Hi friend,

We're back and looking a little bit different this month. New year, new me and all. 💅

Don't let the new look fool you, though; we're still here to offer you the same great content you signed up for. In case you're new, nineteen eighty four is where the design, marketing, and sustainability worlds collide to give you a bustling bulletin of goodness that you can't afford to miss.

Instead of celebrating the fact that January is nearly over (wahey), we're celebrating the launch of something pretty big that's been in the works for a few months now and we can't wait to give you a first look at it in this newsletter!

Avery & Brown releases first ever impact report

We are thrilled to announce the publication of our first ever impact report!

The report covers our first two years of business, from August 2020 to August 2022. If you've been following us for a while, you know that being a regenerative business is super important to us, and we're always looking for ways to be better. Like any business, we've had our ups and downs, but we truly believe that our focus on being regenerative has played a huge role in our success so far.

To grab your copy, click the button below! The impact report is currently only available to our loyal nineteen eighty four subscribers, and you’ll need to use the password OpRegen2020 to access it. It will become publicly available in a week’s time on Tuesday 7th February.

If that wasn't enough news for you, then have a gander at what else we've been up to since the start of 2023:

• We announced that our new focus for this year and beyond is the built environment!

• The Avery & Brown team attended the inaugural Better Business Summit in Manchester this month and you can read all about it in our blog post here.

• Russ was interviewed on The Alternative Business School Podcast, discussing the importance of stakeholder governance.

• Finally, Josh joined the team this month, ending the search for our new Marketing Executive.

The National Portrait Gallery reopening sees new branding direction

In preparation for its reopening in June, The National Portrait Gallery has been given a grand new logo, typeface, and colour palette. Created by Edit Brand Studio, the overhauled branding aims to take a nod to the gallery's history and tradition while adopting a fresh contemporary image to attract a new audience.

It takes a special kind of creativity to evolve a well-established brand to balance heritage with innovation. This month has also seen the launch of several high-profile rebrands, from Eurostar to Center Parcs.

Something else that caught our eye this month is a recent building project in Vietnam. Vo Trong Nghia Architects recently completed a literal concrete jungle with their own urban farming office, covered in various fruit, veg, and herbs. The secret here is the building having an exposed frame and the planters being supported by their own shelving structure. You don't have to travel all the way to Ho Chi Minh City to get your thumbs green though, as Farm Urban, based in Liverpool, is creating its own vertical farms through hydroponic and aquaponic methods!

Hey. Do you have a creative project coming up? Need some resources?

If you're looking for some great free photography sources, why not check out Creative Boom's best stock photography sites for this year? If you need some help thinking like a designer, Canva's brainstorming tools have you covered.

ChatGPT: your new virtual assistant

They're the talk of the town and they're not going away any time soon. AI tools have cemented themselves as the future of business. That's why this month, we're doing a special on ChatGPT!

Created by OpenAI, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm since its initial November 2022 release. Unlike OpenAI's image processing model, DALL-E (which can produce art pieces like 'R2-D2 getting baptised' at the snap of a finger), ChatGPT manages to complete a wide range of useful language processing tasks like translating or summarising text.

If you're looking at hopping on ChatGPT to make your workload just a little bit easier, there's some great resources out there on maximising your productivity so you're not just wasting time typing away into the void. Take a look at Ruben Hassid's quick 'How-To ChatGPT' guide on LinkedIn and Matt Gray's Twitter post on turning ChatGPT into your own marketing powerhouse.

Even with the bonuses that come with having your own little virtual helper on stand-by, there's still that question in the back of our minds asking 'how long until AI comes for me?'. John Naughton gives us some food for thought in his article on how our reliance on AI for productivity purposes could have a negative impact on humanity as a whole... Spooky.

Could Britain's 'shadow woods' be the key to reforestation?

Could you imagine Britain with a lush rainforest along the full length of its Atlantic coast? Hear how the natural regeneration of Britain's 'shadow woods' could bring the west coast's winding ancient trees, lichens, fungi, and migratory birds back to their former glory. Over in Brockley in south-east London, residents managed to raise £100,000 to save Gorne Wood. The three-acre patch of ancient woodland houses endangered species such as hedgehogs and toads, but fell into disrepair in recent years after being sold into private ownership. Through fundraising efforts, enough money was raised to buy back the land to put it back into the hands of the community. Well done Brockley!

Away from the good news and into something rather troubling (sorry about that), London has seen its worst air pollution in six years this month with the capital reaching a whopping 10 on the pollution index. Home wood burning in the evening has supposedly played a major factor here, with home fires in the UK producing more particle pollution than the exhaust of all UK traffic.

Each month, we feature a different Certified B Corporation, to celebrate the brands which are working hard to create a better business world. To learn more about B Corps, click here.

Our featured B Corp this month is...

Teapigs

We all love a good cuppa, don't we? Well, even more so when it's manufactured sustainably, using whole ingredients. Whole leaves, whole berries... the whole lot. And that's just what Teapigs do.

Teapigs believe in doing small things, better.

Their range of teas use 100% natural ingredients (no artificial flavours), are sustainably sourced, and are certified plastic-free.

Have you enjoyed the new look of nineteen eighty four? Let us know your feedback by dropping us a line at [email protected]!