Tickets are now on sale for The Manchester Design Symposium 2012 .

This year’s event will explore the complex relationship between design and the economy, bringing to question whether the UK’s place at the top table of world design is under threat as emerging economies invest more in their ‘knowledge economy’ – and whether design and innovation has the potential to power the UK out of a recession.

Renowned graphic designer and writer, Adrian Shaughnessy, is leading the five-speaker line up.

Shaughnessy will be joined by Morag Myerscough, founder of Studio Myerscough and renowned for her work in the integration of graphics within architectural settings, Jason Smith, founder of Fontsmith, is also joining the line up.

Director of publishing platform It’s Nice That and agency INT Works, Alex Bec and designer Vera-Maria Glahn, cofounder of digital art and design studio Field, complete the speaker line up. Malcolm Garrett, renowned for his graphic design work for artists including Simple Minds and Duran Duran, will join all the speakers for the event’s panel discussion.

Tickets to the event are selling fast and can be purchased via the website www.manchesterdesignsymposium.com. The event will take place in the Great Hall at Manchester Town Hall from 12-6pm.

For press enquiries please contact Lisa French at Truth PR: lisa@truth-pr.co.uk

We are delighted to reveal our design work for Train Manchester, a new gym offering in Castlefield, in collaboration with Corporation Pop who we worked closely with on all aspects of branding and identity.

Moving away from the ‘typical’ gym design, the interior has been created to be innovative and unique with a ‘spit & sawdust’ industrial feel. Existing materials were reused throughout the project as well as hundreds of scaffold boards and recycled wooden pallets for wall coverings and seating.

Bold lettering, way-finding and the use of graphics throughout demonstrate Train’s strong identity and individuality, featured not just on signage and walls but as markers on jump-boxes, vintage fly-posers and the member’s t-shirts, ‘The Iron Horses’.

In keeping with the ‘Train’ theme, vintage train tickets are displayed in corridors grouped as colour-ways; their RAL colours matched to the painted boards leading you to the changing areas upstairs.

Train is located in Castlefield, Manchester. It is open 7 days a week and offers a variety of strength and conditioning training for everyone. For more information visit the website here.

Photography by Pip Rustage (c)

NoChintz are delighted to announce that we have been appointed by Peel Media to provide further Furnishings for the Greenhouse, MediaCityUK.

Following on from our initial work at the Greenhouse in 2011, when NoChintz fitted out the office pods, meeting rooms and the reception area, we will be furnishing additional offices, meeting rooms and break out spaces.

Natalie Gray, NoChintz:  “We’re thrilled to have been appointed to work at the Greenhouse once again, we are looking forward to providing further design solutions for these creative and diverse offices”

Spaced over three floors The Greenhouse is purpose built for smaller businesses and is an integral part of the creative community that is emerging on Salford Quays. Its neighbours include BBC, ITV, The Pie Factory and the University of Salford.

Architect Frank Gehry’s is said to have redefined modern architecture, he believes that architecture is art and has said that he has been more influenced by artists and sculptors than by architects.

His Easy Edges furniture series gained surprising acclaim and was largely responsible for Gehry’s rise to public recognition in the early 1970s, however it is his building architecture he is now more widely known for. His most spectacular design to date is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, completed in 1997. The Guggenheim Museum is often thought of as his most famous building and described by Time magazine as “The Building Of The Century”.

Olympic fish: Spain, Disney Village: Paris, Dancing House: Prague and Gehry Tower: Germany are just some of the other widely recognised designs Gehry is known for.

For the February 2012 Spring Fair we developed an innovative extension for the Luckies of London exhibition stand.

The original Luckies stand was created by NoChintz in 2010, this years extension allowed us to incorporate new design features and various display options for the product.

The idea of a cube with fixed dimensions was used and implemented in a deconstructed formation; as a pegboard, an open shelf, an angled shelf or a storage device. LED lighting and a large bespoke neon ‘Luckies’ sign brought the seating area to life.

The design is a flexible addition that can be adapted and added to for future exhibitions.

Luckies is an online brand that creates and sells ‘super-fun super-useful products’, we have previously collaborated with Luckies for the Spring Fair 2010 and Autumn Fair 2011.

(Photography by Haydn Rydings)

Love instagram? Get involved In Manchester’s Instameet picture competition, based around the theme of ‘one-off’ your entry could become part of an exhibition that will launch on Wednesday 29th February otherwise known as ‘Leap Day’.

Whether it’s a ‘One Off’ building, moment, person even a mindblowing meal that you think sums up the theme of ‘One Off’ all you have to do is take a picture with the app, tag it with #oneoff and submit it at with some details of the story behind it via instameetMCR@gmail.com.

A selection will be displayed in the Incognito gift store in the City’s Northern Quarter where an event to pick the winners will take place on Leap Day from 6pm onwards. The exhibition will then run until March 14th.

There will be a ‘People’s Choice’ winner – which will be the most liked #oneoff picture on Instagram and the rest of the winners will be decided by the crowd on the night. There are a bunch of prizes on offer for the victorious including goodies from Incognito and Instagoodies.

For more information about the event visit the website here.

A while ago we revealed that we were working with the Hotel Inspector’s Alex Polizzi and Twofour Group for a new BBC series. The episode of Alex Polizzi – The Fixer that we were involved in aired last night on BBC2.

Featuring Guide Bridge MOT, a family ran car repair garage in Ashton-under-Lyne, Manchester, the episode sees Alex lend her business skills to help the garage transform family failure into financial success.

As part of the Garage transformation NoChintz redesigned the reception area. The space was created to have a welcoming feel for customers, the new price list was clearly displayed above the main reception desk and a family tree mural was used as a feature on the wall to highlight that Guide Bridge MOT is a family business.

If you missed it you can watch the episode here.