ICM - Leeds Design Agency

I absolutely love looking at maps. I can spend hours casting my eyes over grid lines, boundaries, contours, footpaths and bridleways. Maybe its because the map crosses over the various boundaries of my hobbies; mountain biking, landscape photography and graphic design, that leaves me gazing longingly at those folded sheets.

It was on this day in 1791, Ordnance Survey was born when a request of the Master General, the 3rd Duke of Richmond, to purchase a three-foot Theodolite and is now generally accepted as the founding action of the Ordnance Survey. That theodolite, and subsequently many others, were used to map the south east coast of Britain for fear of invasion by the French, and from that day to today’s world of GPS, Ordnance Survey has played a constant role charting the changing face of the nation.

The presence of the Royal Engineers harks back to Ordnance Survey’s military origins, where that fear of invasion promoted the Board of Ordnance, the Ministry of Defence of the day, to order a survey of the south east – hence the rather unusual name.

The great art of map making subsequently played a major role in both World Wars, with Ordnance Survey staff being dispatched to map the trenches throughout The Great War, whilst during World War II some 342 million maps were printed for use by the Allied forces. By 1944 maps were off the presses and in the hands of men at the front within 24 hours.

Years later and we take for granted the great work done by Ordnance Survey for such a long time.

Personally, I have great fondness for the 1:25000 Leisure maps...

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Every once in a while you are given the opportunity to learn something new about yourself. I was given that opportunity on Friday when I was lucky enough to be invited to take part in our client Cirrus Research’s * 40th birthday celebrations at a Palmer Sport driving day.

When I was first invited I had no idea of the extent of the day and even after reading through the Palmer Sport website and brochure I still didn’t quite believe that I’d be driving all of the amazing cars – but I did!!

Here I am at the beginning of the day about to drive the first car, a BMW M3 GTP.

(Feel free to laugh, nicknames so far have been ‘pin head’ and ‘chipmunk’).

In 10mins I did a lot of things that were totally new to me. I wore a helmet (lid) for the first time, I learnt how to change gear with paddle shift and not ‘feed’ the steering wheel (I got better at this) and I learnt how to drive FAST round corners and concentrate on my driving line with someone screaming ‘POWER LOU POWER!!’ and ‘DO NOT BRAKE!’ into my helmet.

I bounced out of the BMW, onto the bus and straight into a Caterham which was so much fun and definitely suited me. One of my friends used to build these, I’ve cleared out the garage and invited him round for dinner tomorrow.

We were let loose to fly solo in the Caterhams in a ‘Caterham Pursuit’ which involved driving round a circuit and doing doughnuts! This was brilliant and felt great to be out there on your own. I was quite good at it too!

Next up were the Clio Cup Racers and Porsche 911 which were, of course, awesome.

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We’re thrilled to have completed our first project with new client, Leeds School Library Service, and even happier that they are so impressed with our work!

The brief was to produce a brochure to send to Head Teachers to communicate the services of the School Library Service. Many schools were not aware of the free services available to them as part of their basic entitlement. These services include free books for the school library and an annual visit from School Library Service to advise them on how to get the best out of their library. At ICM we have many keen readers and the thought of free books filled us with much excitement so we were quick to grasp the importance of this message!

It was crucial to produce creative that would stand out on a busy Head Teacher’s desk getting the message across to them quickly so that they would pass it on to the relevant member of staff at school. We wanted the copy to focus on them, their school and their pupils so we re-wrote the existing copy to reflect this and to achieve a bright, conversational tone.

We also interviewed teachers who already use the services and wrote case studies and testimonials to clearly highlight the benefits of working with the School Library Service.

We really enjoyed getting our teeth into this project and are very proud of the finished product.

Here’s what our client said:

“I came back from holiday on Monday to find our wonderful new brochure on my desk. I am really delighted with it.

Your response to our original enquiry was particularly impressive and as soon as we started working with you we were both delighted at…

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