Admit­tedly, we’re a bit biased on this one as Lark & Linen won Design Refuge’s Octo­ber Chal­lenge. This means Lark & Linen get to choose a Coulson Macleod typo­graphic print of their choice.

How­ever, there is a good reason Lark & Linen received so many votes (181 out of 813) in the Chal­lenge, because it’s a beau­ti­ful blog, run by Jac­quelyn Clark, a Toronto-based interior designer. Her blog is a real joy to read. And the pho­tos are heavenly.

Jac­quelyn says she is pas­sion­ate about uncom­plic­ated, well thought-out, liv­able, usable design. Snap. She has a door crush. Snap. She likes all things neut­ral. Snap.

In par­tic­u­lar we love Jacquelyn’s “Scenes from my week­end” with her won­der­ful photo montages.

BIG news time and it’s all to do with Jamie Oliver.

Coulson Macleod was approached by The Jamie Oliver Found­a­tion who asked if we’d con­sider design­ing a piece of bespoke typo­graphic art for their annual fun­drais­ing event, A Big Night Out With Jamie.

Well, we didn’t have to think twice. We love Jamie Oliver.

Coulson Macleod’s bespoke design for Jamie Oliver

The event is being held this Thursday (11^th Novem­ber). And it’s being held in St Paul’s Cathed­ral. Wow!

Our ‘Pukka Print’ (get it?) is being put into the silent auc­tion, which will be dis­played on elec­tronic keypads at every table, shown on screens around the room, and goes into the auc­tion pack. Cool! When we showed The Jamie Oliver Found­a­tion our final design, they loved it so much they asked if we could send the actual print to them, so people at the event can admire it in the ‘flesh’.

The annual fun­drais­ing event is in aid of Fifteen’s pion­eer­ing Chef Appren­tice Pro­gramme. Money raised at the event will be rein­ves­ted so Fif­teen can con­tinue to offer young people, often in need of a break in life, the exper­i­ence of learn­ing to work in the res­taur­ant business.

I also men­tioned this on BBC radio last week if you’d like to listen to this interview.

If you want to watch a bit of last year’s Big Night Out With Jamie, you can view a snap­shot at http://​www​.you​tube​.com/​f​i​f​t​e​e​ntv

Jamie will be there. Obvi­ously.  As will his wife, The Lovely Jools. Ben Shep­h­ard is co-hosting. The Fif­teen chefs and appren­tices will be cre­at­ing a four-course meal designed by Jamie. Diana Vick­ers is performing.

Just wish we were going.

The online lux­ury life­style magazine Hot Brands Cool Places is all about Homes & Gar­dens this month. And they’ve given Coulson Macleod’s typo­graphic art a fab­ulous full page feature…

Coulson Macleod was asked to pick the ten final­ists for Design Refuge’s Octo­ber Chal­lenge.

Such fun and a real hon­our. But you know what? It was really hard. The chal­lenge attrac­ted 48 amaz­ing entries. And we had to choose just 10.

The chal­lenge, which was open to any­one, was entitled “This is me!”.

Interior design blog­gers had to post images that rep­res­en­ted them­selves and their design style. Whether it be a photo of a room, a piece of fur­niture, a spread from one of their favour­ite magazines, or a pic­ture from their home or of themselves.

We picked the top ten and now any­one can vote on who their favour­ite is. The top three then win some very cool prizes. First prize is a Coulson Macleod typo­graphic print of their choice.

So do please pop on over to Design Refuge and get voting.

Related art­icles: Win A Coulson Macleod Print On Design Refuge

We’ve just been approached by Design Refuge to see if we’d be inter­ested in giv­ing one of our typo­graphic prints as a first prize in their com­pet­i­tion. Of course we’re interested!

This is a huge hon­our. Design Refuge is the largest meet­ing place online for interior design blog­gers. Their mem­bers com­prise the very best blog­gers in the design world. The super­stars of design blo­g­dom. Our heros. Mem­bers include {this is glam­our­ous}, coco&kelley, Bright.Bazaar, Lob­ster and Swan, Made by Girl, Nick Olsen, and sfgirlby­bay.

To win a Coulson Macleod print, Design Refuge mem­bers have been given the chal­lenge to describe their style aesthetic.

Mem­bers of Design Refuge come from all over the world includ­ing Greece, Nor­way, USA, Canada, Rus­sia, Sweden, UK, Aus­tralia, Montenegro, Fin­land, Ser­bia, Bel­gium, Neth­er­lands, Malay­sia, France, Thai­l­and, Ire­land, Den­mark, Israel, and Spain.

We’ll let you know who wins and what typo­graphic print they choose.

Intro­du­cing our latest typo­graphic art collection…

From Coulson Macleod’s Rust Collection

From Coulson Macleod’s Rust Collection

We had a lot of fun cre­at­ing this col­lec­tion. The steel sheets are nat­ur­ally weather-rusted. Basic­ally we left them out­side. And watched them turn a gor­geous rust brown. As said so beau­ti­fully by Doves “My god. It takes an ocean of trust. In the King­dom of Rust.”

The metal is then over-printed with relief-printed typo­graphy and then moun­ted into a hand­made reclaimed wood frame. Once again we use antique Vic­torian roof timbers.

By using reclaimed wood and rus­ted metal (the rust­ing on the steel is com­pletely unpre­dict­able) means each art­work is totally unique.

Now this looks like some­thing you’d find in a junk shop. And covet.

Hoo­ray! Coulson Macleod and our glob­ally loved typo­graphic art are award final­ists once again.

We’ve made it to the final four entrants at this years Northamp­ton­shire Busi­ness Excel­lence Awards for Inter­na­tional Trader of the Year sponsored by HSBC.

Inter­na­tional Trader. Us!

Well we have shipped our typo­graphic prints to Aus­tralia, Canada, Fin­land, France, Ger­many, Greece, India, Ire­land, Italy, Neth­er­lands, New Zea­l­and, Nor­way, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Arab Emir­ates, and right across the USA.

The win­ners will be announced at a gala din­ner on 18^th November.

Related art­icles:

• Mumpren­eur Awards 2010
• A Little Bit Of PR
• Mum In Line For National Award
• Mums In Business

Last month we launched our £150 giveaway.

A fun little com­pet­i­tion in the run-up to Christ­mas. All you need to do to enter is to email us a photo of your Coulson Macleod typographic print hanging in your home. Simple.

The com­pet­i­tion ends on 10^th December.

We’ve now got a ded­ic­ated page on our web­site to show the photos.

Here are the ones so far…

Related art­icles: Coulson Macleod’s £150 Giveaway

Great art­icle in the Sunday Tele­graph a few weeks back that said we should be very excited, because this sea­son is all about the tra­di­tional, mixed with flea-market finds.

And we love flea-market finds. Which is why at Coulson Macleod we try to recre­ate this with many of our art collections.

Hand­made. Hand painted. Reclaimed wood. Dis­tressed typography.

The key theme for the autumn/winter 2010 interior is “heir­loom”. The art­icle says we’re crav­ing time­less pieces that will look just as good a dec­ade or two down the line, and retail­ers are grant­ing our wish with hand­made accessor­ies using tra­di­tional fabrics.

Which is exactly what we at Coulson Macleod are doing.

We com­mis­sion local crafts­men to hand­make our dis­tressed typo­graphic prints. We com­bine their tra­di­tional skills with our con­tem­por­ary art. So again, we’re bang on trend!

One of the com­pan­ies high­lighted in the piece is Anta, who we fea­tured back in August. Anta has been a per­sonal love of mine for many years. In fact, here is my col­lec­tion of their slightly wonky, hand­painted, stone­ware mugs…

Related art­icles:

• Failte. That’s Wel­come To You And Me.
• Two Two’s Are?
• Freeze, Freeze Thou Bit­ter Sky

Fol­low­ing on from yesterday’s post about fonts, I was read­ing the Novem­ber issue of music magazine The Word

and lo and behold there’s an art­icle on clas­sic rock typo­graphy. The art­icle, which I’ve shown below also says about Hel­vetica, “The face that took over the world you just sort of breathe it in. It’s all over the New York sub­way — Amer­ican Apparel, BMW, Saab, Amer­ican Air­lines — the swift, clean, post­war mod­ern typeface. So it’s per­fect for an obvi­ous, com­mer­cially ambi­tious act like Oasis. Inter­est­ingly they dropped it for two albums — which bombed — but brought it back for their Greatest Hits.”

And Futura, “The 1920s Ger­man typeface used on the Volk­swa­gen ads. Influ­enced by Bauhaus, lots of artistic and intel­lec­tual bag­gage — per­fect for the intel­li­gent col­lege band Vam­pire Week­end claim to be. It was used on the moon plaque almost cer­tainly because of its name — it is futur­istic, very clear, the poin­ted Vs, the sharp angles, the sci-fi connection.”

Related art­icles: Coulson Macleod Loves Fonts Too