THE LOGO.. Next it was time to think of and design a logo. My initial thoughts was to use my signature but wasn't sure how to spark it up and whack it into a logo. So I started drawing some quick rough sketches. At the time my signature was joined up with the 's' having a tail. However over the years I have signed many things and the signature has become more complex although relatively the same. My favourite colour at the time and still is to this day is red, so that was the colour scheme sorted. White was chosen for the signature as for it was the colour that showed up best on red. Eventually after a night out I grabbed my sketchpad and felt tips and got drawing with an idea that the logo would be a red bubble cloud with the signature positioned in the middle of it.

The image above is the very first drawing of the Jarvis Bubble logo drawn in 1997.

Jarvis was founded in late 1997 by myself Richard W B Jarvis. We started by providing essential community services in the Kidbrooke FERRIER ESTATE SE3 area, (South East London), along with Grant Anderson as Head Manager and many others. These services included things such as 'window washing' Graffiti removing' 'drain unblocking'. All of this was done for free with our team of volunteer staff which reached into the double figures. Each week the windows of stair wells in the selected tower blocks were cleaned. Our team (including myself) cleaned thousands of windows each week. Some members wore our '1997 RED BUBBLE' uniform and others wore our fluorescent Jarvis workers jacket. I the Chairman and Grant the Head Manager kept in touch via short distance radio on a '49.02 - 49.89Mhz' band. Also all members had to remain in pairs whilst working. To pay for all of this, we also ran a 'car washing service' which was a private paid for service. All Jarvis members as they were known, were trained up at a specially made camp down an embankment in a hidden location. Here members also retreated after a hard days work for a bite to eat and a coffee or drink. First records of volunteer staff and small operations date back to '17 FEB 1998. Those services were stopped in 2003 as for we were nearing the end of school years and some of us needed to do our own things, other problems also got in the way. Our main detailed and overview  records date back to 18/05/98

-1999

In 1999 we took a dip in to market phases and crazes and were fairly successful in choosing products that people wanted yet undercutting the the retail mark up by a decent amount and still profit was made. This involved me going down the year room at secondary school to sell whatever was going really out of my rucksack. At the time, aliens in jelly was the hot seller and we managed to sell a version retailing £1.50 - £2.00 at just £1. The news quickly spread by word of mouth and a customer base was quickly growing. Other things that were sold included stationary, these were hot sellers and packs were sold out during the 15 minutes morning break. Our trial formula of trading was a success and we will use this as a base for future retail ventures.

-2001

Early 2001 Jarvis started up a ringtone service called 'Jarvis SMS' where help and tips on SMS were given via SMS as well as NOKIA ringtones which were charged at 40 to 50 pence. We decided to get into this market whilst it was fairly new. Jarvis was outraged at poor quality service with ringtones sounding nothing like they were described as with a charge of up to £5 plus bad catches, such as gripping people into a subscription service. Our plans were to offer a simple honest service at a fair price with added extras. In May 2001 this service was re-launched as 'Post4Tones' where people simply posted for ringtones however this service never took off and was later adapted for the J-tonez mag which was a ringtones magazine with 40 NOKIA keypress tones which was priced at 2 pounds. This service only managed to get interest from the free* giveaways in 2003 which attracted a lot of interest and visitors to Jarvis with text entries coming in thick and fast.