Not complaining, can’t wait to get stuck into them, good chance keep our ‘hit rate’ up.

In a world full of more awards than anyone can ever name, or care about, the D&AD is still a byword for global creativity standards. If you’re are lucky enough to actually own a coveted ‘pencil’ then you have truly made your mark in the creative world.

Lately it has taken a little bit of a bashing from the graphic design community for being seen as elitist, expensive and exclusive, whatever your opinion, it still matters, and it still inspires. Take a look for yourself online, whilst I sit down with a cuppa, have a good browse through and aim my creative sights just that little bit higher.

Lots of images and a bit of blurb about the project will be up on the ‘Projects’ page very soon – when I can squeeze some time in the schedule – but here’s a sneek peak.

Part of Dandy’s philosophy is to give 1% of our turnover to a good cause, and as such we are part of the ‘1% For The Planet’ organisation (you may have seen the little logo on our webpage). We’ve been having a good look through the causes we can support - quite a choice, a few in the running, we’ll let you know who we decided to choose in the next few weeks. All clients should feel free to have a look at the 1% site and offer your preferred options.

Going to celebrate with an oatmeal and raisin cookie and a nice cup of cha.

Much Googling and discussion of flags past and present ensued, but one clear winner… Japan, sums up the nation so perfectly - orderly, simple, beautiful, spot on.

We take flags for granted, but at some point someone sat down and said ‘what do we want our flag to represent?’. Thinking we may try and design a Dandy flag!

Why not have your own go, it’s fun.

We like howies here at Dandy. We like their clothes. We like the little messages they put on the labels in their clothes. We like their attitude to business and life and that you can borrow books from them if you promise to give them back. I just got their first email newsletter – Tea & Wisdom – which had a link to this video. It makes us want to go out on our bikes in the mud.

Clearly Sara has extensive experience in this area, but I find it a real shame that any one of a broad range of creative talent in and around Nottingham were not used to create the identity for the new venture. There is plenty of excellent creativity around the city that could, and would, have thrived on creating a suitably contemporary and imaginative identity.

It’s doubly disappointing as Nottingham as a city is currently very proudly nailing its colours to the mast in relation to creativity, by bidding to be ‘World Design Capital’ in 2012 - highly commendable, and something I wholeheartedly condone. But if we’re that good, how come we can’t use our own designers when it comes to major design project within the city?

If we don’t, or won’t, invest in the talent on our doorstep, how can we expect to be taken seriously when we promote ourselves as a creative city?

I’m not sure whose decision it was, or how it was made - but I suspect we can be sure that if Leeds, Manchester or Liverpool were to need something similar, one suspects they would look locally. Something to keep in mind if as a city we are to aspire to compete with other major cities in the UK.