Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year

Seasons greetings from us all at Lake. Have a nice holiday and we'll see you all in 2009.

xx

The 2nd Leg

Lake FC travelled up North for the 2nd leg of the Lake vs ENCAMS cup last night. It felt like a proper FA Cup tie with the wind and rain whistling around our convoy of cars and supporters.

We were 3 men down as Dickie was ill, Ben was tidying his house and Neil had to go to a primary school play. The dedication of our team is 2nd to none but we were confident (kind of) with a healthy 2 goal lead from the 1st leg.

Newspaper reports of unrest with the team all day as we playing outside and it was cold was completely false! Dam journalists trying to unsettle us.

Once we again we went 1-0 up (forgotten who scored) and also once again the minute by minute analysis of the game is a blur.

Fergus was like a man possessed! That boy has got fitness (in every way ladies), he never came off the pitch once, didn't break a sweat and never stopped running! He stuck 4 in the onion bag to boot as well!

Gareth was once again a hero for the team! Including taking one right in the goolies from a shot that travelling at least 100mph. Apart from an error to end all errors, all i can say it will be on a Football Nightmares DVD next Christmas.

Steve was doing a sterling job in defence all night! Marshaling us all night and rifling one in from long range.

Barry hasn't lost his touch after all these years! he may have run out of fitness but the silky skills were still there! Including a delightful little flick into the net - his own net!

Captain David once again knocked in a hat trick and did some running around. His highlight was a lovely little back heel to set up Bern but after jarring his knee and being out on the jars the thursday, friday, saturday and sunday before it soon took it's toll!

Bernard was on top form and actually quite impressed a few heads watching. He knocked in 2 (it was 1 really but he's claiming an own goal) but last night he actually had a foot shaped like a 50p!

Final score was 17-15 to ENCAMS so we only lost by the 2 goals which was a decent effort by us.

We'll be back after Christmas for more of the same and this time football is coming home to Campaign House!!

Lake's Goal Scoring Charts

6 - David

5 - Fergus

3 - Neil

2 (kind of) - Bernard and Steve

1 - Dickie 

xx

p.s The official scoring chart doesn't add up to our final score but hey, thats 5-a-side!

Lake FC

Lake FC was re-born on Monday night at the JJB Soccer Dome. We played 5-aside against one of our clients ENCAMS.

There was the usual banter flying around before the game. David threatening to tie Ben's laces together and pull down his shorts but that all stopped as soon as the whistle was blown.

Some say that this was they strongest Lake FC ever, with new additions of the captain David and Fergus with the usual young guns Neil, Ben and Gareth and the wise heads of Barry, Steve, Bernard and Dickie.

We were quietly confident!!

Off we went and stormed into a 1-0 lead with a goal from Dickie.

Then the whole game is a bit of a blur as we are all terribly unfit and nearly passed out after 5 mins of running around (apart from Fergus and Neil) so we had roll on roll off subs.

There was some lovely pass and moves, touches and some screaming shots that just deserved a goal, one especially from Steve that cannoned off the bar.

The game entered it's final 5 mins with the score poised at 6-6 and then WALLOP David sprang into life. His 23 year old legs got their 2nd wind and he banged in 2 goals to finish the match as a Lake victory 8-6.

ENCAMS said they were gutted to be beaten by 2 late goals, but that was always our plan. Honestly!!

Truth be told we played OK but our star man was Gareth in goal, who was awarded the Man of the Match award as he was like a cat in net and kept us in the game.

Neil and David were strong candidates for the award as they both bagged a hat trick.

BUT it's only half time! We have the away leg in Wigan on Dec 8th so we will take our 2 goal lead up there confident we can bring home the trophy.

Lake's goal scoring charts

3 - David and Neil 

1 - Fergus and Dickie

COME ON LAKE FC!!

xx

Go on the Robins!!

David, Neil and Barry went down to the mighty Moss Lane last night to watch our adopted local team Altrincham FC take on Luton Town FC in a FA Cup 1st round replay, after Alty drew with Luton away a couple of weeks ago.

David and Neil went off to the Tatton Arms early to get a pint and some famous massive home cooked chips, to find out they have stopped doing food! we should have gone home then!!

When we got to the ground, it was in pitch black because of a flood light failure so David and Neil waited patiently for their free tickets (David's cousin is on loan from Leicester at Luton), while we left Barry and his neighbour with the normal people at the turnstiles.

We finally got in half an hour late and expected an upset!!

In a pretty un-eventful game Luton got reduced to 10 men and Alty missed the penalty so it stayed at 0-0 all game and extra time and THEN in a tense penalty shoot out Alty lost 4-2!

It was fun BUT cold and Alty had no hot food, so we were hungry!

Anyway, onto the weekend where we should destroy Cambridge at home!

GO ON LADS!! A.L.T.Y!!

xx

Doing our bit for charity

We've had a raffle around the office today for Children in Need.

1st prize was David's Mum's Homemade Christmas Pudding which Ben won.

2nd prize was a box of chocolates which Gareth won.

3rd prize was some Father Christmas toilet paper which was won by Tony.

We raised a very healthy £44.

xx

Photoshop CS4 ad

This is wicked! I like the way they have done the ad with real stuff and things when it's actually for a computer program.

Check out more photos on - http://www.flickr.com/photos/18697966@N00/sets/72157608377333404/detail/

xx

Caption competition update 2

Ben's added his 2 pence worth with - "Excuse me love, is this where i come for the dogging?"

Stevie B has got in on the act with these gems - "Are we having a rollover?" and woman says to Bernard "I told him to sit but he's hard of hearing"

xx

Animator Vs Animation

Check this all the way out, yeah! It's class!

http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs13/f/2007/077/2/e/Animator_vs_Animation_by_alanbecker.swf

xx

SMACKDOWN LOWDOWN

What a night!! There are some strange people in this world, 15,000 people watching blokes in tight pants fighting in an arena. At one point i got shot down by some kid as i shouted "he's behind you!"

No Big Daddy, no Giant Haystacks, no Kendo Nagasaki, no good! It's not as i remember on a cold Saturday afternoon back in the 70's. The women with handbags have been replaced by geeks and weirdoes, it's wrestling Jim, but not as we know it.

Bernard

Giraffe

Just look at this guy! How tremendous is he?!!

xx

How to manage your debt

This just genius, especially in this credit crunch! Everyone should start practicing their drawing skills.

http://franksemails.com/pics/spider-payment/

xx

Caption competition update 1

We have 2 captions from Barry so far - "Nice puppies" and "Is this Old Trafford?"

Keep them coming boys and girls

xx

Caption competition

Have a good look at our Bernard here being a model for a day for ENCAMS and send us your best caption. The funniest will receive that massively oversized high vis jacket, as worn by Mr. Bernard Hesketh himself.

xx

Celeb spotting in Hale

We've got a new celeb around Hale to steal TV's own Michael 'Kevin from Corrie' Le Vell's thunder. None other than former Leicester City, Liverpool and Birmingham City and now Wigan Athletic and England's power house of a striker Emile Ivanhoe Heskey!! Reports he made this hand gesture when we saw him and chanted "GO ON EMILE LAD, TURF 'EM UP!!" are not true.

xx

Dear Father Christmas,

I would like for Christmas one of these bad boys please! I have made sure that i have been a good boy all year! Thank you, David xx

Dear David,

Unfortunately these will never be made and it's only a prototype by a designer called Ignacio Pilotto, so i instead you can have your Ferrari you always ask for. Father Christmas xx

Climb every mountain

We now have our very own adventurer in Lake. Barry managed to scale Snowdon this weekend, we at Lake are very proud of him, we also think it's very funny that he is having trouble walking around the studio today as his legs are killing him!

xx

Happy Halloween

Have fun tonight everyone whilst out trick or treating.

I shall be out and about in Manchestershire dressed as Alan Partridge zombie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O14C_eNWdwM

xx

Lake boys in safe hands

A big pat on the back for us as we've won a new account! WOO HOO!! We shall now be doing the Mid-Cheshire NHS quarterly newsletter. So no more waiting for operations or check ups for us!

xx

Changes to the beautiful game

Football needs to get with the times!! The 15 minute half-time break is simply not long enough. The game is now faster and the demands on the modern player are tougher than ever. I think a 30 minute half-time break would give the players more recovery time and give us the paying public more of a game in the second half as players have had time to rest. It would also give me time to digest my cheese and biscuits, i was crippled with heart burn in the second half because i had to get through 4 different cheeses and numerous biscuits in 15 minutes!

Bernard 

Glory Hunter Gets Lost

Bernard who is, in so many ways, a typical Man Utd supporter is going to a game this weekend (it's a free corporate ticket, prawn sandwiches included).

Showing his almost instinctive knowledge of his own team's ground, here he is planning his journey. (Bern, it's the big ugly stucture in Salford you're looking for).

Here take my card

I wonder what Patrick Bateman would think of some of these?

http://www.fubiz.net/blog/index.php?2008/04/15/1692-70-amazing-business-cards

I'm not sure they are quite his style!

xx

Logo's logo's logo's

Check out the link below for the best logo's from around the globe for 2008.

http://www.wolda.org/showcase

What do you think of the winners? My favorite is the French entry with the boxing bag.

Ouuh lah lah! xx

Get some chickens and enjoy the good life!

Not sure how this blog thing works, only just got my head round the facsimile machine! Margot and Barbara are still laying an egg each day though. I'm expecting that to drop off as the nights draw in. I'll keep you updated as to how they are doing and publish some ideas for using up those extra eggs, there's only so many poached, scrambled and fried eggs one can eat.

Bernard

Maguila

Good morning everyone,

Check out the link below. It's an experimental design thingy me jig based in Sau Paulo. Basically they release a pdf each month of anything and everything and you're more than welcome to submit your own bits and bobs.

http://www.base-v.org/maguilamag.htm

xx

Shadows

We found this on the old world wide web. Some wicked use of shadows! Have a try yourselves and send us what you come up with.

xx

A full team in the studio

We've got a full team back in the studio now Bern has got back from a week off. He spent the week catching up with us brother because he was over from Oz and they hadn't seen each other for 10 years!

It's nice to have a full team in, the banter is flying especially with Bern around as he likes to think of himself as a bit of a comedian. In reality he's as funny as Hale from Hale and Pace.

xx

Baaaaaaaaaaby head wetting

A date has been set for Ruby Hartley's head wetting (at last)! The plan is to get Ben as drunk as possible so injures his other knee dancing. If anyone is around about Liverpool on 21st of November be sure to keep your eyes peeled for a large man from Burnley called Ben wearing a new shirt and probably shouting at David. Be sure to congratulate the said man for carrying on the good name Hartley, oh and his is a Bacardi Breezer but we'll leave the flavour up to you.

Keep a eye out on this blog for pictures and stories of the night to end all nights!

xx

Something Swedish and it's not a leggy blonde

We found this today on the old t'interclick - http://www.malmostreetsproject.se/

Look out for a lake one hitting your pavement or driveway soon!

xx

Guess who's back?

Well we managed 3 whole days without Big Bad Ben in the studio! Off he went last Thursday down to the Big Smoke to find his fortune (spend his fortune on Babbbbbbbby Ruby and Sarah) but now he's back shouting at everyone (especially David even though he's got man flu).

We're all in agreement that it's good to have him back and we've missed him........like toothache.

xx

Who's been praised by Michael Wolff?

When someone as highly regarded as Michael Wolff (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolff_Olins if you don't know who this design guru is) starts praising your work it's difficult not to feel pretty pleased with yourself.

This outpouring of admiration came when he selected a piece of our work to receive the Chairman's Award at the Chip Shop Awards last week. In the post below, you can see the work he is commending in the video.

Chips with everything

We've just been nominated for some Chip Shop awards. These are fast becoming a standard to judge how creative your agency really is. The categories allow you to produce work for any organisation, regardless of whether or not they are a client - it allows agencies to just be as creative as they like without any restraints. We’ve won in the past and we’ve got two nominations this year. Here are our entries for this year... enjoy.

Bellway Homes is where our heart is...

The housing market, like many others, faces an uncertain few months. As always, in difficult markets, there are companies that choose to cut their marketing spend (we’ve never understood how this actually helps to increase sales), and those that make an increased effort to stand out from their competitors.

Here’s an example of the latter... Bellway Homes and an a piece of creative which goes a bit further than the usual ‘only one unit remaining’ approach.

If you'd like creative which goes a bit further towards helping you achieve your marketing objectives, just give us a call on 0161 926 9898.

Making some tasty numbers

Annual reports and accounts can be a bit boring.

The trick is to find something to lift the document and that comes from a close understanding between client and agency.

We've just completed annual report for Lancashire and Blackpool Tourist Board and we think it's an excellent example of how this can work. Focusing on the board's local food initiative, we've made the report look very different.

And the client agrees - he said, "We knew we could trust Lake to apply real creativity to our annual report. The result is an inviting and attractive publication, which carries all of our key messages in a relevant way.”

Scary stuff...

Back in 2002, we produced one of the most memorable cinema ads of recent times.

With an astonishingly high recall rate among the target audience of teenage litterers, this ad dramatically reduced the amount food litter.... which is handy, because that was the brief from Keep Britain Tidy.