We're very excited to announce that we've just been awarded by the IPA for outstanding professional development. We're one of 29 agencies to be given the gold certifcate for our comittment to learning and trying to improve the minds and lives of everyone who works here. If you'd like to join our happy team then get in touch. 

We launch a new campaign this week to promote Uniqlo’s unique and innovative approach to design. The new campaign focuses on the attention to detail found in Uniqlo’s high-quality range of clothing. 

Dentsu has produced a campaign which heroes the innovative products and features headlines which communicate the unique features, ranging from UV resistant shirts to super-fine seamless briefs.  These will appear alongside the Uniqlo brand manifesto with the ‘made for all’ end line, reflecting the retailer’s mission to democratise fashion.
 

mcgarrybowen have been awarded ‘Agency of the Year’ by both Adweek and Ad Age, a pretty amazing accolade, but given the amount of new business success, organic growth and fantastic work, it’s not hard to see why.

Visit our blog post for behind the scenes information.

Greg, Margot and Simon Alexander joined more than 650 other Londoners in a sponsored SleepOut for Centrepoint, the youth homelessness charity. Currently, about 80,000 young people are homeless in the UK – and Centrepoint provides support and accommodation to 825 every day from 33 centres across London. Between them, our intrepid 'rough' sleepers raised £1,200 and the whole event £140,000. There is also still time to donate to their Just Giving page.

We're running two events as part of Internet Week 2011. 

A making workshop on Tuesday November 8th at 4pm here at the spaceship involving drawing amongst other things.

And a combined talk and workshop called the Electric City involving lego, also here.

All welcome, you can RSVP at the links above for each.

We've just finished a new Suwappu demo. Beeker writes about it here. 

Oliver and Ciaran have recently joined us. They're a young creative team, working on a bit of everything, and we're happy to have them. 

Oliver takes some nice photos (and he draws too).

Ciaran writes. He also likes music, wine, cocktail bars in the East End and smoking cuban cigars. And he's writing his first novel.

Welcome!

Suwappu and our Media Surfaces films will feature in MoMA's Talk To Me exhibition in New York from July 24th.

So we’ve had great news from our Straight 8 entries! Out of the 115 submissions, 3 of our films have been shortlisted for screening at the ICA in July, and two (Stiff and Living with Barry) have even made it to Cannes! We haven’t seen them yet – because they went straight into a Super 8 cartridge with no editing – so we can’t wait to see how they all turned out.

For people who don't follow the blog and who enjoy Suwappu news, we've started a series of Swuappu comics with the talented Matt Sheret, which you can find here in full.

(Bigger version here.)

Robbie joins this week as business director for our Canon and Starwood Hotels Aloft clients.

As part of our collaboration with Urbanscale, we're asking for imagery of urban screens for our flickr group. There's some great stuff going up already, so it's worth a look. 

Our resident Creative Technologist will be speaking at Game Camp on 14th May at London South Bank University. Game Camp is a conference for 'the designers, coders, artists, writers, thinkers and, above all, the players who are making the 21st century the century of the game'.

Today we set Suwappu loose in the world with this film. Deer, Badger and friends are a range of characters, and a new augmented reality toy concept. You can read more here.

Donations for the relief effort can be made directly to the Red Cross. A Voices from Japan website has also been developed as a way to connect the rest of the world to what the people of Japan are seeing, hearing and feeling in the wake of this disaster, and to offer all of us tangible, immediate ways to help. 

Chris will be hosting a molecular gastronomy session at Interesting on 18th June 2011 at the Conway Hall in London.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts have appointed us to help launch their Aloft brand in the UK. Aloft London ExCel will open in October 2011.

This week we are welcoming Chris Lynd, digital project manager, and Jack Bayley, TV producer.

Chris Heathcote joins the agency as creative technologist. Fresh from speaking at emergent technologies conference LIFT2011 in Geneva 2-4th February, Chris will bring inventive future magic across our products and work.

Oliver Egan writes about an emerging breed of non-client-related agency work from Mother, the agency and Happiness Brussels.