Yesterday saw our first visit to the Big Chip Awards, and whilst we didn’t win, we had a good night with the folk from Manchester United Soccer Schools, Ricky Gervais(ish) and Bill Bailey.

Congratulations has to go to our friend and collaborater Ian Hogg who snapped up two awards for a great piece of CGI animation with ahd imaging. Watch out for next year, we’ll be back to get some for ourselves!

A smart designer by the name of Rob Matthews had the idea of printing Wikipedia as a book as a bit of a statement about the quality of the articles on the site. Obviously there’s far too much information to put in one book, so he settled for a mere 5,000 page, knee-high tomb containing 837 featured articles from the online encyclopaedia. I’m a stickler for not breaking the spines of books, but I think I’d struggle with this one!

In a detour from our regular “Chippy Friday” lunchtime taste sensation, this week we picked up a couple of Chip Shop Awards last night! One for Best Stationery Design and one for Invent Your Own Category, both in collaboration with Ian Hogg.

With a night of befriending bouncers and getting a little too intimate with the chips after the awards show behind him, Andy managed to drag himself and the trophies back from London this morning so we could all wallow in the majesty of the handmade yellow beauties and set up lighthearted photos of them with our usually-sofa-bound stuffed toys.

You can check out the full list of winners on the Chip Shop Awards site.

Snarling Liam

Last weekend saw most of the Creative Spark gang haul-ass down to Heaton Park through the driving wind and rain to watch Oasis in their massive homecoming gigs.

Despite the rubbish weather, we all had an amazing time. Oasis played a big set of 24 favourites including Masterplan, Half the World Away, Champagne Supernova and Live Forever.

Kasabian were also amazing and we all wished that we’d got to their secret gig in HMV on Market Street on Monday.

Gemma and Georgina get into the Golden Circle

Andy's Mad Fer It

Noel givin' it some

Oasis ripping up Heaton Park

What would your own album look like if you were in a band? Follow the directions below and find out…

Here are the rules:

1 – Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click here
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 – Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations”
or click here
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.

3 – Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click here
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 – Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

Here’s are own creations and we will keep you updated on are upcoming tour dates!

Here’s what one of our fans came up with. Thanks Linda! X

Local Indie band Fine Lines are off to Scotland this weekend to do a few gigs and we were asked to do some posters. Thanks to Marc the printers for a lovely print job!

This weekend Carl, our studio manager, finally got to say hello to his daughter Nina after nine months of excitement, nerves and outright fear. We’re all looking forward to meeting her soon and finding out whether she’s as cute in real life as she looks in these photos!

How old do you have to be before you can use a Mac nowadays anyway?

We do type chemistry day in, day out here, but occasionally even we forget the atomic mass of Clarendon and whether or not Bodoni is a noble gas sometimes. Luckily we were sent this periodic table of typefaces so we have a quick reference for the future, thank goodness!

If anyone knows who created this let us know so we can credit them! This table was made by Squidspot (thanks Mark).

Rob and Graham (aka Teacake) are joining the Creative Spark team for the next couple of weeks after Noise Festival set them up with us through the Dream Jobs scheme. After just a couple of days they’ve bought us Fruitellas, made a few rounds of brews and initiated the welcome decision to go to Subway for lunch; they know how to endear themselves with us. When they’re not involved in an intense session of fruit-chew-purchasing, Team Teacake will be busting out some fresh design! We will keep you posted!

You can follow their progress through their own eyes at their Teacake/Noise Festival blog.