The moment Polaroid decided to stop making film their huge following sulked. Nearly a year later and they announced they were back in the room and would start making the stuff again. Since then people have fallen back in love with their cherished instant photography device and every week we hear more and more people discussing Polaroids. Lady Gaga become their Creative Director and suddenly Polaroids were cool again.

With all this interest we invited freelance beauty and lifestyle writer Adele Mitchell to guest post about the subject.

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Last week the D&AD hosted their yearly awards ceremony at The Roundhouse in London.

Forty-two Yellow Pencils were awarded to work that set new standards in creative excellence, along with five Black Pencil’s – the creative industry’s most elusive prize, only awarded for truly outstanding and groundbreaking work. Of the five Black Pencil’s handed out the final one went to D&AD perennial award winner, Apple, for its website Apple.com. This prize was the only Black Pencil that received a lacklustre response from the audience, prompting only a small ripple of applause.

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A couple of weeks back retailer Waterstone’s unveiled their new brand identity on their website and throughout all their stores. The bookseller has changed its logo and created a new strap line – “Feel every word”, which both feature on waterstones.com.

Many people, agencies and sites were quick to jump in and critique the work, which is always to be expected in ‘new’ brand development. Having had a few weeks to absorb the move though I revisited the work with an open mind to have another look.

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Which political party’s website wins the design vote?

Okay, so today’s the day. Whoever you vote for and for what ever reason, today’s the day we express our democratic right to vote. So do it.

Not wanting to detract from the importance of this occasion I wanted to take a moment to look at the design of the three main parties’ home pages to see which site – not party – would get my vote.

Complete impartiality, (and in alphabetical order), which party’s site would get your vote? Keep reading…

Ok Go – This Too Shall Pass (2010)

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As a regular reader of Michael Johnsons blog, I’m always interested to see sneak previews of upcoming Johnson Banks work. Recently he unveiled their latest project for The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and once again I was pleasantly suprised. Whilst I can’t deny liking the restrained cool of an identity consisting of a nicely kerned Helvetica or Avant Garde logotype and little else, sometimes the less is more approach can leave me a bit cold.
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When I first started writing this blog back in July ‘09 I didn’t really get blogs, let alone read or follow other peoples. I didn’t have a full understanding of the benefits of Twitter, and I certainly didn’t want to launch a Mat Dolphin Facebook group. What would be the point?

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So, where did Christmas go? It seems that a few days ago I was drunkenly slipping into a turkey induced coma and all of a sudden I’m discussing our plans for 2010.

With this in mind, I’ve started thinking about what we’ve seen in 2009, what we’re likely to see in the new year and if these trend predictions are actually worth paying attention to. Does following trends help you develop as a designer or simply make you another pack animal churning out the same ideas as every other creative with an eye on what’s hot?

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I was interested to see the latest Dixons ads from M&C Saatchi on my tube journey home the other day. The blatant dig at some of our high streets best-loved department stores is nothing if not controversial. The confrontational tone, transparent publicity-bating and admission that you might find better service (if not value) elsewhere may not be to everyone’s taste, (unsurprisingly) but they certainly inspired some debate here at Mat Dolphin towers.

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This week Creative Review posted a new Question of the week about blogging on their blog. Should we blog? Shouldn’t we blog? Who blogs and who doesn’t, and at the end of the day who cares? Like everyone else we’re now blogging about it. Blog blog blog.

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I’ll be using this space to update you on what we’re doing here at Mat Dolphin headquarters. You’ll see sneak previews of the design projects we’re working on, meet the people we collaborate with and get an insight into our working process. I’ll also be sharing my influences, inspirations and interests.

Keep checking back to see my regular updates, and if you know of anything I might be interested in blogging, or just want to say hello, feel free to get in touch.

Watch this space.

Mat Dolphin

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