This is our journal where we put pen to paper and share the word on the street.

INTL Festival | Live Brief ’24

Another year, another great INTL Festival! Excellent speakers, fantastic events and an all-round inspiring week—we were thrilled to play a part in the Live Brief Project. Ten groups of recent graduates and students gathered in Civic House to work on...

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#8 Colour Countdown — Purple

So next up in our Colour Countdown is purple. A solid fixture in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. The first to jump to many people’s minds might be Prince’s Purple Rain. Strictly speaking, the cover is pretty multi-coloured....

#9 Colour Countdown – Green

Number two in my top ten album cover colour associations—is Green! Yup, just green, but arguably always combined with a touch of black. As I write this, it is a pretty topical subject, with Charli XCX’s brat album bringing album...

Andrew joins the O Team!

We’re delighted to introduce the latest recruit to the O Street gang, Andrew Johnston! An alumni of Glasgow School of Art, Andrew is an experienced designer with a tonne of industry experience from BBC Creative, Alphabetical and Studio Form. Outside...

#10 Colour Countdown – Yellow and Pink

When designers choose colours for their projects, there are a thousand different factors at play. Firstly of course is the brief, what the client wants to say with the work. Colour choice helps us reinforce that message. But, what a...

How should a design studio respond to the climate crisis?

We all know we’re in a climate crisis, it’s something at the forefront of a lot of our minds, especially given recent updates on global temperature and the changes we see in our climate year on year. We kinda like...

O Hello Keli!

Say hello 👋 to Keli Mitchell who joins the O Street studio as Partner, alongside founding partners, David and Neil. With 25+ years of creative industry experience, she knows a thing or two about what we do here at O...

Doctors + Designers = a tool that can reduce NHS Waiting lists

This last week has been a whirlwind for Infix Support, a business I have worked on with my brother Dr Matthew Freer for the past four years. Our flagship product Infix Schedule has won a competitive tender (against enterprise software...

Books are dead, long live books!

Counter-Print has just published a beautiful book of Animal Logos. Even if we didn’t feature (ahem… on the spine), we would probably have bought this one anyway. Great design publisher and cute animals — how could we not? The logo...

GFF24 Film Picks

Oh, it’s a special one… Glasgow Film Festival celebrates its 20th year! We’ve been talking about the GFF24 programme in the studio for months, so as is tradition, here are our picks for 2024!   Kevin – Love Lies Bleeding...

What does Brand Strategy actually mean?

Many people talk about brand strategy, but what does it actually mean? Choose the recipe before buying the ingredients You could say that a brand strategy is a recipe for your business, it tells you: what ingredients you need to...

Boshi says メリークリスマス (Merry Christmas)

Boshi has long been the star of O Street’s window. Waving tirelessly at every passerby, she’s become a bit of a local celebrity in the community!   To get us in the festive spirit, we cracked out the paint pens...

We need to talk about Kevin

If you follow us on Instagram, you might have seen a new face in our Millport reel we shared this week—consider this your formal introduction to the latest O Streeter, Kevin Biggins! Kevin is no stranger to the studio; he...

It’s a small world after all…

Despite our ‘studio next door’ vibes, O Street has been operating as a global agency since our inception 15 years ago. Over the years this has included work with Google, Spotify, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Bacardi to name a few. We’ve run...

The Restless Spirit

Happy launch day to Outwalker—the latest whisk(e)y brand we’ve been working with… and this time, it’s Irish! Outwalker Whiskey is a collaboration between global mixologist titans Sean Muldoon and Jillian Vose (owners of Charleston’s Hazel and Apple), ex-Irish rugby player...

Works Well With Others

At O Street, we’ve always loved bringing others into our creative circle when working on a particular project. These others are often our clients but where possible, we love collaborating with other creatives. When we first started out as two...

Refuweegee EP – BESSA

We recently worked with our pal, Scottish musician BESSA (Sam), designing a cover for the Refuweegee 7″ EP—a collaborative project between I Belong To Glasgow, O Street and BESSA, to raise funds for the brilliant Glasgow charity, Refuweegee. We worked...

15 years of doing things differently

O Street is officially 15 years old this year. In business (or cat) years that’s a wise old age, a sure sign that we are doing something right. Over that time, we’ve helped lots of brands grow and we’ve provided...

O Fishing

We’ve gone away fishing again! I’ll admit, we’re a bit late in sharing our reportage of the trip this year, but there’s a reason for this, and thankfully it’s not because of a man overboard or raw-fish-related ailments. As per...

Motion Cowboys

Hot take: Screens are everywhere. We’ve been progressively looking at screens in more and more places ever since the first little rectangles came into our homes in the 1940s. Even the billboard, the hero of traditional brand communication, is now...

Where are all the women?

When I started at O Street, I was the only woman in the team amongst a bunch of beards and beers. Meeting the Glasgow creative scene for the first time at a design festival, my experience was much the same....

O Street’s Glasgow Film Festival 2023 Picks

  If you’ve been anywhere near Glasgow, you’ll have seen that it’s almost time for Glasgow Film Festival—posters and banners can be seen all over the city! The film festival takes place at the beloved GFT and other venues from...

Importance of a Manifesto – INTL Festival

  After an inspiring and engaging day at INTL, a creative conference held in Glasgow attended by people from all over the world, one slide, in particular, got us talking the next day; Swiss type design agency Dinamo’s bullet-pointed manifesto....

Culture is dead, long live culture

It was with great sadness that we read in September the Edinburgh International Film Festival and Edinburgh Filmhouse had gone into administration. The Film Festival was one of O Street’s first big clients (back when Neil and I had more...

Who’s New(ish) Around Here

We’re having a great, busy year at O Street and as a result, our team has grown a little. Let’s get you up to speed on who’s new(ish) around here! Meet our new staff—Becky and Bea, the latest designers to...

Signs on the Street

In a recent visit to my old stomping ground Norwich, I stumbled across some slightly odd signs dotted throughout the city. After initially thinking I was seeing things, or maybe a member of Norwich City Council was using any means...

O Street’s Glasgow Film Festival 2022 Picks

Glasgow Film Festival opened last week! To celebrate the opening of our favourite film fest, we’ve combed the listings and each chosen a top film pick. Neil Cape Fear Made in the year I was born, I didn’t get see...

Book Week Scotland’s 10th Anniversary

After the success of last year’s campaign, Scottish Book Trust came to O Street to design the identity for Book Week Scotland 2021: their 10th Anniversary. Scottish Book Trust have been bringing the joys of reading and writing to everyone...

Gathering Inspiration

Where do you find your inspiration? Here at O Street we like to tackle it with a bit of fresh air. For years, we’ve been keeping our eyes open for visual oddities out-and-about, then sharing them in an aptly named...

Period Pain

We were allocated 28th April for the annual design publication Fedrigoni 365. Our piece was inspired by the average menstrual cycle of 28 days. Our motivation for creating a design which contributes commentary on this topic was to stimulate dialogue...

We’re Back, Baby!

Last week was our first week working back at the studio, and we couldn’t be happier about it. Remote working was getting old, Eli was even starting to offer their houseplants cups of coffee and biscuits. So with a little...

We’ve Got New Photos

It’s been a while since the O Street crew last touched base at the studio… and we’re all missing it. We’ve even had a couple of new recruits since we started working remotely: Eli joined us a couple of months...

The Future of Networking

I am a strong believer in the importance of networking. Building strong relationships with our clients and creative circle is a driving principle behind O Street’s success. Yet it’s becoming obvious to most of us that the future of networking...

O Street’s Christmas Menu

We all know it’s been a long year. One thing a virus can’t stop is over-eating at the Christmas dinner table. To help you along, each of our team members has contributed one favourite festive recipe to make up O...

Branding & Marketing Beer in a Weird New World

Amid a pandemic and a shaky economy, it’s a scary time for craft breweries. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re riding out the storm, here’s eight tips for branding and marketing beer. Tip #7: Know what people are picking...

How to Pass the Nine Foot Test

Here’s how to pass the nine foot test: 1. Catch the eye 2. Put brand first 3. Test for legibility A brand where we recently put the nine foot test to work was Full Circle Brew Co., where we had...

We Got a George

The O Street team is chuffed to announce we’ve added a new designer to our Glasgow team. Meet George Creese. George is yet another Edinburgh College of Art hire for O Street (we swear it’s not intentional). He brings a...

Love in the Time of Corona

An ongoing list of things getting Team O Street through the days of COVID-19 quarantine Know your trees, they deserve it! I’ve been trying to up my Grandad skills during Lockdown. These are the things I feel it’s my responsibility...

Best of the Brewers Journal

Back when travelling was still a thing, we journeyed from Glasgow to Leeds on a beer-filled adventure. Joining our pals Tim & Jon at Brewer’s Journal, we gave a talk at their Brewers Lectures series. We jump at the chance...

GSFF2020 – A Retrospective

Like many festivals, The 2020 Glasgow Short Film Festival has been postponed. Rather than leaving short film fans with another disappointment to deal with, they generously hosted 12 short films over 5 days on their website. I’ve always been meaning...

Remotely Interesting

With a decade behind us, it’s now the 20s and we’re looking forward. As a small team and creative business founded by two blokes who’d done the whole Big Agency thing, flexibility is integral to keeping us afloat. We’ve made...

Ten Years and Counting Mixtape

We do like a good music compilation. And as we come from the mixtape generation, all we need is half an excuse for a theme—hey, a fresh decade will do! We thought we’d celebrate with a Ten Year Mixtape, looking...

Branding Architects and Kissing Giraffes

Kenya believe we were in Nairobi? We barely remember the busy blur that was 2019, but taking a lengthy Christmas break helped to clear our heads. In-between the fishing trips, beer work and design events I really did fit in...

A Design Studio’s Must-Watch Christmas Movies

Ah, that time of year for a seasonal blog post. Put another log on the fire and curl up with one—or six—of our favourite holiday flicks. Christmas Vacation Penned by the crown prince of 80s films himself, John Hughes’ Christmas...

Beer is the Best Beverage (and Other Learnings From the Brewer’s Congress)

The good folks at Brewer’s Journal (shout out to Tim & Jon!) invited us down to this year’s Brewer’s Congress last week, which is a day filled with talks about beer, food served alongside beer, and beer. Having attended some...

GDFS (Good Design Fun Squad) 2019

Graphic Design Festival Scotland is over for another year, and O Street has had a blast. We had Tessa dishing out wisdom pearls at the Nitty Gritty event, and Jonny and Anna mentoring the 2-Day Live Project. It’s been a...

Craft (Your) Beer (Brand)

In years gone by, when I was a student at art school, the choice of beer in the union bar was poor: Lager, Heavy or Guinness. Or, if you were a fancy pants, you might be lucky enough to get...

A Work Trip With Porpoise

At O Street, few things are held in such mythical regard as the annual fishing trip. Chaotic to organise, usually involving rain, and in danger of being overhyped, it is a trip held close to all of our hearts (and...

The Bonnie Neon Signs of Denver’s Bonnie Brae

You’re walking along on a hot summer day and feel a craving coming on. The ‘ol sweet tooth. Panicked, with your very survival at stake, your eyes search for the first hit of sugar available. If you’re a mile within...

PARTY ON, WEANS

The Design Weans (Glasgow’s arm of global supernetwork The Design Kids) have put on another exhibition, and it’s an absolute corker. Among the creative whipper-snappers exhibiting are creative duo Clubhouse Paradiso, ceramicist Ruth Mae Martin, illustrator Oscar Mitchell, and our...

Extra-ordinary Everyday Design in Japan

What we think of as ‘ordinary’ in graphic design (the road signs, the brand logos etc.) often become ‘extra-ordinary’ when viewed by someone from a different part of the world. During a recent trip to Japan, whilst most folks were...

Eastern Seaboard On An Ontarian Skateboard

After exploring the Land of the Free’s West Coast last year, I went back to check out its Eastern offerings. Skateboarding through the locations mentioned above meant that I got to fill my eyes with more visual curiosities than you...

Five takeaways from the Craft Brewers Conference

As you might have heard, we don’t just drink beer. No, our relationship with the beautiful brew is much deeper than that. You might call it our muse. But our inspiration doesn’t just come from guzzling the stuff down—we also...

CRUSH – A Love Letter From Us, To Brew

We talk about beer a lot. It’s maybe getting a bit weird. How do we know beer feels the same way about us? Don’t worry, we have a plan. We plan to tackle that question the only way teenage girls...

Is Logo Design Dead?

A social media post made a splash when designer Mirko Ilic posted an image featuring the vintage logotypes of several famous fashion brands alongside their new logos. His caption simply read, “Interesting logos are being replaced with boring ones. This...

Why have just one logo?

Logos can be boring. Being stuck with one can be especially yawn-inducing. Don’t you wish we could have lots of logos to play with—get some variation in there to keep things interesting? Most logos these days do have variations: different...

O Street’s Favourite Albums of 2018, Illustrated

Last year we treated you to tracks, and this year it’s albums. Being designers and music geeks, we felt a good way to recap our year would be to each pick a favourite album of 2018 and illustrate a cover...

Spelling Your Own Name Wrong: When Will We Trust Ai to Write Our Emails?

In O Street’s early days we won a big job with a gallery in Glasgow. In my haste and excitement when writing my first email to the client, I signed off as ‘Davis’ instead of ‘David’. I was too embarrassed...

How to Brew a Brand

Beer. Our studio has an undying love for the craft. We’ve been known to swing by Fyne Ales for a brewery tour and a wee keg or two of ale. Our team has been caught up first-hand in the wonder...

Label O’ Love

One sunny day, we at O Street had something wonderful plopped into our laps: a big box filled with labels. Why’s that wonderful? Well, these labels are a glimpse into design’s industrious beauty of decades past: a commercial printer’s life...

Saltwater, sushi and broken necks (or, seven steps to a stellar fishing trip)

The O Street way—besides ‘tea at 3’ and ‘put that scalpel down before you hurt yourself’—can perhaps best be summarised by our insistency on piling into a fishing boat to slay a handful of helpless Scottish mackerel every year. This...

Signs You Might Be in a Canyon

There’s a heck of a lot of places to go wandering around nearby our digs in Colorado. Here’s a few signs you might be in a canyon. Just don’t wander off the trail—there’s snakes out here.

(Actually) Fake It, Until You (Actually) Make It

Fake it till you make it the Orson Welles way: how he gave us a blueprint for getting creative dream projects going with Citizen Kane A couple years ago, we found ourselves wanting to break into the world of beer...

Trump Scrabble

All you need to protest Donald Trump is, well, Donald Trump. It goes for his character as well as his name. Download the kit here. So we drew DONALD TRUMP! in a typeface inspired by old-school civil rights signs and...

America, Give Us A De-Sign

When it comes to graphic design, we can be a bunch of nostalgic Americophiles. Our Jonny recently visited the great US-of-A and soaked up a load of Americana, and since most of it was bolted down and his 3rd suitcase...

The sounds of a design studio

We pride ourselves on thoughtfully different design. While we create work that looks beautiful, the buck doesn’t stop there. To be an O Street project, you’ve got to have character.     So when we created a new showreel strutting...

Getting stuck in—the magic behind making a brand

What’s the difference between visual identity and a brand? There’s a hundred ways to skin this cat in design thinking, but one theory is this: the former is a visual toolkit, while the latter embodies the spirit of its subject....

Cool things brewing in London — women in the beer trade

Last week we raised a glass to the women of the world, and it gave us a thought: what’s the state of women in brewing? Having designed the What’s On Guide for Walthamstow Forest Council and their community arts project...

Iceland, accidental design mecca

Since branching out to America, a certain island has become an obvious stopping point for Oventurers: Iceland. Yes, we too fall prey to travel blog fever, not to mention the extended layovers offered by airlines at no extra cost. Iceland...

GSA Winter School in the Highlands

In January, students from Audencia Business School’s MSc in Management and Entrepreneurship in the Creative Economy (MECE) programme travelled to The Glasgow School of Art’s Creative Campus in the Scottish Highlands for the International Winter School. The event is a...

O Street is in America.

O Street are moving to the USA. We’re chuffed (very pleased) to announce a third location for our shop: Denver, Colorado — a place we’ve been in love with for a while. As of today, our resident American Josh is...

Our Design Space

We were delighted when Computer Arts hosted us in their My Design Space feature, which you can find here. No matter where we go, our flagship studio in Scotland’s grunge capital Glasgow will always be our beating heart. Our design...

beer x KOZY

It’s getting cold out, so we gather for something warming: beer, gloves and Buckfast. Inspired by the amazing knitted hats of Lake&Loch, we team up with them to invent KOZY: a glove/beer koozie hybrid that doesn’t take itself too seriously....

Graphic Design Festival Scotland Live 2-Day Brief

Graphic Design Festival Scotland is an annual festival that seeks to elevate the global stature of design and its reach in Scotland. Four years in, it’s working. O Street were delighted to again be invited as mentors for the fest’s...

TopForm top tips

GDFS seeks to elevate design in Scotland with an internationally relevant festival. The 2018 fest kicked off with TopForm, a day of talks from industry leaders. There’s a lot we could say about the breadth of amazing insight from this...

There’s Something About Mary

One of the weightiest decisions in designing currency is deciding whose face will be passed over coffee counters and lost in couch cushions for the next thirty-odd years. The minds behind the most recent bill in Scotland can rest easy...

Designing for Trust in an AI-First World

At one of our recent studio Vision Days© at O Street we talked about how each of us yearned to keep up with the ebbs and flows of our industry, partly by attending events and training sessions. We divvied it...

What we bring when we’re away

We’re headed off on our annual fam fishin’ trip this weekend and will be back in operation on Tuesday 5 September. What are we bringing? Well:

A moral or amoral designer

As our studio approaches a move to Colorado, we have a decision to make: does working with weed make you a moral or amoral designer? It’s easy to work away as a graphic designer just making the things on our...

Things to do in Denver when you’re a designer

We’re looking for a new USA-based home for O Street. With a booming craft beer industry, burgeoning tech scene and tons of sun, Denver Colorado is a good bet. Here’s a few designerly things we got up to in the...

wHY & O Street: Concept for Ross Pavilion and Princes St Gardens Unveiled

We’re excited to share our team’s concept for Edinburgh’s £25m Ross Pavilion and Princes St Gardens competition, which has been made public today > O Street are part of a multi-disciplinary team led by eminent US firm wHY. Alongside Stuco...

In Miffy Memorandum

Total simplicity allows space for imagination, especially when it comes to children. For the past year or so, our resident studio ‘waving’ lucky cat has sat pride of place at the front window—beaming at the school kids that pass by...

Advertising Wasteland — photography by Adam Frint

Chicago-based photographer and designer Adam Frint has an amazing eye for geometry in urban spaces. We’re particularly drawn to his photographs of empty billboards; a not-so-subtle visual allegory for our times. We asked Adam about his series. “For me, these...

Season’s Greetings from Nunraw (and O Street)

A graphic scavenge through a curious old bookshop yielded this treasure: bits of 1980s Christmas programmes from the Sancta Maria Abbey in Nunraw. From a graphic standpoint, it’s a goldmine: digitised black letter typography (which we redrew for our Christmas...

Ladies, Wine & Design / Here come the girls

Last week, our studio was taken over by the conversation series Ladies, Wine & Design. Facilitated by ilka, the series brings together a small group of women every month to drink wine and chat design, creativity, business, stuff, life and...

A Chicago Cubs visual primer

The Chicago Cubs won the World Series this week for the first time since 1908. O Street’s Chicago native has a few gems to school you on the team’s graphic history. Logo As a team that’s been known as the...

Making (and breaking) the poster grid

You can participate in contributing to the 2016 identity for Graphic Design Festival Scotland. In a pretty dang cool move, the team behind the festival have made available assets to make posters like one the below, by Warriors and Freytag...

Go Fish

O Street’s annual fishing trip has yet again been pulled off without any human casualties. Please enjoy this visual report from the weekend. The location was lovely Loch Fyne. Avengers assemble! Tessa leaves a bucket of bodies in her wake....

Making Roadline—designing a font

How do you make a working font from some type on a road? Our collaboration with Glasgow roadliners was an amazing experience but as ever there is more to it than meets the eye. We thought we’d share a bit...

Future Now – Design, Tech and What’s Next

What is the shape of design in the future, and how does technology affect creative practice? Our studio O Street is about a decade old and came of age during the tech boom. We’ve gone from analogue art-school punks to...

Seven Art School Life Drawing Disasters

In advance of beer x All the Young Nudes, our noggins have been full of memories from art school’s past. Of particular abundance are disasters we all seem to have experienced at some point in life drawing class. A rag-tag...

O Street Tracks – ‘Sleep’

Need something to listen to? O Street Tracks are back. Here’s a playlist suited for both zoning out and focusing on work. Or just drifting off. Give it a listen with a 12 second fade in/out for maximum transcendental mindlessness....

How to Bug Out your Bag

The sky is burning. Layers of red and orange blaze up to the darkening clouds that hover on the horizon, intertwined with the smell of smoke, blood and…do I hear screaming? And so begins the end of the world. Or...

7″ slipcases

We’ve just allocated the Secret Santa names in our studio (I have a feeling the Illinois Dynamo is a ‘Christmas person’) and I have been racking my brains as to what to buy. Scrolling through eBay I stumbled on some...

last of the cut ’n’ pasters…

    We were out of space in the studio plans chest yet again. Right, some of this shit has to go. And go it does, piece by piece to reveal… eh, what’s this at the back of the drawer?...

embrace the revolution

Having recently worked on the branding for the annual IAB Engage event at the Barbican, Neil M, David and I had the opportunity to attend some of the conference itself. The day consists of a multitude of speakers, all discussing...

OST space – a Friday mixtape

O Street’s resident astronaut Neil M has compiled space, a Friday mixtape that will jumble you up and blast you into the stratosphere before gently floating you into the weekend. God speed!

Himalayan Road Guidance Poetry

Also when stone cold sober, don’t drive like a dober. HIMANK is a road safety project in India’s northerly Ladakh region and a great name for an organisation. Pathetically for me, I suppose this because it rhymes with something rude....

OST loch-sides

The latest O Street mixtape is a collection of tunes we turned to for late-night, whisky-marinated sing-alongs during our O fishin’ trip. Kick back and enjoy!

O Fishin’ 2015

Last week we hung up our macs a wee bit early and piled in a van destined for Loch Fyne—our annual fishing trip. After the usual pit stops at craft breweries and Waitrose breakfast foods aisle, we settled into our...

Pre-Internet Boredom

Recently I was helping a friend lug boxes of things from her old life to charity shops. Like any designer who thinks he’s worth his salt, I began rummaging through her stuff — you never know what the discarded printed...

Beer x Lauren Law

Beertimes is a rolling program of cultural collaborations curated by O Street. For our latest get-together, we welcomed set designer & visual artist Lauren Law to take over the studio. After a ridiculous photoshoot involving hotdogs (which sadly went to...

OST work waves 2.0

Our latest mixtape is a new work waves: heads down, get-it-done tunes. Bring on the weekend!    

beer x el rancho records

Beer, pals, tunes. Sometimes we have it too good. O Street’s culture series rolls on and most recently featured Glasgow’s El Rancho Records. It was a blur of a night—and what we remember we won’t soon forget! Featured guest: El...

OST Work Waves

For all you worker bees headed into the weekend: here’s a heads-down, get-it-done hour of quality sound waves playlist to finish off Friday.

Beer x Workhorse Press

Beertimes is a rolling programme of bespoke brews and cultural collaborations curated by O Street. Workhorse Press stormed the studio with an exhibition of risograph printed goodness and created limited edition labels for a passion fruit IPA brewed by Chris...

we’ve got your money!

O Street’s pay-day playlists. A Side O Side

Love is in the air! Or maybe it’s just overcast and a bit nippy.

Valentine’s/Anti-Valentine’s OST (O Street Tracks) Join O Street Studio for some good (and some not-so-good) tunes either celebrating or desecrating the day of love–we’ve got a Spotify playlist for lovers, and another for those who want nothing to do with...

Beer x Photography

On the 5th December we uncapped our event series Beertimes, where we celebrate culture with small-batch custom beers. Photographer David Wishart, a BMXer in 1979 Florida, exhibited photos of ‘chromies’, dust-caps stolen from fancy cars to deck out bicycles way...

Power of design

If ever there was an example of the power of design I think it is the story in todays papers about the success of the ‘generic packaging’ initiatives for cigarettes in Australia. Although, opposed by many when first suggested, the...

Solid Gone

One of those little moments when you chance upon something astonishing and it stops you in your tracks. It wasn’t the rock, just a photograph of it. Smith Journal (smithjournal.com.au) is always a welcome arrival with its rich and eclectic...

Tessa Simpson

The O Street family grew this year as we welcomed designer Tessa Simpson, a graduate who has eased into industry like she’s been at it all her life. Tessa is talented, driven and alongside Ed, a good example that you...

Waiter, waiter, there’s a shark in my wine!

We all know the advertising game can be brutal and blood-thirsty work. I’d often thought there was something a wee bit gory about the original of this poster at our local supermarket. But hey, this isn’t the arty West End...

i love google

When I studied at the Glasgow School of Art there was 30 of us sharing the one Mac and we shunned technology for the smell of the caseroom or the scratch of a pencil. I say this to highlight how...

Man Ray Portraits

O Street were approached by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery to design the campaign materials for Man Ray Portraits, a first major museum retrospective of his photographic portraiture work to be held in Scotland. The exhibition, presented in collaboration with...

Last.fm Mix Tape

Last.fm celebrated 10 years of scrobbling in December 2012. O Street were employed to develop a piece of print to celebrate this exciting milestone. We developed a concept based on the familiar and much loved cassette format. A concertina booklet...

Fab-ulous Toilet Tiles

O Street were approached by fab.com, the everyday design marketplace, who wanted to stock our pictogram toilet tiles—an O Street classic! Naturally, we jumped at the chance to spread our toilet humour a little further than the confines of OHQ....

Toronto Graffiti

I think it was Bob Dylan who once said ‘Beware of bathroom walls that have not been written on’. There was no need to worry about Toronto then. From stencil to sticker, official to unofficial, Toronto’s graffti all looked great.

Taking the Ceramick

O Street’s ‘desperate’ toilet pictograms are one of our few ‘claims to fame’. When —The story of our toilet pictograms started a long, long time ago when I was a student at Glasgow School of Art. Visiting lecturer Jonathan Barnbrook...

pressing on

Spent a bit of time down at Glasgow Press this week to see a new project on the press. We’ve been working with acclaimed photographer Kieran Dodds to produce the first in a series of A5 postcard sets called ‘little...

made in scotland from electrons

Our geometric t-shirt designs for Kiltr are now available in the shop (check them out here). A little reminder that networks are physical and not just digital. Kiltr is a scottish social network that has attracted more than 20,000 members...

Solid Gong

We just received our Scottish Design Awards ruler in the post for the winning ‘O Here’s To‘ project. None of us could make it to the actual black-tie do, so Neil got out his felt tips to re-enact the magic...

the clyde alight

A happy accident. The Clyde from the sky looks on fire tonight. No photo filters, just O Davis not knowing how to use his iPhone camera properly.

high flyers

We’ve just received these invitations we designed for Aurora Aviation—a global aviation service we’ve recently started working with. This event is part of their attendance at the ebace aviation convention in Geneva. They wanted something special so the invite has...

Type on Gates

I’ve been driving passed this Fish & Chip shop for years admiring the type on the wrought iron fence outside. Someone has bent these letters with their bare hands… It’s not in the most glamorous corner of Glasgow, and the...

Our City is Made of Trees…

…our forest is made of stone. On the edge of the Botanic Gardens Arboretum, this block forms part of a column under the Kirklee Bridge. I’m lichen it a lot. It moss be the way I tell ’em!

Manchester/Dunlop

Manchester, amongst other things, famous for it’s music, should also be famous for it’s signage. This old Dunlop factory frontage in the arts district (new-age) is a deco stone rampage!

X-ray Oscar Bravo Charlie Foxtrot

It’s always a treat when working with clients throws up something cool and unexpected. Even so, we were genuinely intrigued when those clever people at BCF Technology (experts in veterinary ultrasound and X-ray imaging) sent us these shots.  

Hi Ho Silver

Had my first trip into work today on some new wheels. It’s an old Raleigh frame with Peugeot forks, re-coated and fixed up nicely by Joe around the corner at Gear bikes (thanks Joe). Have to say it’s looking very...

Road Writers

The hard men of typography! A couple of strips of gaffer instead of a baseline grid and years of sweat and muscle instead of daily searches on designspiration. I feel like a phoney, a patsy, a schmuck. I’ve been designing...

Magic Shots

Stunning long exposure photos by Tsuneaki Hiramatsu of fireflies. This enchanting forest in the Chūgoku region of Japan, is the home to gold fireflies that charm the area regularly. Magical.

The Joy of Books

We love this. A stunning piece of work created by Sean Ohlenkamp to promote the Type bookstore in Toronto (883 Queen Street West, (416) 366-8973). The work that has gone into this is mind-blowing to say the least. Everything you...

Horror-ble Poster

Not very often one of these comes along… We’ve been asked to design the poster for a new horror flick premiering at SXSW. When it comes to dream projects, I’d say that’s pretty hard to beat! We’re currently in the...

Looking Forward To a Brand New Year

We have begun to roll out a new identity for Scotland-based Law firm Inksters to reflect their place in the legal market as forward thinking lawyers. But more on that later. To celebrate the launch we designed this unique mailer...

o here’s to

We’re busy setting up an installation piece that involves a projector, whisky and lots of LED lights! The installation is part of a live social media project taking place tomorrow at our studio Christmas party! You can take part by...

Jim Sandborn

We always enjoy a bit of experimentation with our mini studio projector. But Jim Sanborn‘s “The Topographic Projections and Implied Geometries Series” takes playing with light to a whole different level. They are long exposures photographs of enormous light projections....

lost moleskin notebook

I just lost my second Moleskin notebook in a week. Gutted. It’s one of our most valuable tools at O Street, and it’s amazing how much of our work is created on its girded pages. Above is a sketch (scribbled...

Retro Football Cards

‘Wanna see my football scrap book?’ It’s not a question I’ve been asked since I was about 12, but sitting there in my neighbours house watching the Champions league last week I thought, ‘Yeah, why the hell not’. I had...

A Christmas Carol Programme Sneak Peek

We’ve been busy working on the design of the programme for the National Theatre of Scotland‘s forthcoming production of ‘A Christmas Carol’. It’s currently with the printers. Here’s a sneak peek behind the scenes at the GSA’s letterpress studio. The...

we walk in beauty

‘We walk in bueaty’ (sic) said the otherwise elegant graffiti at the Navajo Nations Monument at Window Rock, Arizona. Underneath, some wag had added ‘even though we cannot spell it’. There is something fundamentally appealing in this exchange. I reckon...

designer foolkit #1

Back when my esteemed colleague Mr Wallace got his first job in the design industry all the kit you needed to survive was a black polo neck jumper and a 2b pencil tucked behind your ear. What with the birth...

the story of ‘o’

Due to similarities in shape the letter O is often associated with zero or nothing, but O is far from being nothing. Unlike zero whose roots lie in Arabic numeration systems of the middle ages O is one of the...