Charlie don’t surf the web during working hours, for Charlie Hocking is out newest intern and therefore has more respect for the job than the rest of us, who idly spend our days watching Star Wars parodies, ranting on football blogs and buying shoes.

Anyways, Charlie is recent BA(Hons) graduate in Graphic Design from London College of Communications and has joined Airside for a three-month internship where we’ll presumably unlearn all them good habits picked up at LCC.

Charlie’s past work saw him shortlisted in the 2010 D&AD Student Awards’ Brand Communications category for his take on a campaign for The Body Shop, while he has also co-authored a book with fellow LCC graduate Alex Hunting about their initial experiences in the world of design, called Be Brave.

One of the first things Charlie will be working on here is the 2011 Airside Calendar. Excitingly we are moving on from the landscape format of the past few years and we are really looking forward to seeing the brand new typeface that Charlie is creating especially for it.  More on that later but for now, welcome to Airside, Charlie.

Our Studio Manager, Natalie is taking a year out to propagate the species and while she is off on maternity leave, she has left Airside in the capable hands of George Thomson. George is an old friend of Airside who enjoys organizing and is at his happiest when surrounded by ring binders and unorganized documents that require alpha-chrono arrangement.

George’s background is in music and as he says himself, he has “an unhealthy fascination for music and a deep respect for all creative arts”. His occupation with music has gone from the dying art of retail through promotion and management and, now, performance. Check out George’s music at his website or soundcloud page.

George is married to Airside’s fashion guru Laura Lees, and they have a two-year old son, Sidney. Looks like that’s another one for Maloo to add to the Airside family portraits.

So, welcome to Airside, George. Why don’t we let the man himself have the final word: “I like to run a tight ship much as the tight ship runs me. I like ice cream and seafaring analogies. Land Ho!”

Airside: The Next Generation take their first steps in the world of illustration in this gorgeous set of drawings from the prolific (Wacom) pen of Malika.

Maloo was using Airsiders as references for an illustration job (more on that, coming soon!) and decided to complete some family portraits in her spare time.

Here they are: the four Airside families. Though that does makes them seem like warring mafia gangs – we’ll have multiple murders intercut with a religious ceremony before we know it.

Let’s try, here they are: four Airsiders, their partners and young ‘uns.  That should be this year’s family Christmas card sorted for these familes. Can you draw Santa hats, Maloo?

OK, so we’ve all gotten into bed with someone we really shouldn’t have at some point in our lives. But the crucial difference between our drunken dalliances and the barely believable ConLib coalition, is that the people of the UK hadn’t put their faith in us to simply have a few quiet pints and go home alone.

For LibDem supporters, the election outcome is like seeing your partner shack up with your worst enemy, and then assure you that it’s all for the best because they’re going to sort out a way for you to hook up with loads of other people instead. Hmmm, this analogy is losing its way a bit, so let’s move on.

Mangled metaphors aside, the point is that some Airsiders are jolly annoyed that their support for Nick Clegg and his party has put the man with the moon-face in the master bedroom at 10 Downing Street. And when we get angry, we design t-shirts.

These are a few of our efforts to express our exasperation at recent events. As Airside Shop is still undergoing renovation, it is unlikely we’ll actually make these t-shirts, but we thought we’d share them with you anyways.

As spring turns into summer, it is time for a new intern to pass through the hallowed doors of Airside’s studio. We are delighted to welcome Jeeyun Michaella Chung (or just Michaella) to the team. A 2008 Graphic Design graduate from Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Michaella has since worked with the ICA and on a bunch of other freelance projects.

She mostly specialises in print materials and moving image, but Michaella has also worked in exhibition design and installations among other things. We love her notebooks for left-handed and right-handed people, whose ruled pages slant to meet the natural body positions of the writer. You can find them, along with Michaella’s other work at www.jeeyunmichaella.com.

The t-shirts have been refolded, the prints have been rerolled, the boxes are returned to the basement.  The cakes crumbs have been swept up and fed to the birds, the sticky splashes of spilt Air-cider have been wiped from the floor, and the fleeting wonder that was the Airside Pop-up Shop, has once more become a mere meeting room.

Thanks to everyone who came to see us on Friday and Saturday. As an online shop, we’ve become accustomed to minimal interaction with our customers, so it was really great fun to meet all you Airside Shoppers. We must do it again sometime. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for the all-new airsideshop.com – coming soon!

We finally got Alex and Anne to hand over their smuggled supplies of bacon, button cookies and not-actually-that-tasty-export-beer, along with some details for their recent trip to Denmark.

Disappointingly, they didn’t experience much Danish cuisine, as like most of the world, the Danes like to eat French and Italian food. The closest they came was the hotdog pictured below.

Anyhoo, aside from considering menus, the Airside duo gave a number of talks to the young, upright creative types of Denmark. First, they were invited by Lasse and Jeppe of lynfabrikken to speak at their creative space in Aarhus. Next they traveled to Vejle, to visit Spinderihallerne – a huge creative hub situated in an amazing old cotton-spinning factory.

Finally they hit the capital Copenhagen and design group Republikken, where they were interviewed for a podcast. A podcast of the lynfabrikken talk will also be available soon. We’ll let you know when we have the links. In the meantime, here’s a picture of Alex looking sad to be leaving the lovely Denmark, which you can just make out through the train window.

Airside’s Alex and Anne spent the week in Denmark, where they gave a talk at LYNfabrikken creative studios in Aarhus on Wednesday. They also visited some other agencies and studios around the country. We’ll have more details for you when we get their full debrief.

In the meantime, Alex got his architectural nerd-on at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen. Whilst browsing in the bookstore, he found a lovely pile of our book, Airside by Airside (still available to buy from Amazon), and sent us this photo. Yes, seeing our book in shops still excites us.

Airside would like to introduce the latest addition to the team: our new Client Services Director, Caroline Matthews. Having someone at Airside with such a classy job title makes us feel more grown-up, especially considering the experience Caroline brings with her. After graduating from Kingston University with a degree in Geography, Caroline did what any self-respecting geographer would do – she moved into advertising.

Over the next 15 years, Caroline worked at agencies such as Ogilvy & Mather and Clemmow Horby & Inge, on accounts for the likes of Safeway, The Carphone Warehouse and First Active. Most recently she was Client Services Director at The Bank, running branding campaigns for Coutts, Vodafone and Peroni Nastro Azzurro. So a big Airside welcome to Caroline. Now, what was that you said about Italian beer?

We were digging around the archives recently when we discovered this ancient artifact. After blowing away the thick layer of dust that had settled over the top, we peered over the top of our thickset spectacles at an alternate cover design for our great tome, Airside by Airside. Once upon a time, mighty battles were fought between those who liked the technicolour mayhem of this design and those who didn’t. Who won? They say, history is written by the victors. Well, they also get to choose that history book’s cover.

You may also notice strange linear scratches across the middle portion of the cover. These are called “words” and scholars believe they were arranged in patterns in order to promote the book itself by describing its contents. These words also contain a little joke at the expenses of a famous graffiti artist (in your carefully-concealed face, Banksy!). Did we ever tell you the story about Alex and the Islington Banksy piece? It’s a good one. . . let’s just get this back to the archive. . . we really ought to digitise this stuff some day. . .