Love4Haiti | Fund Raiser
British Library & twenty%extra™ partnership
Just a quick newsflash, we’re very pleased to announce that twenty%extra recently became partners with the British Library.
We’ll be delivering our Let’s Be Brief Business workshops, a one day communications programme for businesses and organisations at the British Library, watch this space for future dates. This was particularly exciting news for us as we’re regular users of the library and Business IP Centre, which incidently is lovely space to work in with Peyton and Byrne cupcakes to boot.
Cristina Guitian | Knotted Arms & Brighten Up Your Day
Recent work created for the recent Art In Industry exhibition and CIDA from friend and fabulous illustrator Cristina Guitian.
Did you know that the Jamme Mosque in Spitalfields was originally a French Protestant Church before becoming a Methodist Chapel, then a Synagogue before it finally became a Mosque? I didn’t either, but I’ll let Cristina tell you all about it.
WIth random visual narratives and a very distinctive hand drawn style, Cristina’s work is always a visual treat. With The Art of Football illustrations for Nike you know she knows nowt about football, but the work proves that’s probably a good thing. John Terry for England captain anyone?
Voice 10 | Social Enterprise Coalition
Hopefully it isn’t news to you that twenty%extra is a Social Enterprise. Now to be frank, the term ‘Social Enterprise’ is a little bit of an enigma for a lot of people. We often hear the following questions after mentioning such a fact; What’s a Social Enterprise? What makes you different from a normal business? Is it a type of charity? Etc etc. Well for those not in the know, a Social Enterprise is a business that has a triple bottom line; People, Planet, Profit.
Earlier this week, Ansel and I packed an overnight bag and boarded the National Express and headed to Cardiff for Voice 10 – the annual conference for Social Enterprises organised by the Social Enterprise Coalition.
The conference is a good opportunity to meet some like-minded folk, talk ‘ideas’ and hopefully do some business. This years pièce de résistance was the unvailing of the Social Enterprise kite mark – a logo designed to help galvanise the SE movement. I have to say however, that I was a little bit disappointed. Since launching our business last year, I’ve always felt that SE needed some what of a brand strategy to get the word out there as well as spread a coherent message.
The problem is that as a concept, SE is many things to many people within a diverse sector. The new brand identity aims to set everyone straight and become the mark of a revolutionary way of doing business. But somehow it just doesn’t speak ‘revolution’ to me, nor does it do away with the infamous questions above. Having discussed this with Ansel, he mentioned a good point that the Fairtrade logo does what it says on the tin. In other words, the name says what it’s all about and cleverly communicates a way of doing business.It’s a shame that when SEC and Co. decided to rebrand the sector they didn’t get some strategic branding advice before taking on such a task, as it was (and still is) a chance to go the whole hog to create a brand strategy and identity that would truly be a unifier for a progressive movement.
Anyhow, apart from launches and plenarys, we had the pleasure of meeting the mad hatter / social entrepreneur / founder of The Big Issue, John Bird, who kindly invited us (and several others!) out to dinner. Meeting JB highlighted that fact that the sector is built upon the dynamism and vision of folk like John, and what ever else the sector maybe or represent, it surely isn’t dull, unlike the branding. Well that’s enough of me, watch the video above (well, the first 30 seconds anyway) and let me know what you think!