Provokateur is chuffed to have been appointed by RISE – “The Voice for South West Social Enterprises” – to create a brand mark for social enterprises to use, akin to Fair Trade and organic products.

As big fans of the social enterprise sector, this will be a very interesting project to work on. We are already consulting with social enterprises across the country and believe this has the potential to be a powerful driver for the growth of the sector.

As part of the brand development of Shared Interest and the Shared Interest Foundation, Provokateur was asked to redesign their quarterly magazine – usefully called Quarterly Return. First issue now out. Hope you like.

And be sure to check out the folk at Shared Interest. They invest your money in fair trade projects and support some great work.

Initiated by Action Aid, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and bringing together fifteen European health NGOs, Action for Global Health is a newly launched campaigning and advocacy group. Targeting national governments and EU institutions, they will be working to make sure the world makes good on their promises on health as part of the Millennium Develpment Goals.

This has been an ace project for a great client, working on the name, brand identity and messaging for the campaign. Intelectually, quite a challenging one to get inside given the complexity of the issues involved, but the final brand looks great and Provokateur is working on reports, publications and lashings more. Just the kind of client we like. Interesting, ambitious and committed to making a real difference. Oh, and the fact that it all had to work in five languages just added to the fun.

We’re proud to launch the first in Provokateur’s t-shirt range. Taken from our Acme Campaign Kit, you can now buy a rather glorious Save the Planet t-shirt. We’ll release details of stockists shortly, but we’re over the moon with this new avenue for Provokateur. Get in touch if you want to get your grubby paws on one – a mere £10. Damn bargain, we reckon.

The problem with looking for the *right* quotation is that, in the process, you come across so many other great lines. Not quite ‘what you’re after’, but amazing nonetheless. So, following from the previous post, here’s a fantastic quotation from Martin Luther King JR.

“When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.” 

Perhaps quotations should become a regular feature of the blog. We’ve already demonstrated our ‘quote junky’ commitment on the main site (check out the Heroes bit in the Provokations section) – but it wouldn’t hurt to start a thread here.

While working on a nice project for the civil liberties organisation Liberty, we turned up a rather brilliant Gandhi quotation. We share it here for no other reason than that it’s great.  

There are seven sins in the world: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice and politics without principle.

Crikey that’s good!

Not content with pushing out the boundaries of fair lending and opening up even more branches, Fair Finance has just produced their ‘goodie bag’ to help spread the word. With help from Provokateur, the nice folk of East London will be receiving advice cards to help them manage their finances, a natty Fair Finance calculator and some other pretty cool items to help them sort their accounts and keep the loansharks at bay.

As ever, Fair Finance is going where the big banks and dodgy lenders fear to tread. Hooray for them.

Provokateur is recruiting.

Yup. We now have so much work that we are on the hunt for remarkable, fresh, exciting, brilliant, unique, passionate, one-of-a-kind, super ambitious, dedicated, lovely designers to join the team.

You’ll have to be someone pretty special though, since Provokateur is committed to going above and beyond in our quest to create fantasticness. Think that might be you? Drop us a line at gimmeajob@provokateur.com.

 And spread the word!