Well I think it's time for an update on how I have been getting on with my design course, for the packaging of our new range of baked goods.It's hard to believe I started the course back in March and it is now already half way through May, time really does fly when you are having fun!The last time that I attended the course it involved an overnight stay at the Ramada Hotel as we were going to be working on our design brief over 2 days. This was a great little perk!We had a great workshop taken by a man named Alistair Fee, who is a lecturer who travels around the world to teach. He was very knowledgeable and passionate and is a fan of the Faber-Castell brand.He got the group to participate in a workshop during which he told us a story about a little old lady who owned a bakery shop in town. He wanted the 4 different groups to come up with ideas for how the lady could progress her business. E.g the different kinds of bread and cakes she could sell and the various technologies that could be implemented to make her life easier & more efficient. It was a great task because it made me think how important it is to gauge other peoples opinions on your products, because as the creator (with the passion & interest) you tend to only see what you want to. When we are looking from the outside we all seem to be able to make better judgments, both good and bad, on things that we are not emotionally involved in.Once the first day was over we were able to meet up informally for dinner and drinks in the hotel. It was a good opportunity to network and hear about all the other projects. It was then only a half day on the Friday & before we could break for the weekend we had a session with our allocated mentors. Our mentor is Stephen and he was really pleased as Neil and myself are the only team to have our design brief completed already. We discussed where we wanted to take our brand and then Stephen explained to us that the design brief will be going out to tender. The tender process means that various Design Companies can read about our plan and apply to take on the project and help us develop it.We are really looking forward to finding out which Design Companies apply to work on our project and who we will eventually be paired with. We just received news that the tendering process in running 3-4 weeks behind schedule now, so we might not hear for a while. Everything leads to Christmas at BasketsGalore, so fingers crossed the design and subsequent manufacturing of the packaging will be completed in time for then!