The first flowers of our  You are important-project are up.

Please join the Piikkiö Harvaluoto community school students and parents next weekend for their flower-get-together with the media. Sima and Pulla serverd.

Thanks Anu Virpi and Saija-Riikka Louhelainen for the photo.

We at BOTH like to think that design and branding are very wide concepts.

We think for example that branding is all about communicating about yourself in an honest way to win the heart of a client. And communication is a wide concept.

Now, getting to the heart of clients can include printed or digital visual elements. Classic corporate communications revolve around this. We have a message, we give it a form, and publish it. You read and understand. In many cases it’s enough.

But, if one broadens the horizon a bit, what if we mixed the classic communication concept a bit, and involved the “target group” in winning his or her heart? This is something we like to see in area branding. And something we played around a bit in for example the Kauniainen planting. We bet hundreds of planters from Kauniainen feel a  bit better about their city after it.

The line between design and art is very thin.

Area branding is usually about communicating something They have done for You. Then you dig it or don’t.

Now, what if one actually could take part in developing the area, really could take part in it? Would it not make it much more meaningful to you? Could it really get into your heart, not because you dig the message, but because you yourself have actually been developing the very dream of it? This is a new way of thinking about branding and wefind it interesting.

And back to 1.0 communications where companies tell you they are good, now what if they really were good?

With thoughts like this we’ve been developing a digital concept with our dear buddies from Avaja Open, the open communications experts.

We are happy and proud to be soon launching a service, where just about anyone can publish and develop their dreams together with the public and private sector. You dream. Your friends help. A company helps. The city official helps. All benefit. In our first pilot Finnoo the Joukkoenkeli (Crowdangel.us) will be used for urban planning.

Please see the Joukkoenkeli site for additional info (only in Finnish for the time being!).

You can also follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Joukkoenkeli

We’ll keep you posted.

We’re looking for an intern for the fall of 2012.

Since knowledge of Finnish will be crucial, this post will be in Finnish only. Sorry!

Suunnittelutoimisto BOTH Oy tarjoaa harjoittelupaikkaa graafisen suunnittelun uutteralle ja taitavalle opiskelijalle.

BOTH Design Collective on graafiseen suunnitteluun, brandinrakennukseen, typografiaan, yritysviestintään ja lehtiin keskittyvä pieni toimisto Helsingin Kauppatorin ja Senaatintorin välissä. Tämän ehkä tiedätkin, kun sivuillamme olet.

Tarjoamme harjoittelijalle hieman besserwisserimäis-elitistisesti valveutuneen pienen toimiston innostavan ja joustavan ilmapiirin ja mahdollisuuden päästä lähelle suunnitteluprosessia. Pientä palkkaakin maksetaan. Työ tulee olemaan pääosin avustavaa työtä graafisen muotoilun, brandirakennuksen, lehtien, designin ja digitaalisen median parissa, kykyjen ja halujen mukaan muutakin.

Edellytämme harjoittelijalta huolellisuutta ja jämäkkyyttä, työtahtoa sekä perussoftien hallintaa.

Harjoitteluaika on sovittavissa 1. elokuuta – 31. joulukuuta 2012 välille.

Yhteydenotot, työnäytteet, työtodistukset ja suositukset osoitteeseen rekry(kiekura)both.fi

Technology Academy Finland has announced The Millennium Technology Prize 2012 laureates: Linus Torvalds and Shinya Yamanaka. Excellent choises, we say!

Talouselämä, the iconic business weekly magazine has renewed. The magazine got smaller in size, but way bigger in appearance. We were involved in the logo design. Thank you Teemu Lehtosalo for trusting us, and congratulations for the beautiful design. More images will be awailable in our portfolio shortly. And you can read more about the redesign here (finnish only, sorry).

We were just informed, that we won not one but TWO golds in the Graphis annual design competition.

One for our own identity:

And one for the Evita magazine we designed:

BOTH is among Gold winners in Graphis Logo Design 8 competition. For which logo design? That is still a bit of a mystery.

We did a little thingie with the WDC organization and Idealist on visualizing information. A fast project it was, and in the core of our passion: to understand and to make understandable. More on this later on.

Wow, we’ve got four of our pieces in the new Design Elements: Color Fundamentals -book by Aaris Sherin, published by Rockport.

Aaris is currently an assistant professor in the St. John’s University in New York. Here’s some more on her.

A nifty little book we say.

Here go the cover and some crummy snapshots to our pieces. Click to get to the original!

We earlier told we’ve been honoured to be included in a Polish school book. We do not really know what the book is specifically about, but it seems it’s about language and culture. Our Freedom of Expression poster is in it and the topic is cencorship.

Here’s an iPhone snapshot of the cover in case somebody can shed more light on this.