We've been working in the Third Sector producing quality printed materials and websites since 1997. We deliver creative, effective and inspiring solutions. Communicating what matters to you, telling your story in the best medium possible is important to us. It's what makes us tick.
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Garden Organic's Adopt A Veg scheme
“It’s been running for a number of years, but in recent years has suffered from a degree of neglect. We knew that it could make a bigger impact as the product taps into the modern psyche of protecting the old and conserving it for the future, in this case, rare heirloom vegetable varieties. We have always felt the product had the potential to perform better and deliver a good level of income to the organisation,” explained Gareth of the Garden Organic Income generation team.
“The result is a totally revamped product. The new logo should appeal to our target audience, as it’s modern but not too challenging. And the gift pack not only looks great, but is also saving us money. CS realised that making the delivery of the scheme more cost-effective was a priority for us, so they devised a print-on demand certificate, which is placed inside a gift pack that is cheaper for us to print and produce than the previous pack. I hear Tim even went to the the trouble of taking several versions to the local post office during development to make sure it fitted through a standard letter box!”
RSPB Species Recovery report and inserts
With its own creative team busy, the RSPB turned to C&S when it wanted to produce new policy documentation. Kate Smith, editorial manager, asked us to create the Species Recovery report and a series of related information sheets. We designed a sumptuous A4 32pp brochure, complete with a flap to hold the information sheets.
“It’s great to know that C&S are able to handle a whole project like this for us,” says Kate. “They design, copy edit and proofread for us; sometimes they take on all elements of a job, others just specific tasks. In fact for this project, they did the whole lot. They really take the pressure off our creative team when we’re busy.”
United Response’s website
United Response supports people with learning disabilities, mental health needs and physical disabilities across England and Wales. And when the charity wanted to redesign its website, C&S was the company it turned to.
“The attraction was that C&S could take on the complete project,” explains James Dodd. “Not only did they come up with a concept for it, they designed each of the individual pages, and then built it. We didn’t have to get involved with a single line of code, or anything technical like that.
“It’s been a long, but thoroughly professional process. We are extremely pleased with our new look and believe it fulfils the aims, which we set out in our initial brief. So far we have received tremendously positive feedback.”
Kettering Borough Council’s cemetery interpretative signs
“I was tasked with looking at how we could encourage more people to use our cemeteries as public open spaces (in an appropriate way of course!),” explains Russ Howell, Health Services Manager for Kettering Borough Council. “The first thing we wanted to do was get some information into the sites. We didn’t want it to just be about graves and headstones, but also to look at other interesting points, including the flora and fauna. It needed to be something eye catching and provide a snapshot of the social, architectural, environmental and ecological highlights of the site – going some for one sign!
“Having looked around our sites, the local Wildlife Trust put us in touch with Tim at CS, as CS produce signs for the Trust too. After an initial site meeting with Tim, Lisa took over the reins and together we came up with the signs that are now in situ.
“The signs meet the brief in every way – appearance and content. They’re just what we wanted.”
Twin’s annual report
We were chuffed to be approached by a new client, Twin earlier this year. As we were unfamiliar with Twin, we soon filled in the blank in our knowledge (they’re a producer-owned membership organisation dedicated to developing the fair trade supply chain) and got on with the job in hand: designing and printing the organisation’s annual report. And Twin were pleased the result, as communications manager, Liz Evers reports:
“We’re really pleased with the work that Cottier Sidaway has done for us. The whole process was well managed and painless – they digested the brief, responded well to feedback and turned around a very well-designed piece of work for us within our very tight deadline. We would definitely use them again.”
Charity Finance Directors' Group’s Annual report
The Group’s Head of Marketing & Communications Lindsay Derry came to us earlier this year with a request to “make our annual report work harder for us and communicate effectively what we have achieved”. Working with a design agency on the annual report wasn’t something the charity had done before, but Lindsay was confident that together we could crack it.
She says: “From the outset, I knew we would have to keep on top of this; the annual report involves a lot of people and incorporating all that feedback can really slow things down. Thankfully, Cottier Sidaway understood, and with a schedule in place we were ready to go. Although there were a few minor hiccups along the way, they were sorted out very speedily, it was really remarkably smooth. We soon settled on a design and it only took a couple of proofs to come up with the finished article. As well as printing beautiful colour copies, Cottier Sidaway also provided us with a stripped-down black & white version too.
“The project went so well that we’re already thinking ahead to the next one – this time without the hiccups!”