DJ Food In Your Ears, Cocoa Amore In Your Mouth.

It might have become obvious over the past year that Inkymole has been building on its involvement with chocolatier Cocoa Amore, whose shop and all-round hub of chocolate education moved last year into its beautiful new store in ancient Silver Street, in the heart of medieval Leicester (just along from the cathedral where Richard III is buried).

Our role there began with an event we put on - a chocolate-infused Buddy Wakefield show co-organised with Pete, Cocoa Amore’s owner - and has evolved from helping out with a little window decoration and signage here and there to fully immersive Creative Direction. We’re currently enjoying the fulsome challenges of everything to do with getting an exciting new franchise off the ground - branding, consistency, interior decoration, marketing, merchandising, communications…and more. It’s hard work, but we’re loving every part of it.

One of the first things we focused on is the in-store music. It’s well-recognised that music can help enhance the atmosphere of a cafe and store (Cocoa Amore is both) and so as soon as we were given the ‘keys to the shop’ we installed a new amplifier, good speakers and a live music streaming system. Playlists curated by us or by our guest artists is not only streamed live into the shop from our studio, but as Cocoa Amore Radio can be listened to anywhere in the world courtesy of Tune In.

Our first playlist we put together ourselves, but our second has been by our long-term friend and collaborator Strictly Kev aka DJ Food. Pivotal in the founding of groundbreaking record label Ninja Tune in the early 90s, Kev’s worked non-stop as a musician, designer, collector and writer ever since, staying ridiculously busy at the forefront of new music and design for music over a jam-packed two-decade career.

His current playlist takes a sci-fi, cosmic/psychedelic vibe and smushes it into different genre corners, roping in such glittering gems as Radiohead (from the new album), Gaz Coombes, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Jane Weaver, Annabel (lee), The Dragons, Lalo Schifrin, Jan Hammer and Vangelis. It strides across decades easily and with audible panache, and has provided the soundtrack to many an overnight session working at the shop. And we’re still not bored of it - in fact, it’s one of my favourite playlists of all time.

Listen in at any time, and feel the cocoa-y feels as you go about your day! (better still, if you’re close enough, get a gingerbread hot chocolate in the shop and listen in the warm chocolatey fug):

Cocoa Amore Radio

You can also listen to more DJ Food music and mixes and/or follow at these online establishments:
Soundcloud.
Bandcamp.
Facebook.
Twitter.
Instagram.

There is plenty more happening at Cocoa Amore to write about, but here are some historic blogs about our work at the shop:

Halloween Windows http://blog.inkymole.com/2015/11/halloween-signwriting-at-cocoa-amore.html

Share Certificates http://blog.inkymole.com/2015/11/i-liked-company-so-much-i-bought-it.html

Christmas Trees http://blog.inkymole.com/2016/02/christmas-trees-at-cocoa-amore.html

Mothers’ Day http://blog.inkymole.com/2016/02/snug-like-two-beans-in-cocoa-pod.html

The Legend That Is Solid Egg http://blog.inkymole.com/2015/03/solid-egg-2015.html

RADIO RADIO!

I'm on BBC Radio Leicester tomorrow talking about my work as an illustrator. From 11.40am I'll be talking with Ady Dayman, and you can listen live here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03lzfqh

or play the show back later on, since it's highly likely you'll have important stuff to do on a Saturday morning!

And then once that's done, we're heading back to Cocoa Amore where we're working for the day, on our Solid Eggs and window painting.

That's all folks!

Snug like two beans in cocoa pod.

I’ve been back at the windows of Cocoa Amore leading up to the great celebration of Saint Valentine; patron saint of affianced couples, guarding against fainting, bee keepers, happy marriages, love, plague, and epilepsy.

I didn’t include any bees or plague as that might have confused the message, but I did keep it simple and bright with an explosion of little none-cutesy hearts bursting from the Cocoa Amore logo, which itself is pretty darned heart-shaped. I made some of the cocoa beans romantic colours too (is purple romantic? Steady…)

Then it was just a case of sprinkling them around the windows to reflect the overall sense of adoration and longing (for chocolate, of course).

cocoa-amore.co.uk

 

Christmas Trees at Cocoa Amore.

 
It’s such hard work, drawing to the smell of liquid chocolate and constantly being offered hot chocolate, sweet things ‘to see what I think of them’ and nice strong coffee. But you know what they say, somebody’s got to do it.

Christmas at Cocoa Amore is of course a stupidly busy time, and as this was Pete’s first one in the new building, its big Victorian windows needed something extravagant to announce the arrival of the biggest sales season of the year, so were created a little bit at a time in an anticipatory fashion. Hallowe’en was well and truly over, and the windows clean again ready for the next season.

Cocoa Amore is a chocolate boutique for grown-ups, I fancied no Santas nor presents but a winter forest, where the chocolate things dangle tantalisingly from frozen branches in a deafeningly-quiet clearing; all you would be able to hear, were you actually there, is the crunching of fresh snow underfoot and the occasional creak of branch as someone reaches for a chocolate bauble. The stars (if we could look up) would be clear and plentiful. And perhaps there were some things hiding inside the trees that may or may not look out occasionally to serve you chocolate!

Just as Leicester was setting up its Christmas ferris wheel and accompanying city celebrations, I began working on the two trees. With a previous piece of work in mind - Snowtrees, from a story written by Ed Garland - the Cocoa Amore committee - Pete, Alun, Leigh and Me) decided that it should start snowing first, so that the design developed over the weeks from the top:

followed by the toppermost branches of the trees:

and went back a few days later to work downwards…

On successive visits the trees were hung with be-ribboned chocolate ornaments, some painted with gold:

and other baubles were painted on:

Late night working of course requires sustenance, this being the richest source of carbs and fat to be foraged in the immediate environment:

And after three weeks of as many night shifts as I could fit in, the window is complete!

And this is Podrick, named by the owner and hanging proudly in the centre of the window above the logo in his Christmas ribbon:

Pete went on to add three strings of fairy lights (that’s Pete on the right in the grey jumper) which really brought the final twinkling magic, and lit up the forest floor!

I will be back there soon to begin the Valentine process.

http://www.cocoa-amore.co.uk

Hallowe’en Signwriting at Cocoa Amore.

I went back to Cocoa Amore last week to add the sign writing to his new shop in Silver Street, in the medieval part of Leicester. The job was to paint a permanent logo in the centre of the huge windows, add opening times, a building number and bullet points, and then make a right old Hallowe’en spectacle in the windows - those to last only a few days, to give way not long after to Christmas.

Here’s the shop in all its glory, and how it got there!

Shop pictures courtesy of Andy Baker at The Leicester Mercury.
This was my first experience with proper sign writing materials, and it was a bugger to get used to. I used an ivory enamel to match Pete the owner’s existing colours, and built up layers to make solid letters:

 - never work with children or animals:

Then, the split cocoa pod at the top was added, and a shout line. Kneeling on two bags worth of dried cocoa beans, the crunching and constant chocolate smell made for a bittersweet agony/ecstacy environment (Pete wasn’t shy of keeping the hot chocolate coming either):

A freestyle building number now nestles under the Victorian gold swags:

And then the job was to add some opening hours too:

- remember everything is painted in reverse, on the inside of the glass!

Of course I made sure I was appropriately attired. Yes, yes, overalls - but more importantly the chocolate brown lip colour (mixed from two different shades) and brown and copper eyeshade. (Question: why can’t you get brown mascara anymore eh?)

Once the main sign writing was in, it was all about getting the temporary Hallowe’en painting up for the opening night. On this I could unclench a bit and relax into painting familiar shapes with a series of non-permanent Posca inks applied with a brush - the sign writing took four times as long as the Hallowe’en work, due to the concentration required of an amateur combined with sticky, enamel-based paint!

All was now ready for the pre-Hallowe’en Grand Opening, by invitation only, to the shop which sits just in front of Leicester Cathedral where King Richard. As far as I know, he was invited, but no-one saw him. OR DID THEY...