Every since our accounts department became decidedly more female, Airside has been sorely lacking in quality beardage, with only Fred bearing the hirsute standard. So, we are delighted to welcome our new intern Giulio Miglietta, whose facial façade has the studio’s beard barometer back to acceptable levels. Oh, and he’s rather good at design as well.

Italian-born Giulio started training as a doctor before deciding it wasn’t for him. Instead he chose the world of graphics and moved to London where he recently graduated from London College of Communications with a BA (Hons) in Illustration. In 2007 he was named one of D&AD’s Best New Blood winners. You’ll see why once you check out his wonderful illustration, video and other work at www.giuliomiglietta.com.

When our ace animator Jimi Newport told us he was working on a film for David Shrigley, it felt like a betrayal. Our beloved Jimi had climbed into bed with some other hussy, leaving us alone on a Friday night with nothing but ice cream and reruns of Scrubs for company. But then we remembered that Jimi is a freelancer and working for other people is quite a normal thing for him to do. Still, it doesn’t mean we have to like his film. Except we do.

Shrigley’s latest creation is a hilariously offbeat history of Scottish luxury knitwear manufacturer, Pringle. The film was unveiled last week at the launch of Pringle’s menswear collection in Milan. The three-minute animation is packed with Shrigley’s beautifully wonky illustrations, all brilliantly brought to life by our Jimi. Or James as he is called in the credits. Well, la-di-da Jimi.
Watch A Short Film About Pringle of Scotland by David Shrigley.

This has been all over Twitter in the past few days, but if you haven’t seen it already, allow us to fill you in. The guys at Motionographer have posted a review of The Power Gap – our short film collaboration with left-wing think tank, Demos. And jolly nice they were about it as well.

Our favourite line is “Airside deftly used the jester’s tactic to reach its audience: humour mixed with equal parts profundity.” Ahh shucks, thanks you guys. Though we should point out the profundity was mostly Demos. Read the full review here.

As the bells chimed to ring in the New Year, Airside closed our eyes, clenched our fist and resolved, dammit, we resolved. Less than a week later we were back on the fags / booze / pastries / tweak, so it seemed an appropriate time to attempt our remaining resolution for the new decade. Which brings us to this blog about a blog – a metablog if you will.

Airside is kicking off 2010 with a brand new Photo Blog . The plan was to post a picture on each working day of the year, but as with our occasional early morning smoke / sip / scoff / slam, it turns out our resolve isn’t all that strong. Nevertheless you can already check out some claymation sculpting and fried Colombian ants, and more to come at the new Airside Photo Blog

Airside designed the artwork below for the cover of the December issue of the renowned magazine The Architecture Review.

Given Alex’s background in architecture, this was a real thrill for us. Even if the hours spent looking at those colourful cubes did make our eyes go a bit funny.

The Guardian is recommending the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art’s Think Tank exhibition in their Exhibitionist section. The online feature promotes the best of the week’s exhibitions from around the UK.

Their Think Tank coverage is illustrated by a still from The Power Gap, Airside’s animated collaboration with Demos, which is currently showing as part of the exhibition. Think Tank’s run has now been extended to 13 February 2010.

With our attention distracted by a festive season full of food, booze and Bond movies, Airside returned in the New Year to find that our website had been hacked. According to the page uploaded by the hackers, Airside is now owned by the North Africa Team.

Our first task for our new overlords will be to redesign their hack’n’splash page. Seriously, if you’re going to go to the trouble of invading someone’s website, at least make sure your calling card looks good.