‘Ah go on, go on, go on, go on.’

It’s A Big Fish and Irish coffees all round at Bowers’ Towers

As we admitted last week, there has been something of a hiatus, but only where the blog is concerned. On every other front, the wheels of Appleby Bowers have been a turnin’ with a purpose. So, let’s get you up to speed.

Sadly, we have to report that Mrs Mohring is gone from the warm and heaving bosom of our organisation and is now engaged in the, er, plant hire business. Y’see, Mr. Mohring works at the Vauxhall factory in Ellesmere Port and they’ve decided en famille that his daily schlep from Stockport to Liverpool is unsustainable. In any way you care to mention, it was costing too much of the green stuff. So, off they’ve trotted and, alas, our former Senior Designer is now working on web sites in Warrington. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember her. Well, we will now and then.

In her place we have an Owdham Roughyead with a name like a fifties rock and roll star. For the uninitiated, ‘Roughyead’ is term applied to those born and brought up in the frontier town of Oldham, which, if it isn’t twinned with Dodge City, KS or Tombstone, AZ, it should be. From this crucible of fomenting lawlessness has emerged one Richard Wilde.

It is by an accident of birth that he has become a graphic designer. Had he been born in, say, 1940, surely he would have been right up there with Cliff and Duane and Eddy and Buddy… Ricky Wilde, ladies and gentlemen. But he was born considerably later than that. Indeed, he was still in short pants when The Boss was scrumming down in First Class rugby and R-Y was tilting at his own rock and roll windmills…

Ricky Rock Star

We had a lovely girl from Armagh via Australia amongst us for a short while, but Bronac has returned to the Emerald Isle. In fact, if it’s a female voice you hear when you phone the studio, it’ll be Amanda’s. She’s from Dublin via Australia and she’s around to experience what it is to work in a bustling design studio. And what it is to make coffee on demand for a grouchy group of grumps. And answer cheerfully to the name ‘Mrs. Doyle’.

Mrs. Doyle

Quite what it is with The Boss and the female Oirish lilt is a matter of some speculation… (But not in this blog – Ed. And what about the Aussie connection?)

Add to all the above the fact that we’ve moved from our former lair on the second floor of Bowers’ Towers into the penthouse eyrie and you’ll have to agree that we’ve hardly been letting the grass grow under our skylights. We’ve been doing lots of interesting work, too: design wise, we were chosen by GVS Assist to design a brand-new corporate identity…

GVS Assist provides a one-stop, quality solution for servicing an organisation’s food and drink equipment. From espresso machines, drinks coolers and vending machines, to multi-site hot snack facilities, for clients of all sizes and sectors, GVS Assist provides service in any location throughout the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Although it became an independent company in 1995, GVS can trace its UK service heritage right back to the 1920’s. It’s A Big Fish.

We came up with ‘a series of divisional identities that identified each separate strand of the organisation whilst clearly belonging to the same corporate family in terms of typography and graphics’, it says here.

There was more to the job than that, though, as The Boss explained: ‘we were also asked to come up with names for the group and its divisions’, he said. ‘We presented a range of potential solutions but we were delighted that the client went ahead with GVS Assist, allowing us to create the separate but linked identities of Vend Assist, Cool Assist and Café Assist, and with the recent acquisition of Coffeetech we’ve been able to add Coffeetech Assist to the ‘family’.

R-Y’s been busy too, but more of that next week.

Meanwhile, it must be time for another Irish potato, er… coffee? No? Ah, go on, go on, go on, go on…’ But hang on: if The Boss is Father Ted, and Ricky Rock Star is Dougal, does that make R-Y Father Jack? You ask him if you dare…

But you’ll see how we’re thinking if you click here.

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