... Company London have a new site with new work on show.

It was great to meet illustrator Nicholas Saunders when he visited the YCN studio this afternoon. Nick is currently working on some exciting projects including in-store artwork at Howies and has recently created a fantastic cover illustration for the catalogue shown above.

We have been receiving lots of exciting decorations for the YCN Christmas tree. This is the beautiful box that Lauren Broderick's handmade gift came in. Check out Flickr to see what was inside...

Earlier this year we helped Nexus Productions find some model making assistance for an animation by Johnny Kelly. The piece, created for Adobe, includes some splendid paper creations by Elin Svensson and can be seen here (there's a making of film here).

.. who can help visualise some architectural plans, in a similar visual style to the image above. Please drop us a line with some work examples if you're interested. It would involve working with a London based client, this week or next.

A handful of images of gifts from under this year's YCN Christmas Tree have been photographed by Tom and can be seen on Flickr. Presents include toys, an ornamental sphynx, vouchers, designer vests, mags, prints and even Books. Send, or bring, us any decoration for the tree and claim your bounty. More details here.

Graphic designer Tom Speirs is the most recent graduate to join YCN on a creative internship. If you're interested in doing so in 2009 then please send an email with your CV and work examples (keeping attachments below 5 meg).

The team from Berlin based outfit Nepomuk paid a visit today and showed their work, much of which can be seen here.

Yulia visited YCN last week to discuss her contribution to the coming issue of Ideas Illustrated. Earlier she sent through artwork produced for today's G2 cover (shown) and to support other festive editorial within. See more of her work here.

In the same generous festive spirit as last year we have installed a Christmas tree at YCN with lots of wrapped presents beneath it. Anyone is welcome to a present in exchange for something to decorate the tree.

You can bring decorations in person, or send them in the post to YCN, 72 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3AY. Images of decorations will be added online as they appear - and so if you'd like us to link to your website or work please include details (along with your postal address of course). Presents not to be opened until 25th December.

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.