Back in January we were delighted to be asked by Ffotogallery to work with artist Helen Sear to develop a publication, and lots of other things besides, for her exhibition …the rest is smoke for Cymru yn fenis/Wales in Venice, Wales’ contribution to the 56th Venice Biennale. Although we can’t post any of the design work as yet as it’s all top secret at the moment.

So far we’ve contributed:

• – the publication to accompany the exhibition
• – vinyl banner and totem design to hang outside the exhibition venue and direct people to it
• – exhibition invites (print and email)
• – text and information panels for the exhibition itself
• – press, magazine and online adverts

Hopefully the tote bags will also be winging their way to Venice very soon too, which we’re inexplicably excited about (probably because we’ve never done one before).

The exhibition opens on 9 May and runs to 22 November.

The Silent Village exhibition opens at the Dox Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague on 12th Jan, 2012, with a new Czech translation of the catalogue texts. The show features work by Peter Finneomore, Paulo Ventura and Rachel Trezise (and a catalogue designed by us).

We might not make the opening as it’s a bit far to go for a night out, but if you’re in the area, pop along. The exhibition runs till the 9th April.

More on the Dox website.

Mike Cherim’s Secure Contact Form is now available in Welsh (cy). The form is designed to enable visitors to your site to get in touch with you, whilst hiding your email address from spammers.

We made use of the form on the Welsh School of Aromatherapy’s site and needed to offer the form bilingually (Welsh and English) so we thought it would be a good idea to make the language file available to other people. Kevin Donnelly kindly helped out with the translation and proofing of the language file (whilst simultaneously developing a free (GPL) Welsh-to-English translation service – http://cymraeg.org.uk/).

The language file has now been added to the download, so if a Welsh secure contact form is just what you’ve been waiting for, your prayers have just been answered. Or something.

Over a month ago now we took delivery of a box of lovely new books. As with any of our book jobs, we were thrilled to be able to finally leaf through something which we had only seen on screen during the design process.

Unfortunately they then sat in a box whilst ointment decided how best to release them into the wild. Fittingly enough, the launch is to take place in the location where the project started in the first place – Ty Canol woods in Pembrokeshire (a National Nature Reserve with 400 species of lichen amongst other things). And what better way to launch a book about artists walking, than with a selection of walks.

It all kicks off at 2pm on 26th July 2008, at the Urdd Centre, Canolfan Pentre Ifan, Felindre Farchog, Crymych, Pembrokeshire SA41 3XE with a selection of walks including: botanising; meanderthal; elasticated; outdoor philosophy and short, followed by the launch of the book and some ‘light refreshments’ – biscuits, booze or both.

All you need to do to take part is to let ointment know, by emailing enquiries[at]ointment.org.uk

Update: for those of you who simply can’t wait till then, you can now buy the book on amazon

We’re very pleased to announce the launch of our new website. As with most designers, keeping your own website fresh and current normally has to take a back seat to working for clients, but we’ve managed to squeeze in a couple of days in order to revamp the site.

The new site makes extensive use of WordPress, our favourite publishing tool, which provides ready made RSS feeds amongst other things. Other updates include a handy downloadable vcard so you can store all our address details at one click, a more elegant enquiry form and some accessibility tweaks.

There’s still a bit to do, including uploading all the books we helped to publish in 2007, and providing links so you can buy them from Amazon.