Inspired by too much exposed brickwork in the L&CO studio and of course our name, we have decided to create a series of posters to celebrate the ampersand. This logogram can be traced back to the first century A.D. and the Old Roman cursive, in which the letters E and T (‘et’ meaning ‘and’ in Latin) were occasionally written together to form a ligature. We just love this little character.

It's important for each of us to maintain a fresh perspective and glean new sources of inspiration, it's one of the reasons why we enjoy travelling. This month will see us visiting Croatia, France, Hungary, Jersey, Scotland, Wales and various other corners of our own island. Over the year quite apart from our professional travel commitments we have ventured further afield to Greece, China, India, Malaysia, Mexico, The United States, New Zealand and South Africa.

Once we had established the new name we needed to find a way to clothe it to lend both a sense of solidity and tradition but with a touch of tongue in cheek style. We employed a series of antique illustrations accompanied by captions to adorn everything from business cards to PowerPoint presentations.

Inspired by Gogos Crazy Bones’ kids collectable World Cup figures, we are offering our clients the opportunity to become official sponsors of this month’s (L&CO) World Cup. For an undisclosed sum (to go to East Sheen Primary School) they can have their logo adorn our prime-time advertising hoardings.

We are currently working with two new start-up businesses and between figuring out their respective personalities and bringing them to life visually, we focus on what to call them. For each project we have created over 450 possible names, just two or three of which make it through to the black hole of legal searches. Watch this space.

Just in time for the annual Oxford & Cambridge boat race we created a refreshed logo for the Oxford University Boat Club, evolving their traditional coat of arms for use across all of their publicity material.

This month we helped Jones Lang LaSalle launch a new advertising format in the Financial Times. The project was really about creating a global advertising framework for the business as part of an holistic approach to design around the world.

We can’t really tell you any more at this stage, other than it’s a happy coincidence that this sassy social brand is relaunching on Valentine’s Day. At least it kept us warm over the past couple of months.

We created a series of simple illustrations to represent each stream of Reed Learning’s business. They form the section dividers for printed and digital media as well as posters for their training centres.

Our work for Frog Capital was recognised at the annual Benchmark Awards for excellence in brand communications and can be seen in this year’s Benchmark book.

It’s not everyday that we see our work carved in ice and made into a vodka bar. But at the LateRooms 10th anniversary ball at The Monastery Manchester this month we were treated to this rather cool prospect.

This month saw the opening of EMT’s new flagship store in the centre of Tallinn. In addition to the nine plasma screens and wall graphics, we designed a giant neon ladybird based on the company logo to sit in the window and create a landmark at this busy junction.

Working with our advertising partners at Gill Creative we designed a concept for a family of new black and platinum cards for American Express. Of course we’d love to tell you more, but for now we can’t.

As Reed Learning turned their attention to the corporate market, we felt they needed a series of illustrations to keep the family of communications together. We commissioned ourselves to come up with the ideas as well as drawing the final illustrations.

This month with the Ashes in full swing we were asked to design the cricketing catalogue and other printed items for online sports memorabilia company Sportspages.com. It was hard to go wrong with such a rich source of imagery.

Our Little Book of Learning was created for Reed Learning to inspire people to think differently about training and to help position Reed as a learning portal.

Working in concert with our strategic partner Simon Paterson we continue to help Shell, advising them on their brand identity and working with their other lead agencies.

In April Paul Barlow co-hosted a forum in New York with one of our North American friends David Boorstin. It was a wonderful opportunity for independent agencies to meet and discuss their work and reflect on the world of design and branding. We hope to host next year’s event in London.

Clarity & simplicity – the idea of seeing everything in black and white lies behind our new identity for Dominion, a trust company with headquarters in Jersey.

We helped relaunch Foursome Investments as Frog Capital who received some great coverage in the Financial Press. This idiosyncratic private equity house are now keen to build a pond in the courtyard of their Kings Cross mews home.

This is a poster designed by Paul which was selected for the Design for Obama website designforobama.org – the 44th and yet the 1st black president of this multi-cultural society. We’re proud to be associated with this great event.