It just doesn’t seem fair does it, we seem to wait (admittedly, not very patiently) for months for a summer, then it comes and goes in a flash, blink and you miss it!  All those plans of sitting out in the evening sun with a barbecue and a glass of something cold have passed us by.  All the summer clothes that we didn’t wear because it wasn’t quite ‘proper’ summer yet…..need to be packed away again without a single outing.

We know it’s over because the traffic is worse now that the schools are back, the evenings are closing in, the odd conker is falling and dare we say it, but the C word is being thrown around like a little rag doll (That’s ‘Christmas’ by the way, for any slightly twisted minds out there!)

The programmes on the television are clear reminders that winter is approaching.  Just the theme music to some can whisk you back to those feelings of cold winter nights on the sofa, heating on, curtains drawn and the smell of a warming winter stew cooking.  A few of these programmes (Strictly Come Dancing, X-Factor etc) have formats that have heats, quarter and semi finals etc and as the contestants are whittled down to be crowned the star, it also gives us a countdown to Christmas.  We know that as the final approaches, so do the festivities!

In the Glow studio we have already been working on several Christmas projects.  Our leisure and tourism clients have winter holidays and deals that they need to be promoting now and it has prompted us to nudge other clients that really, they need to be thinking along the same lines.  In order to plan, design and write for even the simplest things like Christmas cards, so much has to be taken into account.  The easiest way we find to work it out is to work backwards – start with the delivery date requirement, take into account print lead times (bearing in mind it’s a busy time of year for them), then the tricky part of working out how long the process of client liaison and approval will take.

So it’s all go and whether we like it or not, we can’t slow down time.  The best way of going into it without it being a headache is to be prepared and if that’s what we are telling our clients, that’s what we need to do ourselves.  None of this doom and gloom, let’s get prepared and face it head on, then maybe it won’t seem so scary.  There are so many good things to look forward to, it’s another chapter in the year and in all our work and home lives, who knows what the next few months will bring us.