Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Magners and Bungalow8

Magners have created an exclusive new ‘Bungalow 8’ edition of Magners Pear cider, just 500 bottles have been produced, available now, only at Bunglaow 8 London. The new design was created for Magners by Cake. Last night we held an event at the club and invited design bloggers along to view the new design. The evening was really good fun, it was brilliant to meet the people behind the blogs and get to know more about their world of blogging.

The attendees, all of which are design blogs that I regularly read, were:
It's Nice that
Form Fifty Five
30gsm
Moco Loco

All worth a visit, the bottle is a very fine example of packaging design and if there was ever an example of the intersection between design and marketing, this would be it:

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Okay Studio party

Last night I went to the Okay studio party. If I had to be honest, the number of products on show was pretty slim, but it was still a very good party.

Troika talk

A very interesting talk about the process behind the cloud project

Troika from This Happened - London on Vimeo.

Friday, September 25, 2009

White Air Festival


Spent the weekend down in Brighton at the awesome White Air Festival

If you're into extreme sports it's definitely worth booking in the diary next year - the biggest extreme sports festival in Europe, alongside some awesome bands in the evening.

WWF pandas

WWF commissioned leading artists and designers to interpret the Panda collection box for an exhibition at London's Selfridges.



Found at itsnicethat

Thursday, September 24, 2009

The Dock

Last night I went to the private party at The Dock For me it was great to meet and chat with designers.

I met Dominic Wilcox - a designer whose work I have admired for some time. He'd created a shoelace field installation.


Also, Will and Alex from It's Nice That, a blog which I read daily.

Then there were a few new designers such as James Patmore.


One product which stood out for my was Pyrus, a paper pulp light by designer Mark Braun.


The Dock is a very impressive new design destination in London. The White House nearby housed a series of small exhibitions in each room - felt rather like a houseparty of design. The whole place really demonstrates how much exciting design their is going on in London right now, and it's events like this that make making connections possible.

I'd really recommend heading down there if you get the chance this week.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Talk by Paul Preistman

Design Week is underway and I'm trying to see as much as I can - so many interesting exhibitions, talks and a few parties thrown in.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Paul Priestman of Priestmand Goode in the very intemate surroundings of a green house at the Wapping Project (an incredible place)

Very interesting discussion on the impact of China on worldwide design and where British design fits into this.

Paracetamol with braille

A very simple additional to product packaging that ensures that those with poor site can identify their tablets. An excellent piece of design. More packaging needs to incorporate this.



Which brings me on to a little story. My mum was at my nan's house and was made a cup of tea - when she tasted it, it was soapy. My nan had put Lenor in it instead of milk. Quite an amusing story but it made me think - it's not such a difficult mistake to make. Both the Lenor and milk are the same colour, in the same packaging with the same blue label. When both are on the worktop it is an easy mistake to make when you cannot read the label. Another area when design can intervene and make life easier.

Latest Blu animation

One of my favourite artists, Blu, has just released his latest street art/animation videos and it's incredible:



Via the awesome wooster collective

More of Blu's stuff

Latest Kluster

My latest Design Den for Kluster magazine just went out.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Viral seeding

A nice case study from Rubber Republic on viral seeding - it is all about tailoring the message to the audience which is the approach that I take - who will find the content relevant?



For a list of projects that I've been involved with, check out viral seeding

Monday, September 21, 2009

Guide to London Design Festival


This year’s London Design Festival takes place from 19th to 27th September and here are some of the highlights that are worth checking out if you’re in the city. My best piece of advice would be to pick up the Icon Design Trail Guide which is distributed around the festival.

Australian superstar designer, Marc Newson is creating a steel structure called Supercell inspired by marine forms at The Southbank Centre. Art lovers can either gaze up at the structure from the ground, or look down into the funnel from the windows of the Royal Festival Hall.

Spanish Designer Jaime HayĆ³n will be unveiling what is considered to be the centerpiece of the festival, a gigantic chess set with beautifully crafted two metre high ceramic chess pieces referencing the domes, towers and spires of the city that the public will be encouraged to play with.

I'm a big fan of the work of Dominic Wilcox and he’s created a very interesting installation using shoelaces as part of Tom Dixon’s The Dock in what is set to be a new design quarter. Last week we wrote about London being the world capital of design, and for this week, it looks like it might just be.

In the West there is 100% Design which features Designersblock and in the East is Tent London

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Did you know 4.0

The latest video doing the rounds in marketing land that points to how the internet is where it's at and mobile internet is set to be even bigger:



Some nice stats in there and it's nicely executed. However, let's not all get carried away here, so to play devil's advocate I thought I'd put my critical hat on:

- There is still are huge amount of the world's population who do not have access to the internet or mobile

- Engagement with TV, radio and newspapers is altogether different to the internet. When I watch TV I will watch an entire TV programme, when I read a newspaper I will sit and read the whole newspaper. With the internet, attention spans are short. People jump from page to page. The amount of engagement online is so much lower and it's far harder to make a lasting impression. The stat in the video demonstrates this - the Iran election was trending on twitter. Then MJ died and people moved on to the next thing. I suppose this could be true of newspapers and TV also. Maybe all media has a short attention span? Books are the way forward.

The internet has however completely changed the way we live, and with mobile internet set to grow - this really is a revolutionary medium.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Can you replay the tune

I have just started working on seeding this heart warming campaign for a band called One EskimO.

Their self-titled debut album provides the backdrop for a groundbreaking audio-visual experience combining music and animation in the first ever visual album “The adventures of One eskimO”

The trailer for the adventure can be found at Find little Feather and you can sign up to the quest which involves completing five challenges, with a new challenge released each week.

I posted the first challenge a couple of days back, but I really like the second one - it's incredibly simple, yet frustrating and addictive! I never was terribly good at the piano...give it a go here


Monday, September 14, 2009

The PUMA index - a genius idea

A new iphone app from Puma - the girls undress as the stock market goes down. Works for me.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

FInd LIttle Feather

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Robert Hammond from High Line

Just watched this. Hugely inspiring and I urge you to watch it.

Interesting things I took away:

- the importance of the logo early on
- How an image that gives peoples ideas and stimulate debate is more important than a fancy rendering of how it will look.
- How you need to prove the economic argument for a project
- Keeping the project open to suggestions from anyone

Had it not been for this man and Joshua David the project would have not happened:



I want to go to New York even more now.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Amron experimental



Some nice product design from Scott Amron - simple and insightful. Although I can't help but think the keyring key would be a bit difficult to use

Music fun at incredibox



A wonderfully simple and highly entertaining website - make your own funky music to listen to, it's all at incredibox

Kluster says


I've just started writing a fortnightly design column for Australian culture magazine, Kluster. Klusters covers art, design, music, fashion and nightlife with writers based in the cities they write about. This week's newsletter can be seen on Kluster's website Definitely worth subscribing.