and to prove it, you're reading it. We're chuffed to bits with its clean new vibe, and hope you like it too. Let us know what you think - we love a bit of evaluation.

Speaking of which, we have high hopes for the info-gathering campaign we just delivered for The Centre in Enfield. They wanted to survey their clients and gauge the effects of their programme on drug misuse and crime. We believe we've asked the right questions, and that presenting the questionnaire as a 'win an iPod' competition was the right strategy. Well, we'll find out next month, when we mine the data and hand over the goodies!

Feb 10th 2006
Still feeling inspired by listening to New Media Age editor Michael Nutley hold forth on winning PR strategies at last night's Creative Herts gathering. We expected him to be good, so I recorded the talk, using my funky new iTalk attachment plugged into my trusty old iPod.

Oh, how my creative contemporaries cooed over my cool gadgetry. Oh, how I blushed this morning when I realised I'd accidentally deleted it!

Human error: 1, technology: 0