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The South Gloucestershire Business Show was held at the Science Park, Bristol, over 2 days, 4th and 5th October 2017. Xor Systems had a stand there and it was a great show! We had new branding, a new brochure, a brilliant design for the stand and a great giveaway. We met a lot of really interesting people, made new friends and caught up with old friends

On our branding and the stand design, we worked with Simon Ellis and his people at Ellis James. They are based in the Science Park as well and are a stimulating company to work with.

We wanted a brochure that summed up our Design Process. We regularly get asked " just what is the process you go through on a project?". We figured it made sense to illustrate this, as a way of promoting our work. Simon Ellis again produced the design and Gemma Boyland of The Copy Cupboard wrote the copy. The result is an entertaining and effective brochure.

We also designed a free gift for our visitors. We wanted something different to the usual branded USB sticks or mouse mats. We came up with a 6-inch ruler which contains switches, LEDs and a microcontroller. There are three sections on the ruler, and each section illustrates the basic components of a computer. There's a section that explains logic, a section that illustrates memory cells and a section that shows counting in binary.

The section that explains logic is really useful, because it offers Xor as an option. Use the 'Gate Select' button to choose the gate and then set the inputs A and B appropriately, and the output shows the result. This is really useful to be able to explain to people just what our company name means.

I was a little concerned about showing this, in case it came over as a little bit too geeky. However, it seems 'geeky' is OK these days, because the overall reaction I've had from those seeing our ruler, is one of absolute delight! Even top-level chip designers were impressed enough to take one away. One guy came back on the second day of the show, to ask if he could have a second ruler. Apparently, he had taken the ruler home and given it to his son, and given his daughter other items he had collected, like highlighter pens and notebooks. His wife was not too impressed with this sexist approach and insisted that their daughter should be treated equally. Another client had given a ruler to his son and his son had taken it into school, because they were learning different counting systems, and binary was one of them.