21 Dec RONIN’s highlights of 2012
2012 has been a year to remember for a lot of people, for a whole host of reasons. This is why it’s been so special for us here at RONIN:
Steve
Our best year ever, following our best year ever. Social media’s become a big thing for us and we’ve won a lot of new clients in 2012 – diverse too: everything from a jazz musician and bread making school to a lift company and kitchen manufacturer, both with the Royal Warrant. Great team; great customers; great work. Here are some of my highlights:
– Working with the Egyptians at EMEC on their website – good people
– Winning the PR and social media contract for Stoneham Kitchens
– Getting some really great design and content together for a series of ads, brochures and white papers for Oliver Wight
– a great summer with my family – the Olympics and Paralympics either side of a long hot fortnight in rural France. I was lucky enough to see Jess Ennis break the British 100 metres hurdles record and Josie Pearson break the world discus record three times with consecutive throws. Like a lot of people, it changed my view of sport forever. Fabulous!
– Getting this website launched at last and reading everybody else’s highlights
Lowlights
– A picture of me in the local press for Movember dressed as the Indian from The Village People (more detail here)
– My ice skating performance at the Christmas party
Clare
WOW. What a year. I thought it would be tough to top 2011, but 2012 has brought even more exciting projects, new clients and new faces to RONIN. I’ve had a great time and it’s been fantastic to see so many of our clients doing so well. Here’s just some of my highlights:
– Becoming an Account Manager: with our team and client base growing, there has been a lot going on in the office this year, and I’m delighted to have a new role.
– Olympic fever: Not just going to the Olympic park (which was amazing) but the transformation in attitudes across the country, in the marketing world and in the office – to the extent a sneaky peek at the days sporting events was expected rather than chastised. Brilliant.
– New social media campaigns, from jazz bands to handbags, to IT, we’ve gone social media crazy!
– Going to more events. Milly and I have done the rounds at many a conference this year, including eCircle Connect Europe, The Business Growth Show and Business Start Up (with Milly winning more than her fair share of competition prizes along the way)
– Attending Harrington’s Kitchen bread making course – one of the most enjoyable work tasks ever.
– Ice skating at Somerset House: our Christmas do with ice skating, sangria, flamenco dancing and silly secret Santa presents was definitely our most memorable yet.
Milly
This year has flown past – filled with exciting new projects, new industries, new marketing platforms to explore, and new faces in the office. Here are my best bits:
1. Pinning, posting, tweeting, sharing – this year has been all about social media and I have loved it! Kick starting this year with RONIN’s Pinterest board, creating mood boards on mural.ly and overseeing social media accounts from bread making classes, Harrington’s Kitchen, to handbag retailer, Perfect Handbags, has been a highly creative, social and rewarding experience!
2. A lucky year. Winning a Samsung Galaxy SII at eCircle’s Connect Europe Marketing conference, courteously of Clare’s tweet highlighting I was living in the dark ages with a phone incapable of tweeting! Then, a couple of month’s later winning country hotel breaks voucher at The Business Startup show!
3. Achieving coverage for Perfect Bags for Men in the Daily Mail‘s Weekend magazine; and getting creative with the Perfect Handbag’s marketing campaign – “5 must have bags,” “Bag of the week”, “Perfect” pinterest boards etc. Now I’m looking forward to seeing Perfect Handbags feature in Women’s Weekly in January!
4. The introduction of “Beer Cart Friday”, ciders and beers on a Friday afternoon – enough said!
5. Discovering lots of new marketing, media and trend inspirations: from the likes of Twitter gurus @MariaPopova, @99u, @Explore; new publications, ‘The Simple Things’ magazine, ‘Oh Comely’; online creative sites Creative Boom, Humans Invent, Design Milk and Pinterest inspiration from Design Seeds, House Lars Built and Dezeen etc., this year has been full of fabulous inspiration.
Darren
Another year in the life of RONIN and I’ve enjoyed every second. The team is expanding and it’s great to see some new faces around the place! Some of my most memorable projects this year include:
– Creating the ‘animal series’ advertising campaign for Oliver Wight. I used a series of thought provoking animal images, with short, sharp headings to promote it’s Supply Chain Design and Optimization product. One particular ad, depicting a tortoise that had been photoshopped upside down caused quite a stir with certain animal welfare groups.
– I worked on a website for property developer, Guildmore. We had a super tight deadline of 2 weeks for front-end design and development, which included a portfolio, case study and virtual tours. We finished on time and the client was very happy.
– Speaking of websites, adding some great other ones to our portfolio has been great, including: EMEC, Excel Portfolios, SCOPA, Skillcrown and of course our own.
– I’ve also enjoyed a lot of the branding work, especially for EMEC who had us apply it to their website, technical manual and product sacks. And music duo, The Rise, having their logo touring with Peter Andre is my new claim to fame.
– One of my other highlights of 2012 has been having fellow graphic Designer, Carolyn join the team 🙂
Carolyn
1) I joined Ronin and became a member of a great family!
2) Launched Ronin’s brand new website!
3) Designed 3 new brochures for Oliver Wight:
– Integrated Business Planning brochure
– Managing People and Behaviours white paper
– Corporate brochure
4) Logo and Stationery design for a Jazzy musician Karl Charity
5) Drinking a lot more alcohol than before I joined Ronin
Martin
– Graduating from University in the summer and finally realising my aim of moving to London and entering the real world.
– Entering a completely new industry and learning the ropes in PR/ Marketing. This has included writing blogs for the RONIN website, one of which was about the future of Marketing in 2013, which excitingly got it retweeted by Empty13.
– Working on RONIN’s new musical client, Karl Charity, and getting a lot more frequented with all types of social media in the process. I was very inexperienced with Twitter before I came to RONIN and now I’m addicted.
– Writing releases for clients such as Oliver Wight and Azzure IT and learning about things I had no idea at all about previously, like supply chains, ERP software and cloud computing!