Harleys has once again teamed up with City of Bristol College to offer its graphic design students the chance to win the 13th annual Harleys Design Award.
This year the brief is to create a brand identity for Festival Friday, a unique competition hosted by Bristol music charity, Brisfest.
“We are proud to be working with Harleys and City of Bristol College on this award because it will inspire the creativity of local students and support an event in the local community that we are very passionate about,” says Poppy Stephenson, CEO, Brisfest.
Festival Friday offers employees across Bristol the chance to have their workplace turned into a pop-up festival for a day, complete with food, entertainment and decorations. Local businesses sponsor Festival Friday and provide the refreshments, with support in previous years coming from regional enterprises like Pieminister and Bath Ales. The headline acts are local Bristol bands that set up and rock out, right there in the office.
Bristol College is including the festival brief in a module on its FdA course in Graphic Design with Interactive Multimedia. Students are required to brand the competition with a recognizable and innovative identity using relevant logos, images and colour. They must create promotional materials such as posters, web banners, stationary, a t-shirt and even a beer mat.
The project will give students the chance to work with a vibrant and creative subject, producing work that will be used across a variety of mediums. The brief also offers the opportunity for the winning entry to be used by Brisfest to promote the Festival Friday competition across Bristol, giving the winner the chance to see their work in action.
“It’s a fantastic opportunity to be working with Brisfest on such an exciting brief that encourages young talent and promotes local events. I’m looking forward to seeing the ideas that emerge over the next few weeks,” says Ken Hale, Harleys Creative Director.
Brisfest was founded in 2007 with an ambition to showcase the best Bristol had to offer in a not-for-profit event. Originally in Bristol city centre, the festival is now held at Ashton Court to accommodate the 20,000 visitors and hundreds of local acts. Brisfest relies on 400 volunteers who rally together every year to produce one huge inspiring event in September.
When it is not arranging the festival, Brisfest is a registered charity that furthers its work with music. It encourages local talent, hosts workshops, branches out into communities, and offers industry work experience to help local people into employment.
Harleys now has an incorporated subsidiary company in the US. This signals our growing commitment to our North American clients, and our evolving presence in the region.
We’ve established Harleys North America to make it easier for our clients in the US to do business with us.
Nick Cottle, CEO at Harleys explains the thinking behind the move: “Our client list in North America is growing, and at the same time our longstanding relationships are becoming even stronger. It’s important for us to respond to this. By establishing Harleys North America, we’re demonstrating our intent to continue building our presence in the region.”
Harleys’ accreditation with the Recommended Agency Register (RAR) has been extended for another year, based on the opinions of our clients.
RAR works with businesses and creative agencies, listing recommended agencies for clients to choose from based on their chosen criteria. Its assessments cover all elements of working practice – from creativity and strategic ability to value for money and professionalism.
These assessments are based on feedback sent directly from our clients to RAR. Only agencies that score above the threshold are then included in the register.
We pride ourselves on giving excellent customer satisfaction, and this comes across in the feedback of our clients. That’s why we’re proud to be RAR listed.
Harleys has a new sales & marketing office in central Stockholm. Following market demand, we’ve moved from our base in Linköping into the heart of the capital. This allows us to be closer to our key Swedish clients.
Although our headquarters remains in the UK, our enhanced presence in Stockholm comes with Swedish representation. Marinette Radebo, an experienced professional with a longstanding relationship with Harleys, now has a position with us as Regional Director, meaning that our clients have personal contact to hand whenever they need it.
Nick Cottle, CEO explains the thinking behind the developments: “Sweden has for a long time been important to Harleys, and this move demonstrates our commitment to our Swedish customer base. Myself and other key members from the team will be dropping in regularly, but more importantly, our clients now have someone available for a coffee and a chat whenever they like.”
The Harleys Award and its winner Barbara Szente were commended this week at a special sporting event in Bristol.
Coinciding with the Olympic torch’s journey through the city, the West of England Celebration of Sport Evening marked the achievements of athletes, coaches, clubs and inspirational volunteers. The event was co-organised by Wesport, this year’s beneficiary of the Harleys Award project, and featured Kriss Akabusi as Master of Ceremonies.
The HarleysAward joins with a different charitable or non-profit organisation each year, with the winning work becoming a live campaign.
Barbara was presented with a bouquet of flowers in recognition for her winning Talent Hubs visual identity project, which has now been rolled out by Wesport.
Pictured above from left to right: Ken Hale, Creative Director, Harleys; Barbara Szente, Harleys Award winner; Richard Colman, Coaching Development Manager, Wesport; Kriss Akabusi, Master of Ceremonies.
This year’s Harleys Design Award challenged students on the Graphic Design with Interactive Multimedia course at City of Bristol College to create a new identity for the Wesport Talent Hubs initiative.
The venture, which supports and inspires talented sportspeople between the ages of 12 and 15, needed a clear, recognisable identity. The task assigned to the students was to develop an original brand and logo which could be used on the Talent Hubs sites, promotional material, Wesport website and coach sports kit.
“We felt that it was an excellent opportunity to gain some fresh new ideas to support the launch of a new project for Wesport,” explains Richard Colman, the organisation’s Coaching Development Manager. “It was overwhelming entering the room with all of the designs covering the walls on the presentation day. We are extremely pleased with the winning design.”
We were presented with some thoughtful and inventive concepts this year, and have been very impressed by the high standard of work received. The work was judged according to three key criteria: creativity, relevance and execution.
After reviewing all the entries, we can now reveal that this year’s winner was Barbara Szente, who impressed the judges with her distinctive illustrative style. “I had the idea for the concept at quite an early stage,” says Barbara. “It was tough to come up with a campaign and keep it consistent, but luckily we always had feedback. It was demanding but exciting at the same time.”
“The annual Harleys project always creates a buzz at the college, not to mention a healthy dose of friendly competition”, says course lecturer Alistair Myers. “The students rose to the challenge very successfully, many of them making some great advances in their concept development and technical skills.
“I think that the winning design strikes a good visual balance between successfully communicating the Talent Hubs brand, using a strong logo, and incorporating a range of well crafted illustrative elements that will appeal to both young people and to their parents.”
The Harleys Design Award is back for its 12th year in a partnership between Harleys and the City of Bristol College. This year’s client is the West of England Sport Trust (Wesport).
Forming a module of the college’s FdA in Graphic Design with Interactive Multimedia course, the award gives students the opportunity to experience and respond to a live client brief. The project is mutually beneficial, providing value for the organisation as well as the students.
This April, Wesport will be launching a new initiative called Talent Hubs, designed to support and inspire talented sportspeople between the ages of 12 and 15. Through weekly training sessions, the scheme aims to provide them with the core skills necessary to help them move forward in their chosen discipline.
The task allotted to the college design students is to develop a strong, creative identity for the Talent Hubs campaign using a range of promotional materials, from posters and business cards to t-shirts and water bottles. If successful, the new brand will be used to promote the scheme across the South West.
“The Harleys Design Award is a great opportunity for the students to build on their creative skills within a professional context,” explains Ken Hale, Creative Director at Harleys. “It enables them to apply the design principles they’ve learnt to a corporate identity, whilst at the same time making a valuable contribution to a worthwhile cause.”
“The previous students set a high standard in 2011, and we are very much looking forward to seeing what is produced this year.”
Christmas already seems like a long time ago, but we’ve just finished adding up the scores of all the entries to our festive competition.
Clients, suppliers and friends alike were invited to have a go at our interactive seasonal game, designed by the Harleys team and based on the world-famous British Christmas Dinner. Entrants were then asked to send us a screen grab of their score.
Some of the more ‘creative’ entries included photoshopped screen grabs with astronomical scores – but genuine winner Inga Mills, Marketing Communication Manager at Saab, has a bottle of champagne on its way to her.
If you missed out on the chance to enter, , and we’ll add you to the list for next time. And if you want to relive the festive spirit, you can still have a go at the game here – no more prizes though!
It’s official: our customers think we’re outstanding. Harleys is now accredited by the Recommended Agencies Register (RAR). It’s an intermediary service that recommends agencies based on the opinions of their clients.
RAR measures customer satisfaction, asking clients to rate their agencies across key criteria including creativity, strategic thinking, value for money and effect.
Agencies who score above RAR’s threshold then become certified and included in the register.
Executive Director Terry Davies shares his thoughts on what this means for Harleys: “Customer satisfaction is what keeps our business going: we do an excellent job, and so our clients keep coming back, as well as spreading the word to their colleagues and networks.
“What’s good about RAR is the way it balances its assessments across such a broad range of criteria. This proves our strengths in every aspect – what we offer, the way we work and how we deliver.”
It’s that time of year again where we announce the winner of the Harleys Design Award. Initiated back in 2000, the prestigious award is now in its 11th year. Each year a new assignment is carefully created and this year we were able to add an extra incentive.
In partnership with St John Ambulance we offered the students the opportunity to work on a real-life vocational project: the StreetSafe campaign. Launched in March 2010 the project desperately required a new identity. This was something that the students could really get to grips with and the chance to design a full portfolio of associated materials.
St John Ambulance Commander, Clive Rooke, explains why the project was so important for the charity: “We wanted and needed to raise the profile of StreetSafe with relevant and appealing materials. Not only has the project given the students a live brief, it has raised the profile of St John and our StreetSafe campaign. The enthusiasm and creativity of the students is to be applauded.”
At Harleys, we were certainly impressed with the wide-scope and unique ideas that we were presented with this year. They represented the importance of this real-life campaign – and what was at stake. The winner will secure a two-week internship at Harleys to develop, produce and deliver the final concept and deliverables to St John.
Competition was tough, but we had to make a decision. We looked at three key aspects when we judged the work: how original and inspiring the overall concept was; how relevant it was to the brief; and, an exceptional execution. This year’s winner certainly impressed the panel of judges on all counts.
The Harleys Design Award 2011 runner up was Iwona Kobus and the winner was Marcela Ramos with her innovative Plaster Man concept. She was inspired by MTV illustration style and geometric shapes, which helped hit the target demographic. Marcella explains that the experience of working with a real client was undoubtedly the most valuable aspect of the experience. “Learning how to work to a brief, put a brand together and deliver a solution that a client would be happy with was a great learning tool for me.
“I’m really looking forward to developing the concept further in a professional studio.” And Marcela is currently doing just that in the Harleys studio.
