Everybody is one bar.
Apparatjik (which features members from Coldplay, a-ha, and Mew) have taken a new approach to the next release of their upcoming album, ‘Square Peg In A Round Hole’. On November 11th (11.11.11), they released an initial draft of the 12-track album which Aspire embedded into Issue A of the ‘Apparatjik World’ iPad magazine.

Apparatjik has been subsequently releasing 10 weekly crowd-produced “drafts” of the album, featuring new edits and musical input from strangers. The final “version” will then become the official album, taking the best of each version’s musical seasonings, to be released sometime in February.

Cabin Recording Session:

Martin and Mags Gearing up for Combat Discoings:

Aspire is very proud to announce the launch of a brand new website for The Hummingbird Bakery, to coincide with the opening of their new Islington branch. Our aim was to simplify the ordering process and reduce the amount of time it required to place an order. We were also able to launch a new section for Gift boxes which are proving to be extremely popular.

The bakery has some stunning photography which we thought should be showcased throughout the website. We tried to make the pages as spacious and clutter free as possible.

We enclose just a few screenshots of a few pages below. Here is a link to the website incase you didn’t know the address: www.hummingbirdbakery.com. Enjoy looking around!

Bakery Menu Page:

Customising Mini Delights Cupcakes:

To coincide with the launch of the Apparatjik iPad magazine, Aspire took part in a pyjama party at Kensaltown recording studios along with Bower & Wilkins and Apple. Aspire presented the magazine to journalists and other interested parties and gave a talk/demo of the first issue – Issue A. We enclose a few photos of the event!

The app can be installed from the App store.

Noah A:

Classe Amp:

Bower & Wilkins 802′s

If that wasn’t enough, they have added some gifts and cakes to the mix (no pun intended) this year, including a gorgeous Mini Delights Christmas Box set, and a Christmas Cake!

So without further ado, we present The Hummingbird Christmas Cupcakes, from The Hummingbird Bakery:

“Share the festive cheer this Christmas with The Hummingbird Bakery. Cakes as light as snowflakes, deep and even frosting, and sparkling handcrafted decorations make this the quintessential Christmas cake collection.”

“You won’t get stuck in the chimney with these tiny Christmas cupcakes! Christmas Miniature Delights come in a box of 12, one for each day of Christmas, complete with delightful handmade decorations including baubles, snowmen and stockings.”

One of the cupcakes from the box of 6, these are pretty awesome, and so well decorated!

“No wonder Santa is feeling so jolly, our box of six Christmas Cupcakes come decorated like a Christmas tree with the most festive of hand finishes. Sponge light enough to make a reindeer fly is topped with smooth frosting, snowmen, holly, baubles and other Christmassy adornments.”

And lastly, this is easily one of the best cupcakes we have ever tasted, the Christmas Pudding Cupcake is so very very good.

Aspire have relocated from Shoreditch to 6–8 Emerald Street, London. The new Central London studio allows Aspire to provide digital web and marketing services to London and U.K. based clients from a more accessible location.

Having established a track record of delivering creative web design services from within the fast growing Tech hub in East London, we needed to move to larger studios in a central location to better serve our clients.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help with your digital web or marketing projects you can get in touch via email hidden; JavaScript is required or call us on 0207 242 4451.

The App is for the iPad and can be downloaded from iTunes for free! You can find it here. We hope to follow it up with an Issue B early next year some time.

Here are some screen shots of the magazine:

Aspire was asked by Some Magazine based over in Halle, Germany if they could use our artwork that was created for the special edition Apparatjik Bolshevik Box. We of course granted them access to previously classified Apparatjik documentation!!

The magazine and workshop detailed within the magazine was kindly supported by smart car and involved Jonas Bjerre and Magne Furuholmen. During the workshop, art students used the parts from an electric car to create art.

The design team at Some incorporated the poster nicely as their cover along with elements within the magazine itself. The poster is made up of hundreds and hundred of triangles to form 3-dimensional cubes. The cubes are coming together to form a larger cube in the middle of the poster.

The magazine is available in various design shops. We happened to see it at the Design Museum shop in London. It can also be purchased from: here.

SomeMag is a German magazine that describes its concept as between design and art.

Contemporary European design showroom

Flux is a ceramics company set up by faculty and MA students at Staffordshire University, to breathe new life into Staffordshire’s long history of ceramic design and production.

Flux galvanises the passion, energy and talent of new, undiscovered designers while drawing on the rich heritage of the region’s potteries to create exquisite, highly collectable and quintessentially English, fine bone china products. These new collections will be exclusive to EDC London.

EDC London will be showcasing Matthew Hilton’s new ‘McQueen’ collection, produced in collaboration with De La Espada as part of the London Design Festival. De La Espada continues its collaboration with one of Britain’s most highly respected designers, Matthew Hilton. Hilton’s designs are understated, sculptural and meticulously detailed, with many already considered design classics. Hilton’s new collection, entitled ‘McQueen’, has been produced under licence by De La Espada. The complementary expertise of the two firms has ensured a furniture range true to Hilton’s creative vision, realised through De La Espada’s luxury materials and expert manufacturing.

Google introduced an expanded set of sitelinks on its search results pages recently. The new sitelinks format displays up to four more sitelinks, rising from 8 to 12, and now includes the web url and a short meta description snippet as well.

Sitelinks are useful at predicting what sections of a website users may want to visit based on search criteria, helping users to navigate quickly to the information they are looking for.

The most obvious impact of this redesign is that the number one ranked result now covers a much larger area on the search results page, making it harder for lower ranking sites to gain visibility. However, the sitelinks appear predominately on branded queries, so this should be a positive step in helping brands to defend their position and direct people to relevant sections of their webistes.

As users making brand specific searches are further down their purchase/decision path, this makes great sense from a usability perspective.

Another result from this change is that, with other natural search rankings being pushed further down the page, it leaves Google’s paid AdWords listings to be the main alternative to the number one result.

What impact will the new Google Sitelinks have on your website?

- Brands could be in a stronger position to fend off competing search listings depending on how many site results used to be displayed. If it was only one or two then competitors will now be further down the page, possibly below the fold, for brand specific searches. If a brand dominated most of the top ten results then they may see increased competition as Google may now consolidate these links in the sitelinks structure, allowing competitors to display higher up the page.

– Website architecture is more important than ever, as Google offers no direct way to edit what sitelinks are displayed.

–Demoting certain pages will be important to ensure that, while you can’t control what sitelinks are displayed, you can influence pages that you don’t wish to be shown.

– Website design will need to be considered as internal pages are being presented more prominently. People may access websites more often through internal pages, turning them more into mini homepages, meaning that the user journeys will have to be adapted.

–Branded PPC ads may see a higher click through rates for brand queries, making it harder for natural SEO on generic terms with brand name overlaps.

For an official overview read Google’s expanded sitelinks page.

London’s tech savvy have coined the phrase ‘Silicon roundabout’ as the UK’s answer to silicon valley located at Old Street roundabout pictured above.

London aims to become Europe’s digital crucible. In 2010 ‘TechHub’ was formed to to help entrepreneurs realise their ideas, with a strong focus around tech startups.

TechHub hopes to help new companies start up and thrive in the area, therefore pumping in millions of pounds to redevelop East London. The hope is that Old Street becomes a magnet for new technology companies.

The area is at the centre of a government initiative and a key part of the 2012 Olympic legacy. Since it’s launch in November the Government’s drive is raising the profile of the area internationally.

The area has been extended east from Shoreditch, to the Olympic park in Stratford, and ‘renamed’ as the “East London Tech City”.

One of the reasons that the area is so popular is the proximity to creative industries such as design, fashion, media and music. Shoreditch is a real melting pot of creativity, something that the U.K., and particuarly London, excels at. An important factor when we decided to establish Aspire Design Studios in the area.

WIRED produced a ‘Tech City’ map detailing some of the growing companies in the area.