It could be down to the fact that we’re getting heavily featured on some good web awards sites. These include:

Design Shack
The Favourite Website Awards (thefwa.com)
Web Creme
CSS Mayo
Most Inspired
Design Fridge
Top Site Tally
Nodus Awards

A lot of the comments are about the clear, simple and functional design. Great to hear.

If either of these posts at one of London’s most exciting publishing agencies sound like they’re up your street, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. For the Sub Editor post, email lucy@sundaypublishing.com or ollie@sundaypublishing.com. For the Art Director post, email matt@sundaypublishing.com.

Full job specs will be available soon, on request.

The magazine, which we’re relaunching as Modus, will be published 10 times a year. Modus will enhance RICS’ reputation as the pre-eminent professional body for surveying by combining thought-leadership content and practical advice to stimulate and shape debate.

Ian Fussey, RICS Head of Member Communications, said, “We are looking to maximise the potential of the magazine as a vital communication channel for the membership. Sunday showed us they understood the challenges we face and came up with an incredibly strong proposition that exceeded the brief on every level.”

Toby (our MD) said: “We’re tremendously excited about working with RICS on this project. The magazine will feature big name writers with provocative viewpoints and look like nothing else in its sector. It plays to our strengths as an agency, supplying excellent creative solutions within a strong integrated communications framework.”

Watch this space…

Each year, leading UK mag Creative Review’s Illustration Annual showcases the very best work by illustrators. And we’re chuffed to bits that this year they’ve included one of our stories from Today Tomorrow, the customer magazine that we publish for Toyota.

The story entitled “A Day In The Life… 2109-Style” looked ahead 100 years to a typical day-in-the-life. The piece weaves together the technological innovations that we could be using on a day to day basis – some from Toyota, some from other companies.

We went for a comic-strip approach, and persuaded the quite fantastic Tavis Coburn to create the look. 

Tavis Coburn’s site is: www.taviscoburn.com

“I do feel strongly,” the superbly named Constance Spry once wrote, “that flowers should be a means of self-expression for everyone.” A florist, social reformer and best-selling author, Mrs Spry (1886-1960) took the cut-flower traditions of the upper classes and turned them on their head, effectively democratising the art of homemaking. She taught many Brits how to beautify their homes by making the most of such humble materials as vegetable leaves, twigs and weeds, and encouraged them to use a motley assortment of containers, including broken bird cages, tureen lids and gravy boats.

Having read a particularly romantic account of Constance Spry’s life and achievements in a spring issue of Vogue, I found myself inspired by her creative example. So I skipped off to a flower-arranging course held at the sunny, secret haven that is King Henry’s Walk Garden in Islington.

The raw materials on offer were rather more conservative than Constance might wish for – Tesco cheapie bunches, plastic pots and gardening ‘oasis’ (the green crunchy stuff that soaks up water) – but I held true to her inventive spirit by grabbing a few leaves and squirly twigs from the garden.

This is the wisdom I learned from my flowery foray:

-    Less is more – too many colours, textures etc makes for an untidy mess
-    Go green. If you don’t want to spend a small fortune on expensive flowers, remember that you can get lots of lovely colour and texture from foliage instead
-    Balance the arrangement by adding a bit of symmetry – put large leaves on either side and create a diagonal ‘fan’ of one type of flower running through the middle
-    Fill out the base of your arrangement, which might otherwise be a bit sad and sparse
-    Poke the flowers and leaves into the oasis with conviction, because if it gets too holey, the stems won’t stay put
-    Check your arrangement from all angles

They’re both talking about the imminent launch of WW2history.com, our ground-breaking digital publishing project for renowned historian Laurence Rees. It’s designed to be an accessible route to WW2 resources, with regularly updated content including film footage, witness statements and an interactive timeline.

WW2history.com is also revolutionary because it marks a move toward paid-for web content. As more and more publishers recognise the value of taking this type of content straight to web – without diluting their online presence with third-party advertising – it’s a trend that’s set to continue.

We took on the project back in February 2009, and have since spec’ed out the design, functionality, security and hosting issues for the site, leaving Laurence free to work with some of the academic world’s leading historians to bring together its exclusive content.

It’s been a fantastic experience for the Sunday team. Keep an eye on the blog for more stories as the site launches, including an interview with Laurence.

The current Sunday Publishing favourites, well worth checking out, are:

1. Ken Robinson on education – a brilliant analysis of how Western education systems fail to nurture creativity
2. Rory Sutherland on advertising – the most incisive and wittiest ad man in the UK
3. Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell on choice and happiness – as illustrated by spaghetti sauce
4. Hans Rosling on how unlocking data challenges our assumptions on the developing world
5. And finally, because he’s my old boss and a genius presenter, Julian Treasure on the effect of sound on our lives

www.voteforachange.co.uk

and…

www.futurefairforall.org/

Surprisingly, neither party seems to have bought Google adwords for their campaign slogans. Maybe soundbite politics hasn’t made it onto the web yet.

Unsurprisingly, no one has done anything with the Liberal Democrat slogan of ‘Change that works for you. Building a fairer Britain’.  This lack of online attention seems to be a common theme for the Lib Dems. Using the very unscientific measure of ‘Google suggests’ (the real time tool that suggests other popular searches in the search bar, based on what people most frequently type in) we entered ‘Is Nick Clegg’ and were presented with this lone suggestion:

Maybe things will change following the recent TV debate, but it seems that, right now, people are most interested in Clegg’s relationship status.

On the flipside, when we Googled ‘Is Gordon Brown’, we got these enlightening suggestions:

And for David Cameron:

Good to know that people are asking the questions that matter.

N.b. Click on the Conservative slogan www.voteforchange.org.uk and see what you get…

It’s always exciting when a magazine breaks the mould. Fantastic Man did it three years ago when designer Jop van Bennekom and journalist Gert Jonkers set out to reinvent ‘the gentleman’s style journal’. The title’s minimalist design and fresh take on fashion photography – a knowing, arch style – had an immediate effect on the rest of the men’s magazine market.

Its sister publication, the recently launched The Gentlewoman, looks set to have the same impact.

Ok, it shares the format of most other women’s magazines, but here the similarities end. The cover has a black and white portrait of Phoebe Philo (Creative Director at Céline) framed within a ‘nude’ colour background; the masthead is all lowercase Futura (expect another revival of this 20’s font shortly) and the paper has a highly tactile mottled texture. And, bar furniture and one discreet coverline, that’s it.

Inside, the design style is deceptively simple – understated, elegant, open, orderly and effortlessly authoritative. Colour is used sparingly – it’s largely black and white, but with the odd dash of block colour to mark out key stories and the three editorial sections. Imagery is challenging and used in challenging ways: tall and small models with heads cropped star in one of the main fashion stories; a series of abstract marine shots introduce a feature on ocean swimmer Lynne Cox; six pages of the backs of heads hold together a feature on ‘up-dos’… The text paper is gloss – conventional, maybe, but it contrasts nicely with the cover and an uncoated reference section in the centre.

The magazine’s editor in chief, Penny Martin, says the magazine is ‘about modernity and women that are just fantastic.’ It ditches celebrity for ‘women who live extraordinary lives’. What a breath of fresh air.

From its cover style to editorial platform, The Gentlewoman provides a stark contrast to any other women’s title. It’s dared to be different and deserves to succeed.