Doh Boy and his army arrive in Bristol this Saturday for the Organic Food Fair. He’ll be spreading the ‘Keep bread fat-free!’ message, with a little help from howies and Thoughtful. If you’re in the area, we’ll be on stand 193 (you won’t be able to miss us) so make sure you pop over say hello. We’ll be giving out samples of tasty fat-free bread along with copies of the new howies catalogue and some other goodies.

We were joined last week by Stephen Owen who’s started a month long placement at Thoughtful. Stephen has recently graduated from Stockport College, and his work has been included in this month’s Creative Review, alongside the best of this year’s graduates.

Stephen’s project was an ad campaign for Recycle Now.

If you’d like a closer look at his project, and the rest of his folder (which was equally as good), you can get in touch with him by email at st3ow3n@yahoo.co.uk

We went over to meet the howies team today. As promised, they turned up in a big chalkboard-covered transit van which they parked outside Urbis. Within 5 minutes the van was covered in peoples thoughts on nuclear energy. It was interesting to see that the main contributors were teenagers, and apart from the odd ‘Lozz is a big (censored)’, there were lots of good comments. Here’s one of ours.

And here’s the van in all its’ glory with Lydia.

We then showed them the way to Central Skate Park, while Alison nipped into our office to put a post on their blog about how the trip is going.

The skatepark was great, and made us feel a bit old and creaky seeing all the youngsters tearing up and down on bikes and skateboards. But that wasn’t going to stop James having a go.

(Tony Hawk must be quaking in his Vans)

And then we left them to get on with the tour.

Good luck with the rest of it Alison, you’re doing a great job.

This week, howies are visiting Manchester as part of a mini tour. They’ll arrive in a chalkboard-covered van and will be asking for peoples opinions on nuclear energy and green issues. This will become part of a debate in which you’ll be able to air your thoughts by writing them down on the van. As this is happening you’ll also be able to catch the howies skateboard team in action.

First stop in Manchester is outside Urbis at 11am, then Central Skate Park at 3pm.

As well as Manchester, they’ll also be visiting six other UK cities.

For more info on the tour dates and locations, click here.

And no, we don’t condone bullfighting.

Here are a few more book covers we did in response to the Serif brief.

Front

Back

At Thoughtful we like to recycle as much as we can, including ideas.

The last cover idea is shamelessly recycled from design group, The Chase. But as this is a bit of fun, we're sure Ben & Lionel won't mind.

The Serif have been running a series of Redesigner briefs recently. A subject is chosen, and Serif readers are invited to redesign it. All entries are then posted on the site. It’s a nice way of getting a non-commercial, non-competitive piece in front of other designers. Past subjects include London Underground tickets, no-smoking signs and the Design Week cover. This time it’s book covers.

We've taken a slightly less serious approach to the brief, redesigning 25 classic book covers using fonts from FontShop.

We've called the range 25 FontShop Classics.

If there are any typo nerds out there who can name all 25 fonts (or get close), we'll send the first three something appropriately thoughtful.

You can see the full set here.

The clue is in the title, or the author.

Send your answers to:
25fontshopclassics@wearethoughtful.com

Have you heard of the Global Ideas Bank? If not, we'd highly recommend taking a look. The GIB aims to promote creative ideas to solve problems in society. It’s a kind of think-tank that anyone can take part in. You submit ideas to the GIB, outlining the social problem, and then giving your solution. Other subscribers can then vote on the feasibility, originality and humour of your idea.

Last year, we submitted an idea in response to the Live 8 concerts. It scored Feasibility 50% Originality 40% Humour 13%.

The Problem:
Donating more money to developing nations.

The Social Invention:
Organise a Live Aid tribute event, with the very best tribute bands and artists. The event could travel to different cities throughout the year and be held in huge venues. Interest from the public be would high due to the fact there would be acts playing that people will never get to see again eg. The Beatles, Elvis, Jimi Hendrix etc. And because the event would be staged in large venues, it would be almost impossible to tell the difference between the tribute act and the real thing (unless you’re in the front row). The money from ticket sales would be donated to developing nations.

Bon Jovi or By Jovi?

We’ve been a bit busy at Thoughtful recently. Some of the projects we have on are slowly being pushed to the back of the queue. So we’d like a bit of help. We’re looking for a Thoughtful student, who can spare two days a week to get involved with these projects.

You’re probably thinking we’ll have you working on the dull stuff, while we’ll be freed-up to get our teeth into the more juicy briefs. Well, you’d be wrong. We specifically want you to work on the nice creative pieces, while we sort the other bits out.

Ideally, we'd like someone who can turn their hand to illustration, but it's not essential.

We’ll cover your travel and lunch expenses (but that doesn't mean getting taxi’s to Le Petit Blanc everyday), and we’ll make sure you're not working too early or too late.

So just to recap:

We’d like a student in for 2 days per week
For around 4 weeks
Hours 10am - 4pm
To start Tuesday 28th August

If you’re interested, please email possiblenewthinker@wearethoughtful.com and we can arrange a short interview with you. We’ll be looking to see people’s folders in the week commencing Monday 20th August.

It was the village fete this weekend, and turned out to be a great event underneath some glorious sunshine. Unfortunately, we had to take someone else’s word for it, as Thoughtful couldn’t make it. We made sure the tickets didn’t go to waste though, and gave them to our friends Katie and Tom who took some pictures for us.

On Monday we introduced you to Doh Boy, our new employee. Doh Boy is sent from howies®, with a mission to take the fat back out of bread. The reason it’s in there he says, is to make the bread quicker and to help keep it on supermarket shelves for longer. Doh Boy insists that everyone should try baking their own bread (in the baking tin he arrived in) as it’s really simple, and good for you.

Stu took Doh Boy home to show him and Emma how to make a good loaf.

All in all it took around two hours to do, and was so tasty, it was all gone before it could be shared around the office.

You can get your own Doh Boy here.