Peter talked about how biases and heuristics conspire to make us think that everyone else is stupid and that we’re dead clever, like. He talked about whether it’s possibly possible that other people are smarter than we think, and discussed what we might do about that.
Big thanks to Andy for asking us to speak at Refresh for a third time.
Peter, Heather and Karys headed down to OFFSET in Dublin for a weekend of inspiration, doodling, ideas and good food.
Speaker highlights included Iain Tait (Google Creative Lab, Wieden + Kennedy, Poke), who gave a huge mention to sugru and the hackable Fixer's Manifesto which we helped create. We blushed and giggled and then promptly refused to chat to him because we're shy and weird. He has also written about more sugru work we did here.
Hvass & Hannibal are a multi-disciplinary design studio from Copenhagen whose work we've admired for a long time. (Their Efterklang work - yum). They approach projects so collaboratively the work becomes seamless, which rings true a little bit for us. Their work is hands-on, geometric, beautiful and sometimes hilarious (sweaty man gym slogans for example).
We really enjoyed hearing Jonathan McHugh talk about his illustration process and insanely short deadlines for the Financial Times. In fact the day he was speaking he needed to submit work that afternoon, having received the brief that morning. Respect. This is him opening the FT to see his illustration in print the next day.
Best entrance award goes to Ben Newman who hula-hooped his way on stage to Jump by Van Halen, explaining it was the scariest thing he could think of doing, so he did it. Kudos. Stunning illustration work too.
JR 's talk was truly inspirational. He makes ballsy, thought provoking, barrier busting street art. We're just wondering if the Inside Out project could make it to Burma.
And Kate Moross, well, we would just love her to be our cool new best mate.
We also got to see The Creativity Hub launch The Extraordinaires Design Studio with some lovely looking awards for the best designs presented over the weekend.
We've been working with the brilliant Rory, Anita and the team at The Creativity Hub for a while now. We've created a product site for their next big thing, The Extraordinaires Design Studio. We also designed the Uploader App which allows users to upload their designs to the site's gallery (the app was then built by Ecliptic).
We all popped down to Dublin for the product launch and a had a great time eating camo popcorn, watching the illustrators at work and having a go at designing our own inventions.
It's an awesome product and we're dead proud to be involved.
Atto Partners have been working with Stand By Me for a while now. They're an awesome charity that rescues kids in danger, many of them orphaned and abandoned. They provide loving, family homes and an excellent education, transforming lives and enabling the most vulnerable children reach their full potential.
When Ahmad asked us to come and see what they're doing in Burma along with a small team of doctors, we jumped at the chance. It's not often you get to work for a client who are literally saving lives around the world, and see the work first hand.along with a small team of doctors, we jumped at the chance. It's not often you get to work for a client who are literally saving lives around the world, and see the work first hand.
We worked with two schools and eight homes that are run by Stand By Me to encourage the children and teachers in their creativity, doing lots of craft, painting and drawing. Many of the kids had never used paints before and they picked it up instantly. We were constantly impressed by the eagerness to learn, both from teachers and children, the warmth and humour of the Burmese people and their fearless hurdle-leaping attitude in the face of a military government and poverty.
Stand By Me partners and trains the best of the best of these people and as a result, the kids we met in the homes were happy, healthy and growing up to be amazing role models in their community.
We both got to meet the boys we sponsor in Kalymayo. Hma Ngaih Thang and Sumpi are both great kids who have come from hard backgrounds. It was emotional and encouraging to know that we can support these boys from across the world.
We might be biased but if you're looking for a way to give to a charity, Stand By Me are pretty darn awesome.
Atto Partners Belfast studio is moving!
A grand total of 20m round the corner. You can now find us in our new place at 25 Donegal Street, now with added natural light!
We'll be moving gear, sawing things and smashing light bulbs for a while so please forgive the mess when you visit.
ps. big love to everyone who helped us move.
Hoorah! We have a new neighbour. It's our good chum Andy McMillan from Fiction. He makes wonderful things like The Manual, Build conference and XOXO conference. He also likes to bring us treats which is just fantastic.
Welcome to the building Mr Goodonpaper.
We've been working with the lovely interior designers, Susan and Kyra for a little while now on a top secret thing (we're moving office and they're helping us make it amazing shhh…).
They asked us to help name their new company; Orr and Gillespie and create their new identity. Working with designers was great, we got our teeth into some juicy colour work and big pattern design.
Peter spoke at Refresh Belfast last night. He was one of 12 speakers talking about the lessons they learnt from 2012. Peter's talk comprised mostly of breakfast tips and the occasional insightful thought.
Find out more here .
We worked with the sugru team to help them produce their very own manifesto. We wanted to enable the enthusiastic sugru community to help edit and add to the ideas so we're calling this is version 1.0. There’s a plaintext copy on Github, where users can contribute improvements, fork it, and make stuff with it. You can also suggest changes on sugru's Facebook and Twitter.
If you like it, improve it.
We designed a new brand and packaging for the all natural cracker company, Just Crackers. Congratulations to Katie as Just Crackers Original and Just Crackers Salt and Pepper have both been awarded one gold star in the the Great Taste Awards.
Happy birthday to us, toot toot. It's been one year since Atto joined forces with Johnston North to become Atto Partners.
We celebrated with plenty of pizza, a J-Bird cake and a comedy show.
CNN visited Jane and the sugru team to film them for a segment. They've managed to capture the feeling of real inspiration and determination that we are so accustomed to seeing in the team as we've worked with them. Nice job CNN.
You can read the article here.
It was great to finally get to talk to David Abraham, the Chief Executive of C4, at their board reception in Belfast. David has always been very supportive of our work and very kindly commended our involvement in a number projects during his talk on the evening.
We've really enjoyed working with Channel 4 over the last couple of years and it's nice to know that they enjoy working with us too.
The next day we had an opportunity to go to their briefing as well and hear Jay Hunt and Stuart Cosgrove talk about 4's plans for the next year. Exciting times ahead.
Can you believe it? Through the Buy One Give One Free project, the Good Little Company has donated over 15 million meals to communities in Malawi.
We are so proud to be involved. Head over here to find out more.
When Gillian Colhoun asked us to be involved in the 26 Treasures project we were initially daunted by the prospect of creating a "visual response" to a writer's take on a well-known Ulster Museum artefact. We would be presenting our piece in an exhibition alongside 25 other pairings of local writers/poets and designers/artists.
Things got exciting when we received Lucy Caldwell's 62 word piece about our artefact, The Clonmore Shrine. Her writing was so visually evocative we had no problem coming up with a slew of ideas, some awful, most impossible, one perhaps do-able.
After calling in favours from technology teacher friends, charity shop foraging and many hours of kaleidoscoping toe nails and hair, we managed to get our Clonmore Shrine piece installed in time for the main event. It was such a treat to see all sorts of folk interacting with our humble little table with a mysterious glowing box on top.
Karys then went on to speak with Lucy Caldwell at the launch of the 26 Treasures book which includes all the pieces from all over the UK. It was great to get to work on something that gave us insight into a piece of history and meet some amazing people along the way. Thanks for involving us Gillian.
We made a Dad's Guide to Fixing (almost) Anything poster with the sugru guys. This conjured up many bygone stories of our collective dads failed attempts at DIY. Thankfully sugru may help to avert future over-confident dad disasters.
You can see the big version here
Hurrah for a maths app that is fun to use and actually works. Komodo was great to work on (and we learnt what 7 x 8 equals along the way - super mathematical bonus).
We created the brand, the characters, the visual design, the copy and the animation. We hope it goes a long way, you can get it from the App store now.
So apparently Atto Partners are in another book. And it's a pretty cool book to be in. It's called Just Design by Christopher Simmons. Your Name on Toast and Build a Beard make an appearance.
Peter had the opportunity to be part of a judging panel of professional designers for the NI Design Alliance Student Awards.The aim of the competition was to help students develop their professional design skills through industry mentoring. Each student team was allocated a mentor from local design agencies whom they worked with to respond to a challenging design brief.
It was great to see emerging new talent and getting a glimpse of how high the current standard of student design is.
This year's Auntie Atto Christmas treat had a lot to live up to after last year's infused vodka efforts. So we made our own condiments (beetroot and orange chutney, spiced onion chutney and chilli jam).
If we have to chop another onion we might cry but the end result was very tasty, even if we say so ourselves.
