Well, we watched Ed and his BarbeSkew on Dragon’s Den last and thought it went well, short, but well. We were expecting the editing to be slightly less favourable as you often see happen. We didn’t get to see Ed’s whole pitch but the BarbeSkew was seen and showed what a great product it is. Peter’s comment about Ed not being a realist was a little unfair we thought as Ed has thoroughly researched the market and industry and knows that it has the potential to be ‘copied’ which is why all the safety certifications, detail to the product and fine tuning in not only the appearance but useability and cleaning has been done to the finest degree and he has become the first to market with a great idea.
On first glance it does seem quite expensive but it’s not a cheap disposable barbeque which you buy one year and throw out the next (we’ve all bought one of those at one stage haven’t we!!?), it’s a very substantial high quality barbecue that rotates the food and this is reflected in the retailers that Ed has selected to stock it, outlets like Harrods and Wyevale.
I spoke to Ed this morning and he seemed pretty pleased with the way it went – he said “I asked for too much money – £180,000 for 15%. If I’d asked for £50,000 for 15% I would have had all 5 of them queuing up!”.
Ah, the benefit of hindsight eh. Well done though Ed.
Filed under: ideas | Leave a Comment
Tags: barbecue, barbeque, BarbeSkew, bbq, dragon's den, rotisserie
BarbeSkew on Dragon’s Den
Tonight one of our clients BarbeSkew confronts the ferocious Dragons on Dragon’s Den on BBC 2 at 9pm. Ed Wray the entrepreneur who invented the BarbeSkew is very positive about the experience and is looking forward to his 15 minutes (well, maybe not quite that long!) of fame. Ed is extremely passionate about the BarbeSkew as is everyone who works with him – his enthusiasm is infectious.
The BarbeSkew is a barbecue with rotating skewers that cooks the food evenly and beautifully – we know – we’ve sampled it!! Perks of the job of course.
We do hope that the BBC is kind with it’s editing. Apparently the filming took one and half hours and has been cut down to about 2 minutes – so fingers crossed those valuable minutes are good ones!!
The BarbeSkew has recently won the HSBC Start-Up Stars Southern Region Award too – over 1500 entries were registered this year with BarbeSkew Company winning the Southern Region Award. Well done Ed and the team!
Fingers crossed for tonight and we’ll be watching.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments
Tags: barbecue, barbeque, BarbeSkew, bbq, charcoal grill, dragon's den
Font Conference
Came across this extremely funny film from College Humour called Font Conference.
Although I’m not sure I would’ve chosen Comic Sans as a super hero!
Think my super hero font would have been: Cooper Black
Also would have been quite funny to have included a character called Eccentric Standard.
Filed under: design, graphic design, typefaces | Leave a Comment
Director of Door 22 Emma thought it would be a good idea to run the London Marathon this year – utter madness!!
But there is a little consolation – to promote the fact we produced some mini cards from Moo and now we’ve appeared on the fabulous Moo blog! Thanks Moo.
The cards are a set featuring the different emotions and expressions that she’ll be going through on the day – probably! The cards also have the Justgiving URL on the back to remind people.
So if there are any generous sorts out there Emma is running for BAAF (British Association for Fostering and Adoption) and the Justgiving page is here.
There’s also a weekly training blog which you can see the training involved in this ‘marathon’ challenge’.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: London Marathon, London Marathon Training Blog, Moo
Whilst going through my recycling at the weekend I came across an old newspaper that was from the world cup rugby weekend last month and found this Waitrose ad. The only reason I stopped was that we did a very similar ad (and series of) for one of our clients The Little Beer Company which ran in the Spanish Daily Mail back at the end of 2006 up to March of this year. I’m not getting disgruntled, I just found it intriguing and quite interesting – the similarity in idea – especially as they were both concerning beer and just thought I should put it in the blog.
Filed under: advertising, design | Leave a Comment
Tags: british beer, little beer company, waitrose
Make My Logo Bigger
This site and online video Make My Logo Bigger Cream is really funny. Another one of those nod your head and laugh outloud moments – I warn you!
We got a rock anthem sent through a few month ago called ‘Make the Logo Big‘ linked here just in case it passed you by. The perfect combination, they should have used it as a background to the site.
Filed under: design, graphic design | Leave a Comment
Carbon Footprint Calculator
This Carbon Calculator ‘Act On CO2′ site from DirectGov supported by Defra is beautifully designed and really fun to use. Have a go at working out your footprint – it’s quite an eye-opener!
Filed under: sustainability, web design | Leave a Comment
Tags: carbon footprint
I do love paper, and as a company we are making sure that we source and specify greener paper and especially paper that is FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) accredited (refer to my previous blog entry for the definitions of recycled paper).
I have found a brilliant website called Lovely as a Tree which tells you everything you need to know to be a more environmentally aware graphic designer. Defines the myths of sustainability, different percentage scales of ‘recycled’, eg, post consumer waste. It has a great choosing paper facility which has the catagories for uncoated, matt, gloss and also rates each paper, explains exactly ‘how’ recyled it is through to who it is manufactured by and where to even if it has matching envelopes!!
Really nicely designed and good navigation and I use it pretty much all the time now when specifying paper.
Filed under: design, environmental, graphic design, paper, sustainability | Leave a Comment
Perfect present for the graphic designers in your life!
These extremely gorgeous mugs are made under licence from Pantone – so are official product. Available at quite a few places including these:
Filed under: Pantone, graphic design | Leave a Comment
I have only just picked myself up off of the floor and now my stomach muscles are in fatigue!
This list from Groy’s website 8 way’s to drive a graphic designer mad is oh so very very very true!
Thanks to The Escape for directing me to this gem.
All current and prospective clients of Door 22 please take special note!
Filed under: graphic design | Leave a Comment
Recent Entries
- Unscathed from the Dragon’s Den for BarbeSkew
- BarbeSkew on Dragon’s Den
- Font Conference
- Jogging & Blogging & MiniCards from Moo
- Ad Similarities (Waitrose/Little Beer Company)
- Make My Logo Bigger
- Carbon Footprint Calculator
- Choosing Environmentally Friendly Paper
- A Perfect Gift for Graphic Designers
- How to Tip A Designer Over The Edge
- A Very Splendid Collection of Fonts
Categories
- advertising (1)
- apple (1)
- beer (1)
- blogging (1)
- business card (1)
- colour (1)
- cvs (1)
- dconstruct (1)
- design (18)
- environmental (1)
- exhibitions (3)
- fonts (2)
- graphic design (18)
- ideas (3)
- job hunting (1)
- little beer company (1)
- mac (1)
- os x (2)
- Pantone (1)
- paper (4)
- photo library (1)
- photography (1)
- quoting (1)
- sustainability (2)
- typefaces (6)
- Uncategorized (4)
- web application (1)
- web applications (3)
- web design (3)
- widgets (1)
