The two day event was designed to bring together representatives from industry and academia as well as showcase the best undergraduate and post graduate talent in the North West. Students from the University of Salford, University of Chester, Manchester Metropolitan University, UCLAN, Liverpool John Moores University, North Wales and Huddersfield University attended along with some of the regions most celebrated design agencies.

As well as an exhibition of the best graduate talent from universities in the North there were keynote lectures from the cream of the creative industry, portfolio surgeries, roundtable discussions and Q & A sessions.

We were delighted to help out with the portfolio surgeries. It’s always energising to see creativity in it’s rawest form, without the complications and reality of restrictive brief, limiting budget and punishing deadline!

The event and exhibition was held at The Triangle, Manchester, for more information you can visit www.designersnorthernalliance.org

Another unknown milestone we reach this year is 60 years since the passing of the remarkable Louis (Luigi) Rocca, the unsung hero and kingmaker of Old Trafford and an Ancoats Italian to boot, relevant to me three times over. While modern day football overlaps nonsensically into the world of business and celebrity, the more nostalgic aficionados cherish these stories and struggle to benchmark the 2010 vintage of association football with the romantic sport of yesteryear.

It’s a story that starts in the first half of the 19th century not a million miles away from Genoa. (Born in 1838) Luigi Rocca senior left Borzonasca, a pretty hill village on the Italian Riviera, in 1865 to search for his slice of fame and fortune. At the age of 27 and still a bachelor, Louis would eventually arrive at the smouldering grey urban metropolis that was Manchester at the peak of the Industrial Revolution. How the colours of the Italian sea, sky and countryside must have compared with Ancoats 145 years ago, one can only imagine but Louis would eventually settle at number 3 Ancoats St, marrying an Italian girl Maria Casinelli, from Sheffield, and together they would raise a typically large Italian family. The family, like many others in the area, would start a vibrant ice cream business in 1872 but youngest son Louis jr had other plans. At the age of 12 he joined a local football team as tea-boy, a position that proved to be the first rung on a ladder that would eventually cement his name in the club’s hall of fame. After then being tasked with looking after the first team kit (quite the honour in those days), the young Italian Manc was also to become the club’s first groundsman.

However, Louis was to make his first real mark on the history and future of the club on April 26 1902 at a meeting to choose a new name for Newton Heath LYR.  Having relocated to Clayton some years earlier, ‘the Heathens’ now saw no need to retain the unpopular ties with the area that borders Ancoats to the slightly north slightly east side of Manchester. After Manchester Central and Manchester Celtic had been rejected it was Louis who proposed the legendary words ‘Manchester United’.

This was hardly the end of Rocca’s immense influence over the future direction of the club. It was he who persuaded James W Gibson to famously save United from near certain bankruptcy in the 1930s and it was he who introduced the first organised scouting system in British football. One that would eventually lead to the finest crop of young footballing talent these shores have ever seen. However, probably his finest hour was being the ‘convincer’ in wrestling Sir Matt Busby away from the clutches of Liverpool where he was seeing out his playing career. Busby had previously played with Manchester City and Rocca had maintained a friendship developed through the local Catholic Church.  The rest as they say is history.

Louis Rocca, born in Ancoats, Manchester was to be spared the pain of Munich, but equally never really experienced the immense glory and worldwide renown that would follow, the fruits of his labour if you like. For someone who dedicated over half a century to the cause he is rarely given the credit for such unswerving loyalty, a rare commodity in the modern game.

The superstars of today Beckham, Ronaldo, Cantona, Rooney et al have many of the finer things in life and will each be remembered for different things, but they will never be able to say they were Manchester United supporter, tea boy, kitman, groundsman, assistant manager, director, chief scout and brand naming genius!

Molto grazie Signor Fix-it.

Growing up in Manchester is always going to bring you into direct contact with footballers past and present. Some of these experiences are extremely pleasant like sharing a flight from Schiphol to Milan with ex-United 60s/70s player Carlo Sartori back in 1999 to watch United play Inter (I had played Sunday league football with Sartori Jr as a boy and my dad also knew the family through the deli).

Brought up in Collyhurst, Carlo played 55 times for United but had now settled near myself in Wythenshawe. He’d come down and watch us play for Hazel Grove as kids but when I boarded the flight in Amsterdam I hadn’t seen the old man for donkeys years but still, someone who had shared changing rooms with the likes of Best, Law and Charlton, remembered his boy’s old teammate. I was honoured.

Equally memorable, if a little distant, was having Roy Keane and his dog watching me deliver the closest performance I will ever deliver to the man himself on a Hale Sunday league park a few years ago. He simply couldn’t walk away from the action and I’m so glad I reserved the one decent performance of my senior career for that day alone.

Other experiences were less pleasant. Like when Brian Kidd told this wannabe 12 year old, during a coaching session that I “don’t know how to kick a ball properly”. Surely there was a nicer way to destroy my one and only dream at that time? I was to later prove Kiddo wrong by being voted the 2004 Red News 5-a-side Player of the Tournament.

What did he achieve?

However, one experience warms the heart and always raises my spirits above all others. A story of a footballer from a bygone era. In fact I had to remind myself of something I was told a long time ago by his wife and seek out Sir Matt Busby’s pre-Munich autobiography. A rare find but thanks to Ebay mine for the bargain price of £3.50. I’ll come back to this.

It’s not often that an ‘unknown legend’ is your next door neighbour for the first seventeen years of your life but that description would apply to Eric Bell, once of Bolton Wanderers and previously a Manchester United amateur. Mr Bell actually to me. And Mrs Bell, or Ivy to my mum and dad. A lovely couple who were neighbours in the true sense of what it used to mean. We lived on the corner of Peel Hall Road, they lived next door on the corner of Simonsway. A stranger configuration of ground floor flats you will not find anywhere but their back door backed onto our kitchen window which opened out to the courtyard/car park which is where the story began.

Me and our kid must have played a thousand games of football out there (on our own, with each other, with other local kids) before I realised the importance of who he was. Before that, he would walk by, say hello, smile, offer sporadic and hushed advice on crossing, heading, whatever we were upto and we’d just think ‘yeah, whatever old-timer, leave it to the whippersnappers’.

Twenty years on, I can’t remember how I found out, but Eric wasn’t just any professional footballer. His main claim to fame was that he scored in the cup final of cup finals. The 1953 FA Cup final to be precise. Sir Stanley Matthews and all that. In fact, not many people know this but Stan Mortensen notched a hat-trick that day (gutted or what for it to be known as the Matthews final after you’ve banged in three at Wembley). And though Matthews eventually ran riot on the right wing it was only because his adversary for the day, Eric Bell, was struck down with a torn hamstring – the sort of injury that has the modern player leaving the field on a stretcher. To Eric’s great credit and with no substitutes back then he gamely battled on, hobbling round the pitch, even grabbing his headed goal after the injury happened. Incredible stuff – surely no other man has ever scored with such an injury in such an important match. I will quote a little extract from this detailed match report elsewhere on the internet.

“Even given the ultimate joy of scoring in an FA Cup final, Bell’s body and facial expressions betrayed the agony he was feeling as he wheeled away to be congratulated by his teammates”

Eric had put Bolton 3-1 up (the winning goal?)…but of course Blackpool fought back to beat Bolton 4-3 and Matthews was immortalised forever after. But surely Bell’s heroics weren’t only recognised by his young neighbour in Wythenshawe…

“Not only was it obvious that Eric Bell’s injury made a massive difference to the outcome of this game it was simply distressing having to watch a man in such obvious pain risking more serious injury in a desperate attempt to help his team prevail”

And what happened to Eric? Well in Sir Matt’s 1957 autobiography, I refer you to page 130…where Busby reveals that of all the exceptional young players he moved on through the Babes era, only Eric Bell went on elsewhere to prove him wrong. Busby’s tone is one of regret and if I was Mr Bell I would take that sort of verdict from here to eternity.

The year after the cup final, Eric was playing for England B (it meant something then) alongside the likes of Roger Byrne, Don Revie and Johnny Haynes. He was eventually ousted from his position in that team by the incomparable Duncan Edwards. No further comment necessary.

The following year Eric finally had the chance to represent his country on an FA tour of the West Indies but again misfortune struck and a broken leg on Easter Saturday at Deepdale meant a certain Jimmy Hill took his place and Eric never got the same chance again, not with Duncan Edwards as competition.

I left home at seventeen and my mum and dad have since moved on, going their separate ways, so I’ve mostly lost touch with the Bells but a quick check on Wikipedia confirms that if he is well, Eric will be 80 this weekend.

I know that in the latter years he’d struggled with some of the ‘what ifs’ in his life…the main one being the cruel misfortune that prevented him from representing his country, long before an international cap became something akin to scattering confetti at a wedding. But misfortune aside Mr Bell achieved so much that I would ask all football fans anywhere and everywhere to raise a glass this weekend and toast a true gentleman and an unknown legend.

My neighbour, Eric Bell.

The underlying theme throughout the book was how incredibly well the three co-founders had managed to drive the business based on their total and utter belief in the organisations brand values. So rather than a fabricated pretence of what they aspired to be, their natural values have permeated every nook and cranny since day one informing every decision and every action. The end result being a consistent brand experience, be it through communications, behaviour, product or even their environment at Fruit Towers. I’d like to believe everything in the book I read is true but despite the fluffiness and the niceness you sense that underneath this sugary coating there are some very intelligent and very hard-nosed businessmen playing a game of sorts. All Oxbridge educated you understand,  and I suspect some stunning business acumen allowed them to surf the crest of the responsibility wave long before most people had put the letters S, C and R in the right order.  That’s the cynic within me talking anyway. At least they have proved whatever your original motive, you can be nice, be responsible and still make a shed load of money. Good luck to them and it’s got me into their smoothies to be fair.

Questioning brand values

It also got me thinking a bit deeper about ‘brand values’. Ours, theirs, everyone’s really. I questioned our own (do we really live and breathe them?) but then consoled myself with some recent excellent client feedback regarding the Studio North brand experience.

Then my mind wandered back to my dad’s old Italian deli which used to occupy a prime slot in Withington Village for the latter quarter of the 20th century.  Here was a business that just simply existed in many ways. From it’s opening day on 8 December 1970, I’m sure C&G Di Paola had no grand corporate vision, no overwhelming ambition to expand into Didsbury or Fallowfield. No, not at all.  It’s purpose was simple. To serve tasty, fresh continental food to the people of South Manchester that they simply couldn’t get elsewhere. No complicated set of brand values to abide by and no overly commercial motivation to undermine the whole reason for being. The shop was all about authenticity, having conversation, eating great food, affordability, drinking good wine, being local…just being there, for the people.

Aside from being authentic it was original, it was niche and it surely inspired others. There was always the Barbakan in Chorlton (Polish equivalent still going very strong) and a couple of other delis dotted round the region but back in the day, real delis were rarer than a Man City trophy or a world class Man United signing this transfer window. Nowadays, the multitude of modern day equivalents fail miserably to replicate the magical formula of rustic charm and continental vibe. Back then, the smell of the coffee grinder, the naff hand-written special offers, the cheese selection, the outdated equipment, the salamis hanging from the ceiling, the Panettone at Xmas. Even the sound of the flies being zapped. Mamma mia. And my colleagues wonder why I love food so much – I grew up with it!

Celebrity shoppers

The old shop was also full of characters, like the little Greek lady Amelia who used to work for my Nonno (Carmine) and Nonna (Luisa) before Papa Gio took the reins. In front of fascinated customers, conversations and ‘heated latin’ arguments were conducted in Napoletana, a dialect somewhat removed from the Italian language. And the stars flocked there too. At the height of the Madchester scene my father had no recruitment problems given the local music legends that used to pop in for a nice bottle of Barolo or some Parma Ham. The Happy Mondays, James, the Mock Turtles. All had the continental munchies. Free tickets for the Hac were also a frequent staple for the lucky shop-girls, thanks to the generosity of Anthony H Wilson and Alan Erasmus. Denis Law was a regular, so was Ken Barlow and other Corrie stalwarts. Most amusingly now, my dad used to come home (to the annoyance of my mum) raving about how gorgeous Alan Partridge’s future Ukrainian girlfriend was (Steph Barnes in Corrie back then!). And in the later years even a little Georgian by the name of Kinkladze used to roll up, Ferrari outside.

The ‘Last Don‘

Of course, in time, along came Tesco in Didsbury, Somerfield in the village itself and Sainsburys pretty much cornered the previously buoyant student market in Fallowfield. Local restaurant owners started finding the hidden gems themselves at wholesale prices down the cash and carry, and Tesco’s foreign buyers were out in force making inferior products readily available to a decreasingly discerning audience. The last don, Giovanni Gennaro Di Paola eventually sold the corner plot to Chinese property investors in 1996 and la Di Paola famiglia left the world of food retailing behind us, with a tear in the eye. Withington is now a faceless village comprising the usual tacky takeaways and shark infested estate agents. The local community feel has been largely replaced by a transient student population and like most suburban villages it seems like the decline is irreversible whenever I pass through.

However, the lesson I learnt when thinking back to the old days is that if you have to try that hard to follow a ‘corporate vision’ or stick to ‘brand values’ then maybe just maybe you need to try something else.

(Above) A design concept for the new Apple Tablet. Allegedly.

So far, so Cupertino. Now, impressive as this may sound, am I alone in thinking this is going to massively affect the way users view and browse websites? Currently users move around by clicking links with their mouse/trackpad, and can be quite precise in doing so as the on-screen pointer is so accurate. Take this away and you have users jabbing their thumbs at navigation elements that may be too small, too close together, or even both. Witness someone trying to use an iPhone for the first time on a normal website (like myself) and you’ll get the idea. Dextrous I ain’t.

So, then, what’s this going to mean? Are sites going to be forced to have larger clickable areas in order to cope with the fat-fingered? Are we going to be in a position where as well as the standard desktop version of a website, you also have a mobile version plus a ‘tablet’ optimised layout more akin to a touch-screen information console (no doubt with graphics sliced up in Fireworks, God forbid) than a traditional website? Not only that but tablets have a smaller screen area and are designed for viewing on a flat surface, i.e. so you’re looking downwards at your lap or tabletop. I can hear chiropracters and opticians around the Western world rejoicing in glee already. Without seeing one in the aluminium, so to speak, it’s hard to say but surely potential screen resolutions will be going backwards rather than forwards, never a good thing for designers who defend and cherish white space and marketeers who insist on everything fitting on the one screen.

I’ve two words for you here, people: internet television. In a previous life, for my sins, I was involved with a mail order corporate who firmly believed this was the way forward. All websites were designed from on high with huge fonts and massive buttons so that the couch potato users who were their target audience could see and navigate from the comfort of their own sofas. They were, in short, hideous. Thankfully the advert of cheaper computing and even cheaper, ubiquitous broadband soon saw the end of that particular fad, but you get my drift.

Will it happen? Will it be a red herring concocted by Apple’s adoring legion of fans and consumers? I guess you’ll have to watch this space. On your PC, mobile or tablet…

Coming here for work experience has really changed my intake on an work place as I thought it would be all work and no play but here I think they have managed to equal that out to some work and some play. I had very little knowledge of what would go on inside a graphic design studio but it was nothing compared to this (this is better). I was warned that Graphic designers sit around all day doing nothing and drawing but it was the opposite although they do sit around they are very hard working but know how to have a laugh.

I feel that I have used my week to my advantage and I will defiantly be looking for a job in Graphic Design once I have got all the right qualifications. Being here for one week has really helped me get motivated to thrive in my graphics course and all my other courses.

I am very thankful to the whole of Studio North as they have really pointed me in the right direction and I know what I want to do in future life. My interest’s lie in offline work as the online work looks a bit technical for me, as I have only touched on online work at school.  I only managed to complete two design briefs as I was only here for a week but I wish I were here for two.