3hundredand65 is an amazing project in aid of The Teenage Cancer Trust, conceived on New Years Eve by Dave Kirkwood. ‘‘It is a response to the awful news I had that my good friend’s teenager had been diagnosed with cancer and would consequently be facing a year of invasive treatment,” explains Dave. That good friend was our MD, Dom Raban, so the project has a very special significance for Corporation Pop.

Taking place over the 365 days of 2012 the project uses Twitter in a unique exercise in collaborative storytelling. Every day a new storyteller contributes no more than 140 characters to the emerging narrative. Though the contributions are finely crafted, for the storytellers it’s an easy undertaking. Dave on the other hand has his work cut out providing daily illustrations to accompany each tweet.

“I’m a designer not an illustrator,” says Dave, “I’ve never taken a commercial commission for my drawings. I nearly lost my sight two years ago in a freak accident. Manchester Eye Hospital saved it, but I’m under the continuous threat of it going at any time. I started drawing at the Eye Hospital one day and couldn’t stop. It’s become a bit of an obsession so it’s my channel swim if you like, without all the effort.”

We’ve designed and built the website and will be designing a limited edition book, sponsored by GF Smith Papers and published early next year. We are also hosting the site – not something we’d normally mention but for the fact that on 23rd May twitter supremo Mr. Stephen Fry, who has an astonishing 4.3 million followers, will be contributing to the story so we’re preparing for a huge surge in traffic!

www.3hundredand65.co.uk

We’ve just completed a new social networking and e-commerce site for The Leadmill – the legendary Sheffield live music venue which is now celebrating its 30th year. As part of the contract we also undertook a complete rebrand producing a new logo and brand guidelines.

The Leadmill has a particular significance for Dom Raban, our MD. In the early ’80s he rented an office upstairs where he produced ‘Proper Gander’ a well-known fanzine of the time and documenter of the burgeoning Sheffield music scene. Later that decade The Leadmill became his first client as he embarked on a career as a self-employed designer producing posters for its club and gig nights.

Dom says: “Not only is this a great win for Corporation Pop but it’s also a very special project for me. The Leadmill was my social hub in the 80s and it’s great to see it entering the next stage of its history with an attitude just as young and fresh as it was back in the day. The only downside is it makes me feel incredibly old!”

Visit The Leadmill website.

We’re currently looking for a Head of Digital to join our fast growing team. This is a very exciting position which offers the chance to join our senior management team and help shape the future of the company. For more details go to the work with us section of this site.

Every so often we all down tools and take a day out of the studio with the aim of being inspired. We call this our ‘cultural day out’ and the brief is that we visit someone or something that is creatively stimulating but not directly connected with what we do. Previous ‘days out’ have included David Mellor’s cutlery factory in Hathersage and limited edition book publishers Incline Press in Oldham – both hard acts to follow. But our most recent excursion didn’t disappoint!

Yesterday we hooked up with Nick Roberson of Roberson Stone Carving. He arranged for us to have a behind-the-scenes tour of the fabulous John Rylands Library, a little known Mancunian gem which took ten years to build but apparently only two weeks to design! Nick’s knowledge and enthusiasm was enthralling – it was the incredible quality of the stonework here that first inspired Nick to become a stonemason. After our fascinating tour we all piled in to a minibus which took us back to Nick’s workshop. Here we learnt about the materials and techniques that Nick uses in his work and witnessed some of the beautiful projects that he’s working on at present.

In our computer focused world its very easy to loose sight of ‘craft’. Yesterday (and our other days out) serve to remind us why we were first inspired to become designers and keep us in touch with the true master craftsmen. Its their singularity of purpose and devotion to their craft that enables them to produce truly remarkable work.

Here’s Nick carving a Trajan letter ‘R’ for us. You can see the rest of our photos from the day here.