Category: Edinburgh

CreativeMornings/Edinburgh: Sarah Drummond

Sarah Drummond is a service designer, graduated from Glasgow School of Art. She runs Snook, an award winning service design agency based in Glasgow, specialising in creating exceptional customer experiences.

Not intentionally, Sarah also became one of the co-founders of CycleHack, a global movement with a mission to tool up citizens to take a pro-active, DIY approach to make cycling easier, more accessible and fun. Hacks created in 25 participating cities can be searched in an open catalogue – some of our favourite design solutions include Penny in Yo Pants, allowing woman to cycle in skirts, and Stack Rack, a more efficient way of parking your bike on the street.

Sarah was the last speaker at CreativeMornings/Edinburgh. In her brilliant talk, Sarah spoke about design as a non-violent way of creating a revolution. Whatever the challenge, she believes in the power of inspiring people with design tools to take change into their own hands and take on the world.

As part of the CreativeMornings/Edinburgh team, we filmed Sarah’s talk. Get inspired watching her presentation below!

Photos by John Duncan
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July 13, 2015
A hassle-free day with Santander

Santander recently got in touch to tell us about their 123 current account, a new service offering cashback on council tax and bills. As we recently started Future Positive Studio, we’re interested in getting the most out of our bank accounts so we asked Santander to tell us a little more about the 123 current account and its benefits.

One of the strengths of the 123 current account is the easiness of switching everything from your current bank to Santander – it only takes 7 days for direct debits, standing orders and salary to be moved. To mirror this hassle-free process, Santander invited us to have a day to ourselves without having to worry about anything, taking us for brunch and dinner around Edinburgh.

This hassle-free day couldn’t have come in a better moment, as we’re currently finalising the last details of a new City Guide to Edinburgh. We decided to walk around the city and visit some new places to us.

We started our morning having brunch at The Gardener’s Cottage. This small restaurant offers a menu that changes daily based on the availability of local produce. We enjoyed a couple of Beetroot Bloody Mary, roe deer and fava beans dips with artisan sourdough bread, and Arbroath smokie and meatloaf sandwiches.

After our brunch we went to Stockbridge, one of our favourite neighbourhoods in Edinburgh. We had a look at some of the recently-opened shops and took the peaceful Water of Leith to walk to Dean Village, one of the areas we wanted to photograph for our City Guide.

We explored Dean Village’s buildings and its numerous hidden streets and after that, we walked to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art to check Roy Lichtenstein’s exhibition, which we hadn’t been able to see yet, and also enjoyed a stroll around its gardens.

We decided to end our day having an amazing dinner at Blackfriars. This independent restaurant and bar located in the heart of Edinburgh’s city centre offers delicious food and a great selection of craft beers. Although we had been to the bar a few times before, it was our first experience in the restaurant and it didn’t disappoint. We enjoyed a special 4-course dinner paired with tasty beers by Redchurch Brewery – we couldn’t have asked for a better ending to our hassle-free day!

May 5, 2015
Edinburgh Fonts

Fonts play an important role in shaping the identity of a city. New York Subway has its Helvetica and you can see Univers Bold Condensed all around London. Edward Johnston’s classic type, designed for the city’s underground system, is also recognisable by millions around the world.

We recently started Edinburgh Fonts, an Instagram project which explores Edinburgh’s fonts used around the city – from shop fronts to street and floor signs. As we’ve been living here for quite some time, we though it’d be a great way to find inspiration and help us discover new details around the streets of Edinburgh, the city we thought we knew so well.

We’d like this project to be as collaborative as possible so if you spot any interesting fonts around Edinburgh, you can submit them on Instagram and Twitter using #EdinburghFonts. We’re looking forward to receiving your submissions!

https://instagram.com/edinburghfonts

April 22, 2015
CreativeMornings/Edinburgh: Gerry Farrell

Gerry Farrell, former Creative Director at the Leith agency in Edinburgh and founder of Gerry Farrell INK spoke at CreativeMornings Edinburgh last month on the topic of ‘Ugly’. During his talk, Gerry shared some of the highs and lows of his creative career and challenged us to used his F.L.I.P philosophy when faced with a difficult situation. Feeling Less Immediately Pessimistic (F.L.I.P) is about understanding that every crises has different outcomes and consciously deciding “not to turn things ugly”.

Gerry believes that not being pessimistic can be a solution to creative problem solving and supports his theory with examples from his career in advertising. His talk was full of great advice for anyone working in the creative industries – from dealing with feedback, difficult briefs or unhappy clients – the decision is ours whether things going to work out or not. It’s easy to be cynical and work with the first idea that comes to our head but we need to study what’s out there and challenge it in order to produce better creative work.

Photos by: Eoin Carey
Video by: Future Positive Studio

March 5, 2015
CreativeMornings/Edinburgh: Ian Sharman

CreativeMornings is a free, monthly breakfast lecture series for creative communities started in NYC by Tina Roth Eisenberg aka swissmiss,. Each event is free, and consists of an inspiring 20-minute talk plus free coffee.

The first CreativeMornings/Edinburgh kicked off last month with a lecture by Ian Sharman, designer and tutor at Edinburgh College of Art. Ian tackled the theme of Education, expoloring how future graduates view the transition from “creative education” into “industry” and how continuous learning is fast becoming a key requirement to their creative happiness.

We’re excited to be involved in organising CreativeMornings in Edinburgh and filming the lectures. We invite you take a look at the video from Ian’s talk below, especially the very interesting Q&A and discussion at the end.

Photos by Gemma Lord

January 14, 2015