Vacancies
7 August, 2008
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We are looking for talented designers who want to do great work for interesting clients in the arts and cultural sectors. An inspiring portfolio and an interest in the arts are essential.

Those interested should email a PDF containing examples of recent work to our Creative Director, Sarah Tempest.
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Shot in the dark
5 August, 2008
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Last week we did a photoshoot with Newcastle based photographer Mark Taylor, to create the imagery we need for the promotional campaign we are producing for the Enlightenment Festival in Durham.

The festival brings artworks made of light to the banks of the River Wear, and our campaign which will launch in the coming weeks focuses on people reacting to the art.

We made a short behind-the-scenes film of the shoot, which you can view here.

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Flickr pool floods
31 July, 2008
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The Flickr pool which we recently launched as part of the website for The Grand Tour now includes pictures of the recent flood in York engulfing some of the artworks.

Over 170 images have been added to Flickr by members of the public since The Grand Tour launched in June.
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Branding Ice Age Britain
16 July, 2008
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Creswell Crags is a limestone gorge honeycombed with caves which were inhabited by our ancestors during the last Ice Age. It is acknowledged as one of the most significant archaeological landscapes in Europe because of the cave art, stone tools and animal bones found there.

In 2007 Creswell Heritage Trust, the organisation responsible for safeguarding the future of the site successfully raised the funding to develop a £9 million Museum and Education Centre which will tell the story of Ice Age Britain and explain the special place which Creswell Crags has within it.

In preparation for the launch of the new venue Creswell Heritage Trust have appointed Sumo to develop the brand identity and comprehensive guidelines for Creswell Crags.
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Sumo gets Enlightenment
16 July, 2008
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Enlightenment is an international light-based arts festival taking place in Durham this November. The festival will showcase four major original commissions created by two UK and two Indian artists designed to reflect and celebrate the City’s heritage and make use of the iconic structures and landmarks.

These will be supported by smaller pieces created by regional artists displayed in ‘urban gallery’ spaces such as shop windows and live performance pieces which will form a light trail across the City.

Sumo have been appointed to work alongside the organisers Durham City Vision and Durham City Arts to develop a brand identity and promotional campaign for the festival.
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Digital culture
10 July, 2008
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You can find Sumo on the pages of Arts Professional magazine and the Museums Journal in the next few weeks, being interviewed about how blogging and Facebook can help cultural destinations to boost their audiences.

Our digital team are doing some exciting work in both these area's and we are pleased that this has reached the attention of these prestigious publications.
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A celebration of South Asian culture
10 July, 2008
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Sumo have been appointed to work with the SAMA Festival to develop the promotional campaign for the week long celebration of South Asian culture. This years programme includes performances from some of the finest artists, musicians, DJs and dancers from the UK and South Asia.
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Talking branding at the Science Museum
24 June, 2008
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Over the past few years we have worked with cultural destinations across the UK to help them to develop strong brands, we will be sharing this experience at the Heritage 365, Museum Marketing Conference at the Science Museum, London in September.

Other organisations speaking include National Museums Liverpool, Sheffield Museums, Museum of Contemporary Art - Zagreb, Wellcome Collection and Brunel's ss Great Britain.

Tickets cost £247 and can be purchased from Heritage 365
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The Grand Tour
4 June, 2008


The Grand Tour is a collection of priceless paintings set free around the streets of York. These Fifty reproductions of pieces of art from The National Gallery and York Art Gallery will decorate street corners and hang on historic buildings with the aim of encouraging people to visit the galleries to see the real thing.

Our team produced the guide and website for The Grand Tour in York.
 



Fully Booked
3 June, 2008


Fully Booked is a new design annual dedicated to book design. It features innovative work from around the globe, including the award winning Bound book Sumo produced with artist Tanya Axford in 2006.
 


Sumo named in ‘Best 25 Design Agencies’
16 May, 2008

The Drum Magazine has named Sumo as one of the 'Best 25 Design Agencies outside of London' which is very nice of them.
 



Dragon Boat Race
8 May, 2008





One of our oldest clients Madventurer asked us to join them for the Durham Dragon Boat Race last weekend. This fundraising event lets amateur teams compete for glory on the waters of the River Wear on traditional Chinese Dragon Boats.

Our joint Madventurer-Sumo team started well, winning our first race, but with a poor second run we missed our chance for glory and had to retire to the bar instead.
 



Waygood Art Boutique
1 May, 2008

Waygood, the new multi-million pound contemporary art centre which will open in Newcastle next year, launched its Art Boutique on the site of the development yesterday.

The boutique is a new commercial gallery selling work by artists associated with Waygood. As part of our work developing the branding for the new venue, we created a colourful sub-brand for the boutique which can now be found on marketing materials, merchandise and bags.
 


i like... museums
26 April, 2008

The 'i like... museums' website was the focal point of a marketing campaign Sumo created for the North East Regional Museum Hub last summer. Visitors to the website could choose from over eighty trails which guided them to the region's museums and galleries, based on their personal interests. They could also create their own trails (and over thirty people did).

The website has just been shortlisted in the 'Best Use of User-Generated Content' section in the North East Digital Awards. This accolade follows the campaign being shortlisted in the International Museum Communication Awards last November.

Following the success of 'i like... museums' we have been comissioned to develop a follow-up campaign to promote the region's museums this summer.
 


Web 2.0 for Museums
23 April, 2008

We have just uploaded an article Jim has written for Heritage365 magazine about Web 2.0 for Museums and the changing expectations of internet users.

Click here to download it.
 


Shetland Museum & Archives
18 April, 2008

I was delighted to hear that our friends at Shetland Museum & Archives have reached the final four in the Art Fund Prize for museums and galleries (formerly the Gulbenkian Prize).

SUMO has worked with the team at the museum since 2004, developing the branding for the venue and more recently our design team has helped them to develop a range of interpretive panels and leaflets to guide visitors around the islands.

My last visit to the museum was a few weeks before the museum opened and it looked fantastic. The team at Shetland Museum and Archive, the architects and the exhibition designers deserve every accolade they get.

The winner of the £100,000 prize will be announced during a ceremony in London on 22 May 2008.
 


BBC Innovation Labs, Day 5
18 April, 2008

The final day of BBC Innovation Labs started with each of the ten companies pitching their ideas to the Commissioners. Having heard the ideas at the start of the week I was amazed at how far everyone had come.

The same was true of our own pitch, whilst at times during the week I had felt that the BBC mentors had been hard on us, it was now clear that they had helped us to develop the way we described our idea from something that took several minutes to a concept anyone could grasp in ten seconds.

We presented last with our five minute pitch explaining our idea and why the BBC should comission us to develop it further.

The Comissioners commented on how impressed they were with the whole group and then gave feedback on each of the pitches. Four of the ten companies were comissioned including SUMO.

It was a great end to a fantastic week and we are excited to be working with the BBC and to be given the chance to work with their team to take our idea further.
 

BBC Innovation Labs, Day 4
17 April, 2008

I woke up feeling positive after a long night's sleep. I now knew how I was going to present our pitch the following day; all I had to do was bring it all together.

David was making good progress too; what had seemed impossible the day before had come together incredibly fast and he had a working proof of concept by lunchtime, allowing him to log into the office and do some regular SUMO work while I brought the pitch together.

I had what I felt was a pretty comprehensive draft of the presentation by three o'clock which gave me a couple of hours to practice presenting it before a pitch rehersal to the BBC mentors.

The rehersal went well and the mentors suggested only a couple of small changes, meanwhile David had a chance to show off his proof of concept to Jason DaPonte who was impressed that we'd managed to get the proof of concept put together so fast.

By the end of the day I was pretty sure we had a winning concept.
 

BBC Innovation Labs, Day 3
16 April, 2008

Day three of BBC innovation Labs was the first time we would get to discuss our idea with the BBC Comissioners.

Most of the morning was spent pulling together a rough presentation which we could use to pitch our idea. The Commisioners arrived at midday and Jason DaPonte, Managing Editor of Mobile Platforms, listened as we presented him with our idea.

He asked if we thought we could put together a proof of concept before our final presentation on Friday. Basically, we needed to prove that we could put together the technology so that a mobile phone could be detected by our hardware and that would automatically update a Facebook profile.

David was worried. He'd put together some server-side software to do something similar for another project, but could he get that to update a Facebook profile in a day?

I was facing a crisis of my own, I just couldn't work out how to present our idea. I sat in our workspace till eleven trying to figure it out, but with no luck.
 

BBC Innovation Labs, Day 2
15 April, 2008

Day two of BBC innovation Labs started with me and David presenting two personas (Personas are profiles of people who might actually use our product or service) which we had created to test run our 'Lifecasting' idea. One was the perfect user for our idea, whilst the other would be a hard sell.

These personas were used to develop a user lifecycle scenario, from how they might hear about our 'product' through to how they would use it.

The day included lots of input from the BBC mentors and I have to admit that at times it felt like they were giving us a hard time. Over the course of the day, the way we described our idea changed a lot and at 5.30pm we presented a much more concise five minute pitch to the group.

It had been a hard day of debating the idea back and forth, but just when we thought we could head to the bar, we were asked to prepare a five minute description of our idea for the following morning.
 


BBC Innovation Labs, Day 1
14 April, 2008

Innovation Labs is a one week development programme which gives independent New Media companies the opportunity to develop innovative new products and services for the BBC.

We won one of ten places on the North East and Yorkshire Lab with a proposal based around developing a mobile based 'lifecasting' application for the 'Skins' generation. Myself (Jim) and our lead developer David make up the SUMO team for this project.

Our lab is at Swinton Park in North Yorkshire and brings together ten companies from the region and a group of mentors who will be working with us through the course of the week to develop our ideas from the initial proposal to a pitch which we will give on Friday to the BBC Comissioners.

Our day started with games to get to know each other which certainly broke down the barriers.

After lunch one of the BBC mentors, Frank Boyd, spoke to the group about analysing our ideas through Edward de Bono's theory of six hats thinking. We had to pitch the idea which won us a place at Innovation Labs to another group, who approached our proposal from Yellow Hat (Positive) or Black Hat (Negative) perspectives. They then had to repeat our idea back to everyone on Innovation Labs and suggest any improvements that thought we should make (Green Hat).

This was an interesting start to the week and really made us think about how clearly we could describe our idea.
 


Waygood Art Boutique
15 April, 2008

The new multi-million pound contemporary art venue in Newcastle, Waygood, is starting to take shape and in the next few weeks their Art Boutique will open on High Bridge Street.

SUMO developed the branding for Waygood, and the boutique gave us the opportunity to develop a colourful sub-brand (which we love).

Get along to High Bridge on May 1st to see it for yourself.
 


SUMO Wii
25 March, 2008




 


History of York
20 March, 2008

I am delighted to announce the launch of the BETA version of one of the most exciting websites our company has produced, History of York. The project brings together Museums & Heritage organisations from across Yorkshire to create an educational resource and a marketing tool for York as a destination for those interested in history.

The project was led York Museums Trust and funded by York City Council.
 

Fresh Awards
9 March, 2008

Having won over forty Fresh Creative Awards over the past few years, SUMO is working on the 2008 call for entries. We have chosen to go for a theme based around military decorations, with adverts asking 'Does your work deserve a medal?'.

Jim has also been invited to be a judge for this year's awards.
 


Quiet Riot
7 March, 2008

The Quiet Riot is a world record attempt which aims to gather together 1,000 people from all walks of life wearing mp3 players to move and dance in silence in Durham City in a communal space.

We designed the Quiet Riot logo.

Quiet Riot will take place on Sunday 13th July at 12 noon. For details send your contact details to info@tinarts.co.uk
 


Dancing the World
7 March, 2008

We've just launched the marketing campaign for the Dancing the World festival which takes place in Newcastle this May.
 


Journal Culture Awards
1 March, 2008

Last night I attended the Journal North East Culture Awards as a guest of the Sponsors Club for Arts and Business. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was a good night and reminded me of all the creative work happening in the North East.

I was especially pleased to see Durham City Arts win 'Best Event in Durham' for their Literature Festival. We have been working with the festival since 2001 (winning quite a few design awards along the way) and they have been one of our favourite clients ever since.

Having seen what they have planned for this year, I am pretty sure that this isn't the last time they'll be celebrating at the Culture Awards.
 


National Trust
22 January, 2008

Having worked with The National Trust for the past couple of years, we are pleased to have won a two year contract to produce literature for the Yorkshire & North East region.
 


Dance City
19 January, 2008

Dance City, the National Dance Agency for the North East of England has appointed SUMO to develop their offline and online communications.
 


Waygood
7 January, 2008

Waygood is a multi-million pound arts development in the centre of Newcastle. SUMO has developed a strong new brand for the organisation.

You can watch a video about the Waygood development here
 

 

 




Sumo is an award-winning,
multi-disciplinary design firm.

We work with interesting clients
to help them to communicate with their audiences through design,
in ways that excite, engage and inform.


Sumo
71 Westgate Road
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE11SG

T. 0191 261 9894
F. 0191 261 9010

E. info@sumodesign.co.uk




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