Its hard to describe what it feels like for your whole life to change in the space of 24 hours but that's what happened to me and millions of other final year uni students all over the county on the 16th March. 

We knew corona was bad, we knew uni would most likely be closing very soon, however none of thought it would be this bad. We're all in shock and its really hard to get your head around the fact that in the space of a few days, from when you thought everything was going to be okay, that you're packing your bags, saying goodbye to your friends, leaving the house and the city that you've called home for years and not knowing when you might return. 

All of this without a real goodbye, it was so sudden that three amazing years could come to a halt in the most abrupt way possible, in a way that we could have never imagined.

The Varsity events were the first thing to get called off, then one by one each event, each part of our lives, everything we've been looking forward to and planning for...cancelled. Uni staff went home, buildings closed and everything became a ghost town within hours.

Thousands of final year students and university staff are left wondering what now? What does this mean for the courses we've just spend 3 years working hard for, 3 years that we've worked up 60k worth of debt for. What does this mean for our graduation and even looking for jobs? Many of us are left thinking, what's the real point?

​Its disheartening that in the daily government speeches, they have never once mentioned university students and what this means for them, only what it means for school students, it really adds to the anxiety.

Hopefully in the future this will teach all of us to appreciate the little things like being able to go out with your friends in the evenings, to be around family, to have food on the shelves in supermarkets, to smile at strangers in the streets and even to make conversation.

These are scary and damaging times. Stay safe everyone, wash your hands, stay indoors and keep healthy.

Lots of love xxx

Ben and Jerry's have created a range of ice cream that highlights climate change in an innovative way to get people thinking. They use ice cream as a very apt metaphor for the planet by saying that
​'If it's melted, it's ruined'. 

The new flavour, called Save Our Swirled, an anagram for SOS as featured on the lid. Is a range that aims to get people thinking about climate change.
Ben & Jerry's know that the emissions that come from producing ice cream are high, each pint of ice cream makes 2 lbs of greenhouse gasses. So they're trying to do everything they can to keep their emissions down, as well as making a change for others.

'We have the tools we need, we just need to do it.'

Ben & Jerry's appreciate there's still work to be done, they are working with climate activists Avaaz to encourage people to sign a petition to take stronger action against climate change. Avaaz is working towards 100% clean energy by 2050.

Information and images from:
​https://mashable.com/2015/05/28/ben-jerrys-climate-change-flavor/?europe=true
https://www.benjerry.com/values/issues-we-care-about/climate-justice/polar-ice-caps-melting
https://www.benjerry.co.uk/values/issues-we-care-about/climate-justice
https://www.fastcompany.com/90188065/why-ben-jerrys-has-a-corporate-activism-manager

On the Ungifted website, you can send a lovely email explaining why you have decided to not buy a random and un-meaningful gift such as... a bath bomb, a novelty tie, pair of socks, scented candle or bar of soap. 

The email explains how the 'Ungifter' is saving you from the 'mass produced junk and needless waste' and replacing that with a an activity that you can enjoy together such as the cinema, a walk around the park, an Instagrammable night out, a visit to your favourite gallery.

So please think about what you're when giving Christmas gifts that might end up being piles of plastic. In exchange you could give people something that they'll definitely use/ need, or choose to spend time with the person or even donate money to charity on their behalf!

But apart from all that, please have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year people! :)

Link to Pentagram's Do the Green Thing website
http://dothegreenthing.com/campaigns/

Recently I've really enjoyed getting back into painting watercolours. It started when I was imagining a packaging design for a wine brand I'd made up and I painted a lobster, of all things. That has now spiralled onto me painting all sorts of different animals and really having fun with it. Below are some of the recent ones I have done; cows sticking their tongues out and portraits of pets for friends.

Doing mostly graphic design, it is easy to forget why you loved art in the first place and get bogged down with just the digital work. But now, I think it is important to keep up the hand-made creativity and that will hopefully show across the rest of my work next year.

Peanut the cat

Cows

Bee-lieve

Penguin love

Take a look at my Instagram - ​https://www.instagram.com/vickisismoredesign/

Turner and Duckworth design studio in San Fransisco, have been working hard to create a new visual identity for McDonalds. While still harnessing the branding that we already know and love. The new look includes posters, paper bags, cups, bus stop advertisements, lorry artwork, van artwork, wifi symbols, clothing, loyalty cards and much more. The redesign features a new font developed with Dalton Maag called Speedee, which comes in three weights. As the branding essentially needs to communicate across the world, covering 120 countries and 35,000 restaurants. They focussed on the famous golden arches of the logo and the recognisable gold and red colour-scheme.

Recently, Canada's national marketing agency has released a new logo which really communicates the spirit and love of the country and of course it has a little maple leaf.

Since Boris Johnson has recently become the Prime Minister of the UK. Huge London had an amazing creative response to this. As a a bit of a joke at the situation, Huge created brand guidelines to go along with Boris' unique persona. After all, maybe this the reason he had the majority.

“Boris is keen on aggressively promoting himself as a living brand to the country,” “He’s spent his entire career creating this brand for himself, with the ultimate end goal of reaching number 10. So we thought we’d mock the moment by creating a set of tongue-in-cheek Human Brand Guidelines for him. No political stance, just complete truth based on his own words and actions.” - Huge London's creative director Hari Bajwa.

The site is making fun of Boris is a sense of, how has this happened? What is happening to the world? How is this person in charge of our country? The tone of voice includes: the Conservative blue, prioritising feelings over facts, lack of detail, marginalising people, and going off script.

One of my personal favourites is 'Harness the hair. To appear relatable to the general public, Boris should ruffle up his locks prior to any engagements.' 

With thanks to Huge London for bringing people together and having a sense of humour on current politics when we can often feel helpless. For more information take a look at Boris The Brand below and It's Nice That's article, as well as Huge London's website.

The Lion's Share Fund

Rob Janoff talking about designing the infamous Apple Logo

Real Handful by Midday

Traffic Folding Ad by Forsman & Bodenfors

Hyundai - Anatomy Lesson by Z+ /Innocean

BLOCK OUT THE CHAOS: WORLD LEADERS by Cheil Worldwide, Hong Kong

Occasional Ad by Spotify In-House

The (un)Clean Air Act by McCann London

Highlight the Remarkable by DDB Group Company

While at the D&AD Festival in London, I attended a talk by Boaz Paldi from the United Nations Development Programme about how advertising can make a real difference to our wildlife. Lions appear in a lot of different adverts, they signify a lot of different qualities such as strength, pride and luxury. 20% of advertising globally uses animals, while 9 out of 10 of the animals used are either endangered or threatened. We have lost 60% of our wildlife since 1970. Consumerism is thriving, while wildlife is dying.

​Today, 1 million species are at risk of extinction. The United Nations is saying, we need to do something about this.

Introducing: The Lion's Share Fund
Offers an innovative solution. A simple way for companies and consumers to get involved and become a part of the solution and together have a huge impact on our world.
This is an agreement with advertising agencies where  0.5% of their media spend goes to the wildlife that they use in their adverts. If the Lions Share can get the top 10 advertising agencies agree to join forces with the Lion's Share, this would raise $47 million per year. 

In return, the money gets used across the world to save wildlife and biodiversity. Last year, $600 billion was spent on advertising. All use of animals counts even CGI, cartoons or a birds in the background. However, animals in logos like the Lacoste crocodile don't count.

This concept has only been running for 9 months and was originally thought of by a man from Finch Advertising in Australia. Already, they have the large advertising agency Mars on board as well as Sir David Attenborough as an ambassador for the conservation. The movement already had over 10+ million followers online. 

The organisation is now a fully functioning conservation fund. Their motto is conserving hope as while the planet is changing at such an alarming rate, they can conserve our hope if we ACT NOW.

Boaz Paldi talking at the D&AD Festival 2019.

For more information please go to 
https://thelionssharefund.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TheLionsShareFund
https://twitter.com/LionsShareFund
https://www.instagram.com/lionssharefund/