Alex Ostrowski and Hattie Newman kindly, and colourfully, rejuvinated a tree as part of this year's YCN LIVE launch at Village Underground. Their latest commission has seen them produce something festive in a similar vein for the foyer of London advertising agency AMV BBDO. Employees will contribute messages to the tree's leaves over the course of December. Accompanying window displays have been created by Tiptoe.

It was a pleasure to have a visit from George this afternoon, who presented some superb illustrations; many created on location in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Morocco. See more of George here.

We've been helping Panasonic promote a new creative competition; and the deadline for submissions is this coming Friday. Public voting on the entries will then kick off on the 9th, with winners quickly announced on the 11th December. The website for the competition can be seen here.

As part of the competition's original promotion we commissioned different illustrators to work on materials; shown above is the effort from Valero Doval.

Last week we ran the second in a series of design research sessions for the Finnish mobile company Blyk; a case study of which will be added to the agency section shortly. Thanks to Hans Lo and Guy Archard for filming and photography - pictured is attendee Rachel Owen.

Damien Poulain, whose work as part of our Bateman's Row project is shown above, has a some desk-space on offer in a shared London studio. More details here...

... hails from Edinburgh, graduated this year and recently visited YCN to show some interesting type work.

... is an exhibiton in aid of Shelter, curated by Studio8 Design and hosted by Poke London. A series of prints depicting each of the 12 days has been created by different artists (including Sophia Augusta, whose three french hens are shown above) to be sold - along with matching Christmas cards - on the evening of 3rd December. Further details can be found here, and all are welcome.

... is now available to buy online. Designed by HudsonBec (and set in the specially created World of YCN), this fifth edition of our annual publication presents a wonderful and diverse showcase of emerging creative talent, including all work Commended as part of last year's YCN Awards. Read all about it here.

We were recently commissioned by the the international development charity ActionAid to re-design the website for their youth campaigning arm Bollocks to Poverty. As part of the project we commissioned ten image makers to create tactical, campaign related, artworks to pepper the pages of the site.

Shown is a crop from the work of Andrew Groves, while a case study of the project can be found in the Agency section here.

... is a Hong Kong based illustrator producing extraordinary hand drawn, collage and sculpture work. See it here.

Julia Zeen has just finished working with Poke on a project for Topshop - through YCN, the seasonal results of which can be seen here.

ico design recently commissioned Giedre Domzaite through YCN to create a series of bold graphics to enliven the stores of frozen yogurt purveyors Snog. The results can be seen in their Soho and South Kensington outlets, with a case study of the project present here.

If so we have a placement opportunity at YCN for someone looking to gain experience in creative project management, marketing and other organisational things. Please send an email with your CV as a first step.

We've begun working on a naming project for KFC, and inspired by a recent talk at the ICA, are interested in getting input from as many sources as possible. There's a five thousand pound fee for anyone that can crack the brief (which can be received as a PDF, with full project details, by sending us an email).

It was a pleasure to meet with Tom Rowe yesterday and take a look at some work. Tom is part of the Evening Tweed collective, and included in his portfolio was the Rolling for Sixes project, a film of which can be seen here.