What is design?  George Cox, the former Chairman of the Design Council, defined the practice as the link between creativity and innovation, ‘it shapes ideas to become practical and attractive propositions for users or customers.’  This statement alone underlines the importance of design in everything, including retail, interiors, events and exhibitions which are the sectors we cover at Straco.  Without design there would be no consumer attraction, no creative thinking or innovation, no brand communication.

With design all around us, and a lot going on in the industry, we thought we would take this opportunity to explore what has been happening with some recent UK events and innovations.

And the winner is: The NAS Design Partnership Awards

Celebrating innovative collaborations between shopfitters and interior designer, these awards were held on September 15^th in London.  This year saw the awards opening up to non-members for the first time, and expanding on an international level, focusing purely on the success of retail, non-retail and leisure interiors.  Everyone nominated was certainly worthy of the honour and the standards were high.  The winners that stood out to us included Mattia Pegoraro, an up and coming young designer who won two awards, Triplar Ltd and their collaboration with Oxfam culminating in a small project award, and of course ISG, who received the NAS Interior of the Year Award.

A week of delights: The London Design Festival

The annual event held in September to promote the big smoke at the design capital of the year recently took place.  A design extravaganza took place across the city, encompassing exhibitions, product launches, pop-up shops, seminars, workshops, installations, and much more.  The exhibition to stand out for us was ‘You Say You Want a Revolution: Records & Rebels 1966-70’ based at the V&A museum, exploring the sixties and its music, fashion, film, design and politics both visually and acoustically, and our installation of choice had to be ‘Smile’ by Alison Brooks, a 34 metre wooden structure you can actually walk in and around on the grounds of Chelsea College of Arts.  With so much going on it was difficult to choose!

New on the scene: The resilient new £5 note

Even if you haven’t seen a new five pound note yet you will most certainly have heard about it and its amazing powers to remain intact following a spin around a washing machine!  The newly designed note, featuring Winston Churchill as its figurehead, is not only waterproof (due to being made from polymer), but also has more security features meaning it is harder to counterfeit.  A new £10 note is set to be released next year, with the new £20 not being released until 2020.

And finally: The Straco Towers Summary

As we discussed in our last blog, we were excited about the arrival of Sinead who joined the team in the newly created position of Sales & Marketing Manager.  We are more than happy to report that Sinead has fit in fabulously (like she has always been here!) and is doing an amazing job of really getting to grips with the business, creating new strategies and meeting clients.  There are so many exciting events in the pipeline we can say with certainty we are very, very excited!

With Sinead having settled in effortlessly it is now time to focus on adding to the team to help with the ever expanding workload.  We are currently looking for 2 enthusiastic, motivated and enigmatic individuals to join us as Recruitment Executive and Recruitment Resourcer.  If you fancy joining a dynamic, exciting and fast paced company then go to our join the team page for more details.  If you are ambitious and looking for career progression, Straco is definitely the place to be!