ERROL'S BLOG

More invention again - Six drummers, one apartment

On the theme on involvement inspired by seeing the Stefan Sagmeister talk again - a classic piece of inventiveness from Sweden.

Say less to involve more

More from Stefan Sagmeister. Here he makes a great point on a theory on abstraction while talking about an Yves Klein Blue field painting all in the context of design that's made him happy. His observation is that, 'if you abstract an image you merely open as much room for the unrepresentable, and therefore are able to involve the viewer more'. Less information brings more involvement and engagement.

As usual, some great ideas and design insights.

Genius graphic design

A brilliant collection of playful and inspiring inventiveness - mostly with a client attached. A timeless and enduring truth comes through for me here is that inspiring people is the key thing to achieve to makes something stand out.

Home movie by The Milk and Honey Band

Just You

The Milk & Honey Band | MySpace Music Videos

This is just a lovely piece of home movie film made by the band who made the music. There's lots of this kind of thing around but this feels very genuine, very honest. A wonderful lightness of touch. 

Rice field as media by Greenpeace

I saw this in mX, a free evening commuter paper a few weeks ago. 

It's a Greenpeace ad made by growing different coloured rice plants in a rice field in Thailand.

When I got off the train it struck me how inventive this idea was in comparison to most of the outdoor ads I saw in the station. It brought home a couple of points very clearly - that strong innovation was vital to stand out in the blur, and that the competitive set for ads in every market can include the best from the rest of the world.

Empty building as media

This is a great use of an empty building. Brands could do this. Pick a disused office block or other kind of building, pick a theme, commission some artists - pop-up art for the people.

Visual art

From Coolhunting.com - Leo Villareal creating light experiences. He says in the film that he tries to find the essences of things, the rules that govern things a lot of which involves setting the initial conditions and letting things happen within a certain framework. 

and Jason Young using curling stones, flame throwers and paint on polished aluminium.

Education shift happens - more from XPLANE

This is an old one from 2006/7 so viewing it now means you just know these numbers have only got bigger. Reminds me of a Chinese proverb; 'If you are thinking of one year's time, plant a seed. If you are thinking ten years time, plant a tree. If you are thinking 100 years time, educate the people.'

New Did You Know? from Xplane - convergence and how the internet is changing our lives

via PSFK.

Culture stuff - the great Gibson Les Paul

I was listening to community radio here in Sydney 2SER 107.3FM running programmes on Les Paul, inventor of two phenomenal things that changed music forever - the Gibson Les Paul solid body electric guitar and also multitrack recording. All fascinating and good to hear early recordings of twiddly Bert Weedon-esque 50's twanginess by Les Paul, the talented multitracking guitarist. 

The Les Paul goldtop is a big icon in the guitar world - that and the starburst finishes are timeless standards - from Paul Kossoff in Free, to Jimmy Page and later to Thin Lizzy and Pete Townsend and many others. For me though, the quintessential Les Paul experience turns up on the genius debut album by Boston. 

'More Than A Feeling' is the complete crowd pleaser - but for me 'Hitch A Ride' has the brilliant soundtrack of great things to come feel. Download 06 Hitch A Ride Fabulous how a technological revolution in instruments of human expression in one decade, can move people generations later in ways the inventor could probably never have imagined.

Semiotics of beer bottles

Pour it into a glass and it's a pale yellow fizzy liquid that smells of pubs. Stick it in this bottle and it's a work of dedication, the love of artisan made real in form of robust homespun humility and industry to be savoured. Semiotics says check the symbols for meaning. So all the obvious stuff is there to connote authenticity and people who care. Scrolling text, earthy solid colours and bottle weight and shape - it's something you have to properly hold suggesting weight and substance - not to be taken lightly. It's all very obvious but it works. All very natural and solid - kegs, sketchily illustration style, big caps for no-nonsense, and scripted name of brand for family owned. 

Does it make a difference? Yes, as obvious as the brand behaviour might be, it works to convey a tone for the brand - implying a character and personality. The bottle makes an impression the product can't. It's not just packaging but the managing of subtle messages in the design of graphic design and form. Object as media because everything is media - often overlooked in communications is the power of semiotics to hep us figure out the science of deciphering what culture means in the way it behaves.

$8bn gets clean water millennium target for the planet now

If this is true and feasible its fantastic. 

Surely the world's water companies would be interested in doing something about making clean water available to everyone? - What a legacy - 2009, met the millennium target and stopped half the people on the planet getting sick and dying from drinking dirty water. 

It will cost $8bn according to Michael Pritchard. 

Please pass this or the TED link on to a water company near you, maybe they'll decide to get together and do something about it, here's hoping, wouldn't it be great if they did? 

Thank you Michael Pritchard for figuring this out, and thanks to TED, and you if you send this on, for sharing it with the world.

Elephant - a new magazine for 'the enthusiastic and curious'

The owner of Magma bookstores, Marc Valli, has created a new magazine called Elephant aimed at people he describes as being 'enthusiastic and curious'. This is a link to an article in Creative Review about it.

He says in the article that he wanted to create, 'the kind of magazine a group of beat friends would have done in the 50s, before the art world became the art world, and the creative industries took over, a time when artists didn’t measure the worth of their work according to auction prices, but by the opinion of their peers.'

The content and design looks interesting. It replaces a previous magazine, Graphic, that was themed based. Colors, made by Benetton and edited in the 90s by Tibor Kalman, used to be a good theme based magazine. It was a good source of interesting facts and figures and great images and was a design studio must have. 

Elephant looks like another good aggregator of interesting things in culture, like Monocle and Wallpaper, set to do well. Valli says that while books sales are down, magazines seem to be thriving. Elephant will have global distribution in stores and newsagents.

This is an old Colors cover. The magazine was printed in French and English which gave it both a graphically interesting and continental feel at the same time. It was a fascinating read and a great example of a very subtly branded content.

Turn up the humaniser

I was reminded of this after seeing a CP+B tweet on the Humanthesizer.

The humanizer control was for putting a little randomness into the clap sound so it didn't feel too sterile or machine like. I think it's a nice thought that the extremes of humanizing are 'ragged' at one end and 'tight' at the other.

My experience of using one years ago was that the extremes were pretty unusable and a good mix of the tighter side of ragged and the lower side of high, worked well, plus you didn't want the thing splashing on forever so a shortish decay and length of crash kept it manageble. 

The opposite of the theremin in many ways (in my last post) in that the Clap-trap had all variables of something very human controlled by dials, whereas the theremin was an otherworldly sound entirely controlled by human movement in 3D space.

Big in the eighties like on ABC's Poison Arrow.

The sound of optimism - analogue happiness

Playing the Theremin is a very odd experience - you make sound without touching anything except the air around a box which looks like a very early prototype of some kind of metal detector, in effect you're playing the air. This is Randy George who also does classical recitals with his theremin (on his site). 

Daniel Libeskind does Brand Planning

I saw this and thought a bit of simple word substitution might be interesting.

For architecture read brand point of view, for space read brand expression, and for building read campaign or creative execution - this talk is from TED by Daniel Libeskind on Architecture in 2007. 

Good for anyone who likes taking principles and thinking from one area and mapping them onto another.

Do lectures animation

Do Do Do Do Do animation from Helen Harrop on Vimeo.

Great positivity from Helen Harrop - this first attempt at animation of one of her doodles won her a free ticket to the howies Do Lectures. Found on Do lectures twitter at http://ow.ly/iFFq

Crocs: 07 phenomenon to 09 danger - could 'built-in intended re-purposing' help?

It sounds a bit clunky but I think there's something in the idea of 'built-in intended re-purposing', for companies who are falling foul of making affordable products that last a long time and are good for all kinds of sustainable reasons. Its a big load of words that essentially mean, designing and marketing a product and services that go with it, to intentionally make money out of when the product has gone beyond its first period of use and is about to be thrown out or just ignored. It's at this critical time that the product's part in a recycling programme can be a new source of value - a re-purposing that helps the brand and consumer get together on a sustainability agenda.

Its about getting good and principled revenue out of two significant stages of a product's life - 'life with the first consumer', and 'life after the first consumer'.

A PSFK tweet a few days ago about jelly mould shoe phenomenon Crocs got me to this. It lead to this article on how Crocs went from market leading hit in 2007 to now severely struggling with big deficits. Apparently the hard wearing nature of the products has meant initial purchasers take a long time before they are potentially ready to buy again. It's arguably a big concern for companies who are aiming to do better by the planet - how to make sound things that are built to last, and still keep consumers buying relatively regularly. 

James Gilmore and Joseph Pine, in their 1998 'Welcome to the Experience Economy' article in the Harvard Business Review headed a section 'You are what you charge for'. This seems apt to me for brands like Crocs - they have to charge for more than just shoes and thinking about managing the wider brand experience would be a good place to find ways to build a stronger relationships around a brand point of view that people would support. 

Turning the relatively indestructibility of their product from a threat to an advantage is an obvious start. The traditional business model of charge for product's life from new to not wanted is wasteful and not what a company switched on to sustainability would do. It encourages the 'buy, use, disgard, buy a different but similar one' mentality - not good for the planet, but great for more disposability and keeping mass production lines churning.

Crocs charge money for a long lasting shoe, what they could do is charge money for an opportunity to be part of a use and re-use sustainability initiative with shoes as the raw material means to a good for all of us end.

They might do well by providing and making us more aware of how we can re-buy into their brand and products beyond first use of their products. Their shoes would be appealing on two levels - we'd use them in their first life and, then we'd pass them on to be re-purposed. The key new thing for me would be to buy them from the outset with the intent to pass them back once we're ready to recycle, or send them into the after-first-use life.

I would have thought it would be easy to pull at our eco consciences and make us realise that there is good recycling value in the big plastic oddities languishing around in wardrobes and summer shoe bags, worn thin from a couple of season's usage. There are obvious ideas - 'recycle your old pairs in our programme and get a discount on your next buy and feel good that you've helped make a new basketball court, a playground surface, or a 'buy one new and on your behalf Crocs donates a pair free in partnership perhaps with someone like Tom's Shoes where every pair of Tom's Shoes bought means a pair is donated to a child in a developing part of the world who needs shoes.

I don't really know how good Crocs eco-credentials are, but either way the creation of a programme for the intended re-purposing of the shoes seems a very responsible thing to do that should help shift perceptions for the better.

I hope Crocs gets innovative on products and processes and marketing to get back to successful ways. I bought a bright blue pair of Crocs in 2006, they're still kicking around somewhere and I think it would have been great if I was asked at the time I bought them, when I expected I might be done with them and be returning them to Crocs for their recycling programme. Also I think it be great to be able to say, 'we make products for people who still get value from them even when they don't need them anymore'. 

Perhaps that's another take on sustainability - the ability to be perpetually of worth, to be valuable beyond your physical existence. Sounds quite zen, in a good way.

About my blog

This blog is a collection of things I like and want to pass on or comment about.

It used to be called 'a blog about brands'. There'll still be things here related to my work with brands in marketing, but there's going to be more of a personal sketch pad and scrap book for things I find and like. For people interested in posts on specific things like brands, selecting from the category list should help.

Everything I write here is my own point of view - thoughts, half ideas, bits of general rambling.

I can be contacted via email, facebook, twitter, and linkedIn and if I show work by people who don't want it shown here, please do get in touch.

This photo was taken in Bude, Cornwall in the UK, on a lovely afternoon last spring. It's here for no reason in particular. The image in the blog title was taken in Sydney this autumn.

Many thanks for taking time to find out about my blog. I hope you enjoy it or find it helpful.

Errol 

A big conservation landmark from a baby elephant at Taronga Zoo

 

I'm delighted to say that this video is the sixth most viewed on Australia's YouTube today. 

It features Thong Dee, an Asian Elephant, and her new baby elephant that was born a few days ago at Taronga Zoo, in Sydney. Please pass it on, spread the good word and help some important conservation work get done. 

This is a first of its kind in Australia - the birth is a massive milestone in the Taronga Zoo Conservation Society's plans for conservation. There are only around 34,000 of these animals left in the wild. 

Taronga Zoo wants people to get involved and help them in their conservation efforts in any way they can. I've had the immense privilege of working with some of the people at the Zoo. They're wonderfully inspiring folk who care about doing the right thing by their conservation goals. The atmosphere there must be incredible. 

It can't be underestinated how a big moment this is in an enormous lot of effort by many very committed and passionate people over a long period of time. It's a magical thing too, being a time and a signpost to great possibilities. 

If you want to help Taronga and its conservation efforts, go to the Taronga Zoo website and find out more, or if you can, go and visit the Zoo, take in the atmosphere yourself, and talk to someone there about what you can do. Thanks for passing it on if you do.