We were commissioned to produce the extensive 180 page plan by Sellafield Ltd with whom we have had a successful ongoing relationship with for over 14 years supplying them with multi-discipline design support services, recently winning the contract for the supply of Marketing, Productions and Publication Services to support Sellafield Ltd and the NDA Estate for the next four years.

The Sellafield Plan has been compiled over the past two years under the guidance of Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), owners of the Site Licence Company. It is the first credible and underpinned lifetime plan for the Sellafield site and details the forward programme of operations, construction projects and decommissioning.

The Plan also provides information crucial to the economic development of West Cumbria. Acceleration of the decommissioning programme at Sellafield site means higher levels of employment than would otherwise have been the case and also provides opportunities for the local supply chain and increased prospects of inward investment for West Cumbria.

Our dedicated nuclear team here at Forepoint worked closely with Sellafield Ltd to create this extensive and informative document utilising the established tripartite brand identity which represents the three key organisations; Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Sellafield Ltd and Nuclear Management Partners, and held a number of workshops with site stakeholders to assist in both the development of the content and design of the plan prior to publication.

Sellafield Plan - PDF Page Turner

At Forepoint we are committed to the innovation of our processes and services and we try to introduce cost savings where appropriate, we therefore decided on producing the plan in a modular nature which was encapsulated in a ring binder which allows cost effective updating of data in the future. We also created an interactive pdf page turner which allows people to view the plan online thus saving on production costs.

NMP Chairman Tom Zarges hailed the plan as a major milestone for the site, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the nuclear industry in general. He added: “We have applied our world leading expertise over the past two years to producing this plan and we are fully committed to delivering the promises made in it.”

You view the groundbreaking Sellafield Plan online on the Sellafield Ltd website.

It’s common knowledge that car manufacturers often spend large amounts of money making sure that their doors shut with a reassuringly expensive clunk, and we all admire the quietness of a well-engineered vehicle, so why spend time making something inherently quiet make more noise? It sounds a bit of a trivial pursuit for a University, in this case Warwick, to spend time exploring. Well, it  comes down to one of those external factors: safety. If you can’t hear a car coming chances are you might step out and end up in A&E. Multiply that by the number of cars and pedestrians on our streets and it becomes quite an important issue to say the least.

So it needs to make noise and, like the colour coding of traffic lights, does it matter what noise it makes? Again it sounds a bit trivial, fun even with spaceship bleeps and whirs being coming to mind. But if you think about it, it’s a pretty big problem to solve. At the moment most vehicles have a somewhat similar engine voice – whether it be a growl, a roar or a purr and we are encouraged from childhood to stop, look and listen. But for what will kids of the future be listening out for? A bleep, a whoop, a whirr or maybe even a custom made, down-load- your-own favorite sound-bite? Should it be irritatingly loud or squeaky, so you can’t miss it? Should it be quiet and calm so as to make the environment a more comfortable place in which to live? Hmmn, not a design puzzle that’s very easy to answer. Any suggestions?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13416020

With the support of a European funding grant , Hawkswells’ were able to install a state-of-the-art milking machine at the dairy which would allow an ‘up’ in production while still retaining that genuinely unique way they produce and deliver their milk products.

This was the perfect opportunity to ease a traditional family business into the 21^st century by developing a suite of communications that would extol the virtues of their heritage, whilst positioning them as an up-to-date forward thinking business.

We were commissioned to design and develop a new product range name, labels and website for Hawkswells’.

The name

The first stop was a new name for their range of milk products. Making clear market differentiation was key and creating a naming strategy that would be distinctive yet represent the fundamental USP of Hawkswells’ – a local family dairy producing and bottling pure, fresh, natural milk products on their farm in the Yorkshire Dales.

The answer was PureDales…‘it does exactly what it says on the tin’.

Pure Dales Logo

The labels

The name gave us the perfect foundation for the creative development of a label range, enabling us to add personality and character to the product lines through the creation of a little fun character ‘fluffy the cow’ (a name given to one of the ‘girls’ in the herd by a younger Hawskwell family member). The result is a set of eleven different product labels for six product lines, delivering great individual on-shelf presence and the potential for developing additional lines in the future.

Pure Dales Label's

Pure Dales Milk Bottles

The website

The responsibility of the website was to build on the character and personality of the labels, while making the user experience engaging and communicating the Hawswells’ USP in bucket loads. Developed using HTML5 and CSS3, the clean simple approach to the site really hit the spot, a neat homepage scrolling banner,  product gallery and contact footer, combined with our easy to use ForeCMS delivered on all fronts. We even created a nice little iOS icon too, just to put the ‘icing’ on the iPad/iPhone users’ cake. We like the attention to detail.

Pure Dales Website

Pure Dales iOS Icon

The outcome is a package of communications for Hawkswells’ that says ‘the right stuff, to the right people in the right way’ and has the potential to deliver genuine results for the business. Watch this space for feedback.

We were approached to give full creative, structural and production input in producing this commemorative book, in celebration of the formal commissioning of HMS Astute into full service. We were honoured to have received acclaim for the quality of the publication from dignitaries and crew at the commissioning ceremony, and are very proud to have been a part of this momentous event in celebrating the commissioning of the most technologically advanced submarine in the world.

HMS Astute Commissioning Book

We are also now on the shortlist for Class Winner and will find out if we have taken this prestigious title at the IoIC Awards Gala Dinner on Friday 17th June in London. We feel that being shortlisted for a National Award is a remarkable achievement and we are especially honoured as the IoIC Awards are Europe’s biggest internal communications competition and our work has been judged by leading communication professionals to be among the best in the country.

So keep your fingers crossed and watch this space…

Actually, if truth be told we signed up on a bit of a whim, it sounded interesting, we fancied doing something different, we could raise a bit for charity, add in a bit of team-building, that sort of thing. It is only since we have been training for a few months that the full implication and meaning of the Trek has sunk in.

In the mists of Rivington

The Oxfam TrailTrekker is a 101.5km (63 miles) non-stop trek around the Yorkshire Dales which has to be completed in teams of four and within 30 hours. I don’t know how we managed to convince eight people to take part, but we did. And then, on training walks, the reality began to creep in… it was going to be very long, very hard and very painful!

Another hill...

The route on the day(s!) will be punctuated by Water Stops and Checkpoints where we will be able to refill our drink bottles and food supplies. Our Support Crew, made up of three of Forepoint’s best, will also ensure that we have everything we need in the way of spare clothing, nibbles, treats and it has to be said – painkillers!

One thing you have plenty of on a long distance walk is time to think and this can be both a blessing and a curse – let your spirits flag when you’re getting weary and your thoughts can sink you faster than a torpedo. On the other hand, it can give you time to consider why you are putting yourself through all the blisters, sweat and tears. In the beginning for me it was personal; I wanted to get fit, lose weight, and get back out onto the hills and mountains that I’d loved to walk in my teens and early twenties, but that has now changed.

Oxfam has told us that the money we raise will go directly into disaster response, helping to aid those whose lives have been turned up-side-down by earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters. It can often be hard to empathize with people suffering when they are thousands of miles away, the horrors sanitized by the television screen. However, when the Earthquake hit Japan, in March, I contacted a cousin of mine who’d been working out there to see if any of his colleagues had been affected. Fortunately, no one from the office had been directly hurt, but some of them were having, because the transport infrastructure had been destroyed, to walk up to 40km home to see if their loved ones were still alive. This struck a chord with me. Here we were feeling very noble about walking for charity when people, just like us, had no alternative but to walk huge distances under much, much worse conditions. How would we feel? How would we cope in that situation?

So, whilst we have been getting many plaudits for taking on what will, undoubtedly, be one of the toughest challenges of our lives, it is the difference that the money we raise will make that will be the most meaningful.

If you’d like to support us please got to one of our fundraising  pages:

http://www.justgiving.com/ForepointTeams
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/forepointteams

Although we were in amongst some great designs we held a strong lead throughout and we would like to thank all who voted for us and Sign-Up Technologies themselves for holding the competition.

You can view all the entries on facebook and see the official announcement of the result on sign-up.to’s competition page.

1st Prize: 32GB iPad with presentation packaging and personalisation

The 1st prize was a 32GB Apple iPad, which arrived today (to a very excited team) and we are very grateful for the prize, presentation packaging and engraving.

As a thank you we have offered to provide a white label of the winning email template for Sign-Up Technologies customers to use. We will notify you by twitter when this is available so make sure to follow us to find out about this and all things Forepoint.

We are looking forward to making use of the iPad for client presentations and to produce adaptive (iPad compatible) websites.

Astuteclass.com Holding Page

You can register your interest in the Astute Class programme and microsite by visting the holding page and entering your email address in order to subscribe for notifications and updates.

iPhone screen shot of bookmark icon

The microsite once live will offer a vast amount of information about the Astute Class programme and its development, with interesting facts, great photography, videos, interviews and the ability to take a tour of one of the most advanced attack submarines in the world.

Facts about HMS Astute

• She is 97 metres from bow to stern.
• She has a beam of 11.2 metres.
• She displaces 7,400 tonnes of seawater.
• Her cabling and pipework would stretch from Glasgow to Dundee.
• She is the first Royal Navy submarine not to have a traditional periscope, instead using electro-optics to capture a 360-degree image of the surface for subsequent analysis by the commanding officer.
• Astute is the first submarine to have an individual bunk for each crew member.
• She manufactures her own oxygen from seawater as well as her own drinking water.
• She could theoretically remain submerged for her 25-year life, if it were not for the need to restock the crew’s food supplies.
• She is faster under the water than she is on the surface – capable of speeds in excess of 20 knots (37km/h), although her top speed is classified.

Rear Admiral Simon Lister, Director of Submarines, who oversees the build programme of the class for the MOD, said:

“To my mind Astute is a 7,000 tonne Swiss watch. There is an extraordinary amount of expertise that goes into putting one of these submarines together. There are stages when it’s like blacksmithing and there are stages when it’s like brain surgery.”

We visited the Health and Fitness exhibition for the UK’s health and fitness sector and it was supported by the FIA (Fitness Industry Association) and IOU (Independent Operators Unite). We got the opportunity to look at the very latest products and services, network with other businesses and industry experts as well as seeing various live demonstrations of training programmes and fitness equipment.

Forepoint at Leisure Industry Week

All in all, it was a very good day, we met loads of interesting people, saw loads of innovative products but more importantly we even got the chance to try a few things out. I have to say though one of the highlights of the day was watching Keith pretend he was surfing on the ultimate aquatic attraction the Wavesurfer, however I don’t think he’ll be winning medals any time soon!

Keith at the Wavesurfer stand

We feel our new website both articulates and strengthens our vision and values perfectly whilst demonstrating that both Guardianship and Innovation come to life in the hands of our people.

This simple, defined message shows we are friendly, helpful and reliable. We care, and we’re great to work with. We take a truly consultative approach and are able to understand the priorities and objectives of our clients, especially those that have to satisfy the requirements of multiple stakeholders. We deliver design communications that meets their criteria.

Our ultimate strength is our ability to produce exactly what is needed to protect and build brands.

Wenlock and Mandeville get the Gold Medal from Forepoint, what do you think?