Always keen to keep on top of the trends that are getting our clients and their customers talking, we’ve created our very own Pinterest page.

Many of you will have heard about the growing popularity of this new social media website, which allows you to create and share personalised ‘pin boards’ made up of images that have caught your eye.

It’s a relatively simple but effective concept – it takes just a couple of clicks to post a pic and you can put together a lovely looking page with minimal effort. The site has already well and truly taken off in the US, and it’s attracting more and more users over here.

According to this article from leading online social media guide Mashable, Pinterest is proving particularly popular with women – 82% of active users are of the fairer sex – which is, of course, why it’s of particular interest to us.

On the Creative Vein Pinterest page, you can view examples of our work, design that’s inspired us, some informative social media infographics and the latest pics from the office and the CV teams themselves.

Want to join in the pining fun? Drop an email to molly@creative-vein.co.uk and we’ll send you an invite!

We did it, folks! Thanks to your support, we were named ‘Ad of the Week’ in the Chip Shop Awards today.

The buzz is now all over Twitter, and our design will be featured on the Chip Shop Awards homepage for the next seven days. It’s also been showcased on The Drum website.

Now it’s just a case of keeping our fingers crossed until June, when the awards themselves take place… 

The big, fat secret’s out - we’ve finally taken the plunge and submitted our entry for the 2012 Chip Shop Awards.

As you may have read at the end of last month, our design’s been in the works for a fair while, so we’re glad we can finally share it with you!

In the true spirit of the awards, we’ve let our creativity loose without worrying at all about being PC and put together an imaginary three-part ‘Stop Childhood Obesity’ campaign. By cleverly manipulating the familiar faces of characters the represent famous ‘junk food’ brands and changing-up their straplines, we’ve tried to create an ad that’s instantly recognisable and, therefore, has immediate impact.

Props to Jon, who’s worked really hard to make sure the entry was just right, getting copy advice from Molly and plenty of design tips from Lu before plumping for the final, finished look.

You can view the ads now on the Chip Shop Awards website. While you’re there, please don’t forget to place your vote to make us ‘Ad of the Week’ – registration only takes a sec and is free.

The studio’s busier than ever at the moment, but we’ve managed to squeeze in some time to flex our creative muscle beyond our usual client work.

We’ve decided to enter this year’s The Chip Shop Awards. Unlike most other major creative award schemes, The Chip Shop Awards set no entry boundaries whatsoever, giving designers and marketers the chance to let their ideas run free without worrying about budget, copyright laws or political correctness.

Our designer Jon has come up with a cracking concept. We don’t want to give too much away at this stage, so let’s just say it’s going to be a big, fat surprise…

Once our design’s been completed, you’ll be able to view and vote for it as your favourite design on The Chip Shop Awards website. We’ll, of course, update you as soon as our entry’s in.

While we’ve already let you know about the latest additions to the CV team, it feels like we’ve not really bigged them up enough!

Gary (a.k.a. Dr Doom), our new junior web developer, has a BSC in Applied Computer and specialises in PHP, CMS and database development.

Gary is currently getting to grips with CakePHP, a web framework application that allows developers to write less code and, therefore, create secure websites much quicker. This will help us increase productivity in the studio and means we’ll have the capability to take on a lot more exciting web design work in the future.

We’ve also now got our very own in-house copywriter. Molly (a.k.a. Rogue) spent over two years as a Content Manager at Citypress PR agency, where she produced direct marketing materials for a variety of well-known consumer brands. Prior to that, she worked as a Commercial Copywriter at the Manchester Evening News.

As well as being a whiz with words, Molly has also worked on a variety of SEO projects and has experience in social media management. With social media fast becoming an essential marketing tool for any and every brand, her skills allow us to offer even more to clients looking to establish a presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

In the spirit of always improving the design and marketing services we can offer our clients, we’ll also shortly be introducing the Creative Vein ‘inspiration station’ – a massive in-studio collage of the print and online projects out there that get us thinking and inspire our creativity. Watch this space for more soon...

As 2012 creeps ever closer and the world of design and marketing fall relatively quiet in the mid-Christmas lull, we’ve had some time to reflect on the past 12 months.

We sped full pelt into 2011 by rebranding ourselves and launching our new website, and now we’ve finished the year off in fine style with some great new business wins and a brand new Facebook page.

In between all this, we’ve welcomed four new talented team members as well as lots of additional clients, and completed some truly exciting design projects that have really stretched and developed our skills. Now we’re looking forward to an even more prosperous year in 2012.

We’ve already started making our new year's resolutions: on the list is to blog more, to Tweet more, to Spotify more (not technically a word, but you catch our drift)… Basically, lots of ‘more’!

We’d like to remind our clients that the office is currently manned (and will be until Friday 30^th December), and then we’ll be back in the building on 3^rd January.

Happy New Year, everyone!

We created some special Christmas characters (in the Creative Vein colours, of course) for our e-card this year.

Join in the Creative fun yourself and download:

Cut out and print decorations

Desktop wallpaper

Widescreen desktop wallpaper

iPhone wallpaper

iPad wallpaper

Wherever you end up using our designs, make sure you take a picture and post it on Twitter (tagging us @creative_vein, of course) or head to our Facebook page to post your pic, where you can also see how we’ve used our festive fellas to brighten up our own office…

In the charitable spirit of the season, the money we would normally spend on client gifts and cards will instead be donated to the Alzheimer’s Society.

Merry Christmas from us all!

Excuse us from tooting our own horn, but we wanted to quickly share some of the fantastic press coverage we’ve had here at Creative Vein recently.

News of our tender for Trafford Council and our two new recruits has spread to How-Do, The Drum, Creative Boom and Creative Times. Fame at last!

As the year draws to a close, there's been some exciting new developments here at Creative Vein.

We are delighted to announce that we have won a tender for Trafford Council’s Design and Print Services on a rolling annual contract. We will be working alongside the Council’s Marketing and Communications team to design a wide range of campaigns and literature relating to the Council’s services.

We have also been retained by our existing client JD Williams to create and develop direct email campaigns for its brand High and Mighty, Europe’s leading retailer of big and tall men’s clothing.

But our expansion doesn't stop there. Our digital department has recently been working on a number of new projects including the design and development of a site for USA Esta Applications (www.visa-esta-usa.com), a gold selling site (www.golddaddybuysgold.co.uk) and a new website for PPI Claims Now (www.ppiclaimsnow.co.uk). We are also in the process of developing websites for a plastic surgery company and a Manchester-based accountant group.

To help us offer an even better level of service to our increasing client roster, we have taken on two new permanent members of staff – welcome to the team copywriter Molly Jones and Gary Grainger, our new junior web developer!

We are all really looking forward to getting our teeth stuck into these new projects - check the blog and 'Our work' page for updates on our latest design work.