Author Archives: uma-admin
Simplicity. It’s something we’re all continually striving for, both at work and in our personal lives, but for many of us it can be a real challenge to achieve.
We can all think of things we do on a daily basis that we wish could be made more simple.
Technology continues to simplify our every day lives, from communication to travel, to simple every day tasks, it’s present in almost everything we do. In a contactless world, digital advances in Apps, websites and even things like QR codes have become a way of life, a way to get instant answers and ultimately make life less complicated. Technology is becoming so integrated in our world, we are at the point of taking it for granted and assuming it will always be there to simplify our lives.
At Blumilk, we’ve learnt over our 23 years that keeping things simple for our clients is the most effective way to build lasting relationships, deliver the best possible solutions and most successful creative outcomes.
We’ve found that simplicity and success go hand in hand together, when you keep things simple, there’s less to go wrong, there’s less to maintain, and there’s ultimately less to worry about! Keeping things simple leads to better accuracy, better reliability, better efficiency and less time wasted – and we can all benefit from that! Simple ultimately communicates better too. It gets the message across without fuss, it creates an instant connection. It’s straightforward, honest, realistic, achievable and it’s always affordable!
We follow five straightforward rules when working with our clients:
- We listen to your business problem.
Whether it’s a need to stand out from the crowd, establish your business in the marketplace, or improve your brand reputation, we make sense of your business problems or needs.
- We understand your current market position.
In order to establish how we can help you, we first qualify your business position in relation to your competition, and understand what your aims and ambitions are in the short and longer term.
- We are honest and realistic about how we can best work with you.
We will always try to find the best direction to make a difference for you and your business. For example, you might think you need a brand new website, but you may only need a little refresh, you may think you need a complete overhaul of your brand identity or a full name change, but a simple update may be all that is required. You may want your business to head in a different direction completely, but a simple refinement of the plan you already have, may be all that is needed to get your business back on track.
- We craft the solution together.
Through a process of concept creation, refinement, amendment and delivery of output, we work with you to achieve the best possible results and we always welcome your feedback, only by sharing thoughts and opinions can we work together to achieve the best solutions and outcomes for you.
- We like to stay in touch.
We make it our business to regularly stay in touch with you, to ensure you’re on track, and continue to support you in the best way we can.
Whether it’s a simple brand identity creation or a complex campaign of activity, a problem with staff recruitment, or difficulties getting the job done, blumilk can help you. Drop us a line or give us a call, we’d love to chat to you.
After the success of The Alnwick Garden’s first children’s publication last Christmas, ‘The Forgotten Snowman’ returns again this year in a brand-new festive story, ‘The Reindeer that couldn’t fly’.
The story is an inspiring tale of a small reindeer called Charlie, who embarks on a big adventure. Together with The Snowman, Charlie attempts to rediscover the magic of Christmas and get his friend back on Santa’s nice list.
The Alnwick Garden approached us in May this year with the first draft concept script which we were delighted to visually bring to life. Starting with pencil sketches, we created all the main characters in a standard pose to get the features and heights consistent. Father Christmas and his elves return as they were last year, as does The Forgotten Snowman, while Henry and Evie are slightly older and more grown up.
Our biggest challenge for this years book was to create Charlie! Small enough to be cute, large enough to be in proportion to The Snowman and full of charm and kindness. After a few rounds of amends, we settled on an illustration style and design that successfully visualised the friendly and bubbly Charlie. As the content of the story was refined and amended, the team began to sketch out a page plan and storyboard, perfecting each layout to capture key moments within the storyline, whilst incorporating characters from last year’s book.
This year we opted for a traditional pencil sketch illustrative approach, with full bleed illustrations to tell the heart-warming Christmas tale. Our team worked on illustrating individual elements, each character was hand drawn and coloured, while backgrounds were digitally illustrated. All elements were then brought together to be digitally enhanced, adding dimension and lighting to breathe life into the festive compositions.
‘The Reindeer that couldn’t fly’ along with ‘The Forgotten Snowman’ is available now for purchase at The Pinery gift shop, online and at The Alnwick Garden, and we’re sure it will be a festive treat for children everywhere!
If you have an initiative or idea you’d like to explore, contact us, we’d love to hear more.
CCW (Consumer Council for Water) are the independent representative of household and business water consumers for England and Wales. They have a
long-standing reputation for resolving consumer complaints against water companies and retailers, paired with extensive knowledge and experience providing free support and advice to customers.
We have always maintained an excellent relationship with CCW and following a recent successful rebrand, which was completed in July 2021, we were delighted when they once again approached us to help support them with the launch of a nationwide initiative. The aim is to encourage everyone to connect with their local water environment and in doing so, become more water conscious, learning more about how much water we use every and how water saving can help the environment. The added benefits encourage friends and family to stay active and learn more about the places they live.
The initiative is named Walking with Water, and also aims to raise awareness of the value of water and the impacts we can have on the natural environment through the way we use water, encouraging everyone to explore walks near bodies of water. Walking with Water is also educational, teaching children to learn the value of water whilst take part in fun activities along the way.
We conducted an initial scoping meeting with CCW, to understand who we were aiming the initiative at and where geographically the key target regions would have the most impact. Following on from this ,we created an identity and developed brand assets including social graphics, webpage, animation, blog images and a fun engaging activity booklet for all the family to complete as they explore.
The activity booklet is a free downloadable guide on all the amazing things to look out for on your ‘Walking with Water’ adventure.
CCW are in partnership with Afonydd Cymru, Living Streets and The River Restoration Centre to support the ‘Walking with Water’ initiative and raise awareness of water environments across England and Wales. The campaign continues to help people save water and their environment, check out it here.
If you have an initiative or idea you’d like to explore, contact us, we’d love to hear more.
Barnardo’s have come a long way since their founder, Thomas Barnardo set up a ‘ragged school’ to help disadvantaged children in 1867. From those early days through to more recent times, Barnardo’s are nationally recognised for providing care and support to hundreds of thousands of children, young people, parents, and carers across the UK.
In addition to this, for over 35 years, Barnardo’s has delivered and continues to deliver employment, training and skills support (ETS) courses, which allow young people to gain recognised skills and qualifications that they can build and develop upon throughout their adult working life.
In partnership with employers, schools, colleges and charities, Barnardo’s provide training and support to over 3,000 young people aged between 14 to 29 every year through 20 specialist centres.
For young people who have just left school, or are looking to enter employment, they provide careers advice on a one-to-one basis, and locate training and employment opportunities in areas local to them, including apprenticeship programmes and other qualifications recognised by employers. And it doesn’t stop there! Once in employment, Barnardo’s provide much needed on-going support to make sure everything continues to run smoothly.
We were delighted when Barnardo’s approached Blumilk earlier this year to see how we could support them with the design and build of their ETS website, which would stand alone as a showcase for the range of courses available from September 2022 through to August 2023.
www.barnardos-ets.org.uk
Beginning with an initial scoping meeting, it was important to understand the exact requirements of the website and the audience demographic we were aiming at. Through a staged process of concept work, wire framing, individual page design layouts and full web build, we were able to create an easy to use, engaging website which gives consideration to UX and UI, ensuring the best possible user experience.
Once fully built, the next step in the process involved engaging in a series of CMS training sessions to support the Barnardo’s ETS team in our Newcastle office and their offices in Perth and London. These sessions comprised a full training session with many of the Barnardo’s ETS team including Barnardo’s ETS Head of Operations. Staff gained valuable insight on how to add content and imagery and how to keep the website looking fresh with regular news and updated content without compromising the layout and style of the site.
To find out more about Barnardo’s and the support available for children, young people and families via the 800-plus services across the United Kingdom, please visit: www.barnardos.org.uk
Regardless of the size, type of business or project need, Blumilk will always find the most effective business solutions to help make the most of your business operations. If you have a business need that you’d like support with, from creative campaigns, branding and websites to digital marketing we are here to help you. Contact us we’d love to chat to you.
I’m sure you will all agree that sitting in traffic, every day, on our journey to and from work is not always the best way to start the working day. That’s why James, our Digital Development Manager cycles to work every day!Even before we relocated to Sixty Grey Street in central Newcastle, James has always routinely cycled back and forth each day as part of his daily exercise routine. Our new office is fully equipped with shower facilities and indoor cycle park to encourage more people to choose cycling as a viable alternative option for everyone’s journey to work, and James is taking full advantage.
The benefits of cycling or walking to work, far outweigh driving our cars, which most of us seem to opt for. It’s cheaper, it’s better for your physical and mental health and it can help you to be more productive throughout the day. Combined with a healthy diet, cycling can help to alleviate stress and keep the body and mind in good shape. It’s easy to vary the intensity of exercise on a bike, so for anyone thinking about getting a bike or starting to cycle to work it’s best to start gently and build up momentum and miles as your fitness improves.
Cycling is also the personal passion of Blumilk founders, Colin and Adam Robertson. Adam, Creative Director and Co-founder, and Cycling Team Manager has grown up with cycling in his blood. He is proud to have represented the UK over a number of years on the downhill mountain bike circuit, throughout Europe and also in America. During this time, he won numerous national medals and achieved seriously impressive results. Today, his love for the sport is as strong as ever, and he continues to work hard with the Blumilk cycling team to maintain a presence on the circuit regionally.
Adam says:
“We were so passionate about cycling we decided a number of years ago to form our own race team which is made up of 10 local road cyclists, who are all nationally ranked riders. It’s a great way to promote our environmentally friendly ethics, whilst also getting Blumilk’s name out on the road.”
James was also heavily influenced by Adam and found his love of cycling shortly after joining the blumilk team. In a short space of time he has come a long way and now, he too, also competes in both on and off road racing events throughout the year.
James says:
“Cycling to work is a great way for me to get regular, consistent training miles in without impacting on the rest of my day.”
On the 4th September James took part in a Cyclo-Cross race in Ponteland. The course was run on grass where there is ample hard standing/grass parking facilities, toilets and a café. Travelling back and forth to work each day combined with a routine training programme, James did well at the event and finished 8th in his category.
The Blumilk cycling team has also had its share of successes over the years, across many disciplines of cycling, from regional road race champions to winners in criterium, time trails and, during the winter, cyclo-cross.
If you are thinking about cycling to work, you may want to investigate the Bike to Work scheme. It is a UK Government tax exemption initiative introduced in the Finance Act 1999 to promote healthier journeys to work and to reduce environmental pollution. It allows employers to loan bikes and safety equipment to employees as a tax-free benefit. There are a few different scheme providers out there each with their own variations, but the basic idea is the same.
It’s a simple process:
- Your workplace registers with a scheme provider
- You choose the bike you want
- Your employer pays for it
- You pay your employer back through monthly instalments taken through payroll.
Cycling to work cuts down on pollution, congestion and roadway cost but also comes with a whole host of benefits for your health, wealth, and the environment too. With the introduction of the new Clean Air Zone in Newcastle about to get underway in 2023, there’s never been a better time to consider an alternative way to commute.
If you’re still a little nervous about trying it for the first time visit: www.cyclinguk.org/article/guide-cycling-work for advice and you’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner.
If you love cycling as much as us we do at Blumilk please follow @blumilk_cyclingteam and stay up to date with all our cycling adventures!
