Allow me, if I may, to preface this post with a little background information. I was raised in Manchester, the most rejuvenated city in europe. The ten years of my life that preluded my move to glasgow were spent in a context of seeing brand new buildings built and old buildings restored and updated. Manchester in short has been very lucky to have had so much funding and backing to pull itself out of its post-industrial stage and to become a buzzing centre of modern service industries, such as graphic design.
 
Having moved up to glasgow, I realised just how much money has been thrown at improving and updating manchester. Glasgow is a great city, but it simply hasn’t had that kind of support. The nature of this I feel has somewhat affected the general outlook of the place and as such creativity and creative organisations have somewhat struggled to capture the publics imagination, more so with graphic design than fine art.
 
The reason I preface this post with this information is because I believe this is genuinely starting to change and that designers in glasgow have been increasing their efforts exponentially. The guys behind Long Lunch for instance have clearly put a great deal of effort into getting the design hub that is london to broaden its perspective and visit their friends further north. 

Another positive note is the opening of GmbH book shop yesterday evening. In their own words “GmbH is an outlet for a wide range of magazines, journals and periodicals sourced from across the world. Focusing on bespoke publishing, art, fashion, design, film and music as well as covering lifestyle, culture and affairs.” Whilst this shop is slightly out of the way it is never the less a positive step forward and a new focal point for designers and a sign of their existence and place in Glasgow’s social existence.

Finally and in my eyes one of the biggest improvements is a new website Creative Everyone.Created by Kulor (London) and Mister (Glasgow). This website allows the user to pick their choice of creative subjects, event types and their location and then view what’s going on in their city that they might enjoy in a well polished and executed calendar format. My favourite feature is the ability to subscribe to your own feed through iCal, the calendar app for OSX which many creative types use regularly to schedule their work days. Being able to see every event I’ve decided to attend automatically appear in my schedule is the kind of leap that turns a site from being somewhat useful to an invaluable tool.
 
The combined effect of these various creative outlets for glasgow is a much needed and positive step that shows the talent and size of the design community in Glasgow that is often hidden or difficult to delve into for the casual user.