Delivering wine to the top of the world

We do like a drop of 'grape juice' at Grove Creative, which is why we jumped at the chance to do some branding for our friend David Perry at Shaftesbury Wines down in Dorset. David, a strong advocate of real wines is about to launch his own brand wine range, consisting of a French red, white and rosé wine.

The brand name Colline d'Or (French for 'Gold Hill') gives a subtle nod to the region's famous landmark - a very steep old cobbled street forever linked with the Hovis advert directed by Ridley Scott in 1973 where "it was like delivering bread to the top of the world". The connection is very fitting, as David now delivers wine to the café at the top of Gold Hill, although not on a bike!

We created a quirky little pen and ink character in keeping with the theme to give the brand a distinctive, friendly look, with a simple colour coded layout to distinguish the three varieties. The labels are currently being produced and we're eagerly looking forward to receiving our sample bottles (for photography purposes of course!)

Here are some designs that got away

Visit Shaftesbury Wines' website, or if you're in Dorset, we would recommend paying David a visit for friendly advice and quality wine.

Copyright ©Grove Creative 2012

Never mind the ballot box

Students' Union election time has given us chance to play with our newly created logo for Edge Hill Students' Union.

We wanted to avoid showing actual faces of studenty types on the posters to leave open the possibility that potential candidates could see themselves in the posts being advertised, so we took the face profiles derived from the EHSU logo and placed them where the heads should be. The end result, although not intentional, did bear a slight resemblance to a certain Buzzcocks record sleeve..

 

Copyright ©Grove Creative 2012

All that jaaaazz

If you're a guitar student and you're in York on the 21st and 28th of March you could do worse things than book a workshop session with guitar pro Al Morrison. We put together this little poster for our mate Al to to help him showcase his playing and teaching talents and pass them on to all budding muso's.

Get more info about Al Morrison here

Copyright ©Grove Creative 2012

All aboard the rubbish bus!

Education is never wasted, and education about waste is the focus of the Northampton Council Waste Bus. After several successful years of travelling to junior schools throughout the borough, Northamptonshire Council's Waste Education Team approached Grove Creative to design some new interactive educational activities and interior graphics.

The key themes are minimising household waste through composting and recycling, so we jumped right in and got our hands dirty with a compostables 'feely' box! The existing feely box was tired and limited in it's interactivity, with the pupils putting their hand into a darkened box to identify an item by touch and then decide if it can be composted but having no feedback on whether their guesses were correct. We enhanced the box by adding illustrated keys to firstly identify the objects in the six compartments and then determine whether the object can be composted. Putting all of the keys in the correct holes and in the correct order releases the lid of the box to reveal the contents. And we even made the box out of waferboard made from reconstituted wood flakes, making it considerably lighter than the original, thereby reducing fuel consumption of the bus.

Still on the theme of composting we designed and built the 'Compost Challenge' testing pupils' knowledge on the optimum criteria for successful composting. What makes the ideal composting conditions - damp, dry, warm, cold, lots of air or tightly sealed? Pupils can try out their theories from a series of illustrated pieces which light up when placed on the board. Red or green lights tell you how compost-aware you are!

Pupils now get a good dose of the 3Rs with the new touchscreen kiosk. We brought the bus's frog mascot to life with games built in Adobe Flash. Cross the river of waste by jumping onto plastics which can be recycled, but be careful - not all plastics can be recycled by your local authority! Then decide which objects can be REUSED or RECYCLED to REDUCE landfill in the 3Rs game in which you catch objects that are being thrown into the bin.

We also spruced up the walls of the bus with a series of colourful posters dealing with composting and recycling different materials.

And our thanks to the Northamptonshire Council Waste Education Team for putting our logo nice and prominently on the outside of the bus!

Copyright ©Grove Creative 2012

When it's good to be two faced

When the team at Edge Hill University Students' Union asked us to create a new identity for them the dual nature of their role soon became clear to us. As representatives of the student body they must communicate and engage with their students, but they also have to be the mouthpiece to the university staff and other stakeholders. We summed up this dual facing role in the new logo by creating two face profiles from the EH of EHSU, making a playful motif to be exploited in a wide variety of visual uses.

The logo is also available in portrait and mono format and can be used as a container for imagery relating to different SU activities.

 

Copyright ©Grove Creative 2012

She bangs the drums

Can't beat a bit of Stone Roses :) However if you're a she or a he and fancy a go at drum and dance African style, and you're in the North West on September 24th, why not come along to Middlewich Community Church for an African drum and dance workshop!

We knocked up this poster in support of the event for Kasupe, which is a charity involved in helping children in Malawi. See kasupe.org.uk for more information.

Copyright ©Grove Creative 2012

Hi

Excuse us... a few roadies checking everything works before the show...