Many congratulations to Mark Lester and the team at MARK Studio, who were named Design Agency of the Year at the Roses recently. Well deserved.

I’m terrible at updating this blog – sorry about that. So here’s a quick round-up of recent new projects, as there’s been a lot of interesting stuff around. (Part of the reason this blog is so erratic.)

I’ve been working with Music in Manchester on a lovely branding project, the first stage of which was revealed recently with the emergence of Act For Wildlife, the campaigning arm of Chester Zoo. There’s more to come on this project, but it’s currently under wraps, so watch this space.

 

Following the Mancunian theme, I’m also currently working with Mark Studio on a major naming and branding project for Russian energy giant Gazprom.

I helped Mark on their pitch, which I’m delighted to say they won. So we’re now creating a new brand for what’s currently called Gazprom Marketing & Trading Retail. That doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, so there’ll be a new name as well as a new visual look and feel.

It’s very early days – Mark and Gazprom only announced the win last week, and the work is just beginning – so another one to watch this space for.

 

I’ve been busy with my old friends at Bounce, too (who designed and built this site for me). We’ve been doing some more work with Knight Frank, on their amazing development at Castelfalfi in Tuscany (for which I previously wrote the website) and on another development in Italy that looks just as exciting.

 

As well as new jobs with old friends, there are also some projects from new clients, which is always nice. I got a fantastic brief from Liverpool-based SB Studio, to write brand copy for The Brink, the city’s first dry bar. (And it went well, as the lovely tweet below testifies.)

SB has been developing the concept with architects R2A and SHARP Liverpool, a project by Action on Addiction that provides a therapeutic environment for recovering addicts.

The Brink is a brilliant idea – far more than just a centre for those needing support, it will be a proper bar and venue, open to the public and serving great food and drink day and night. It’s just that you won’t be able to get anything stronger than a coffee. The bar is already gathering a lot of support, and it’ll be fascinating to follow its progress.

Another recent new client is SomeOne, creators of ‘BrandWorlds™’. We’re working together on a really interesting new business-to-business brand for a very well-known client. All deadly secret, of course, but hopefully I’ll be able to reveal more soon.

Lastly, I’ve also just started work on my first project for Wolff Olins, which is obviously an exciting development. It’s a relatively small project – doing some naming – but I have high hopes it’ll be the first of many with one of the genuine legends of design and branding. Let’s hope they like my ideas.

I’ll try to be better about updating you from now on. And don’t forget my newsletter if you’re not already signed up.

Out of the blue, I just received an email from Orel Bitan, a copywriter at BBDO Israel. Orel is spreading the word about the video she made with a friend for Love146, a charity fighting child sex slavery and exploitation. Could there be a more desperately upsetting or important cause?

In the video, made for nothing and starring Orel’s little sister, what seems to be an offer to sell children’s toys (the prices pop up as you roll over them) turns out to include a price for the girl herself. Click on that pricetag, and you get sent to another video telling the deeply shocking story behind the organisation's formation.

It’s a great, simple idea, and deservedly one of the winning videos in YouTube’s Good Work Competition at the Cannes Lions. Let’s hope it does some good for the fight against this unspeakable trade in children. Pass it on.

One minute you're having a laugh mouthing off about rubbish clients on Twitter, the next you're splashed across the Creative Review blog. Hope none of my clients thought I was talking about them. As if.

It was fun though.

For a few years now, as you may well know, brand and business consultant Jan Casey has been hosting Meeting of Minds: an annual gathering of branding and design types focused on a talk or debate between industry luminaries.

I've been to the last four now, I think, and they're always great. Each year, the question for debate is:

‘How can design not only meet a client’s commercial objectives but also enhance our lives and the culture around us?’

 

– Pic: Sir Christopher Frayling, from BBC Desert Island Discs

 

Last year, while exploring that theme, former Rector of the RCA Sir Christopher Frayling made a statement that Jan wanted to pick up on and explore more closely. He said:

'There was this great tradition of British design and craftsmanship which was grounded in ideas which went right back to the origins of modern design in the mid 19th century – and which in turn were embedded in the culture, understood by specialists and non-specialists alike.

'In the 1980s, all this seemed to be forgotten or at least left behind. The headlong rush towards business and profit – which was a huge plus in terms of profile and status and public awareness – was a turning point.

'I think British design lost much of its theoretical base, and some of its substance, when that happened.'

It's quite a statement, so you have to applaud Jan for getting Sir Christopher back to talk about it some more. Which he did, in conversation with the Director of the Design Museum, Deyan Sudjic.

 

– Pic: Deyan Sudjic, from Zocalo

 

The conversation was long, slightly meandering, but generally fascinating. As ever, it’s just a pleasure to sit and listen to people talk with passion about things they know far more about than you do. (One of the reasons I’m a fanatical listener to In Our Time.)

 

Changing words

There were lots of interesting nuggets, one of which in particular pricked this copywriter’s ears. While describing how non-practitioners used to have a clear sense of, and opinion about, design, Frayling quoted some words delivered to his historic namesake, Sir Christopher Wren.

Apparently, King James II (or possibly Queen Anne) described St Paul’s Cathedral as amusing, awful and artificial. But it wasn’t the damning verdict it appears today. The King (or Queen) meant the work was pleasing, awe-inspiring, and demonstrated skill and artistry.

(The process by which words shift their meaning like this is covered in this good language blog.)

 

A loss of public understanding?

Nuggets and meanderings aside, there was a clear theme, at least for Frayling. He was concerned that modern times had seen a decline in the discussion of art and design outside the ‘industry’ itself, and that this was in large part the fault of those within it, who no longer talked in serious terms about their subject to the wider public.

These days, he said, a talk by a big-name designer was more likely to be a run through his or her portfolio than any sort of detailed discussion about the deeper concerns in art and design.

‘Post-modernism,’ he said, ‘likes breadth, not depth.’ In 21st Century British art and design it’s ‘naff to be serious’, and no one talks about serious things like ethics or truth.

(Coincidentally, a few days after Meeting of Minds, I came across this rather more optimistic article in The Observer about the British attitudes to intellectualism.)

Frayling compared this with the Victorian era, when practitoners like John Ruskin, William Morris, Christopher Dresser and Owen Jones (who helped found the V&A) would write and speak about their work in real depth to audiences outside the practice. They felt an obligation, he said, to explain what they did for a living.

He told us about the V&A’s early exhibit, ‘Decorations on False Principles’ – also known as the Chamber of Horrors – which collected examples of what the curators believed were bad design. (Frayling covered this in more detail in his inaugural Henry Cole Lecture at the V&A, which you can watch on Vimeo.)

Deyan Sudjic took some issue with the idea that one can pin an item down as ‘bad design’. But Frayling’s point was not that we should have ‘rules’ on what’s good or bad, but that the curators were giving their reasons for thinking as they did. It was part of an active, informed public discussion about design.

He compared that with an episode of The Apprentice where a team had to design pet food packaging, and clearly had absolutely no sense of what ‘design’ meant. They didn’t consider any of the practical issues in the brief, but treated design as ‘the icing on the cake’ – a shallow, frothy business little more sophisticated than colouring-in.

(That may be a bad example, given that most Apprentice contestants seem the sort who’d have trouble, as the saying goes, knowing their arse from a hole in the ground.)

 

From designer to 'Designer'

In the 1980s, Frayling said, there was a split between ‘art’ and ‘design’ which saw designers producing limited ‘art’ editions and rejecting the idea of design for the high street, which Frayling defended as a ‘noble’ pursuit.

He clearly saw this as partly to blame for a public sense of ‘design’ as essentially superficial, and perhaps rather pretentious, rather than a real art and craft, with complex theoretical roots and a rich history.

That rings pretty true to me. We still use ‘Designer’ to denote a premium item, creating a skewed understanding of ‘design’ – and the obviously nonsensical implication that ‘ordinary’ things haven’t been designed at all.

 

Art and design on the brink?

The most startling claim of the evening came right at the end, when Frayling spoke about the Browne Report on Higher Education. Before the report was published, he said he was convinced it would prove the moment art and design at last got the recognition they had long fought for as serious, valuable academic disciplines.

But they didn’t. Instead, Frayling believes art and design are being relegated in Government thinking to purely vocational, practical subjects, rather than ‘serious’ academic ones. Unfortunately I didn’t jot down the name of the official he quoted, who dismissed art and design on exactly these grounds.

Frayling’s final words were an impassioned, almost despairing, plea against this potential loss of status. But it wasn’t just a plea to Government. It was a plea to artists and designers themselves – to be more active in ‘spreading the word’ about the thinking behind, and importance of, their subject.

It was stirring stuff. I learnt a lot (I'm ashamed to say I knew nothing about Christopher Dresser or Owen Jones), and as you can tell it sent me off looking in various interesting directions. You can't ask for much more from an event like this.

Thanks are definitely due to Jan and her speakers for another great evening. Can't wait for next year.

One of my favourite design blogs, The Disciples of Design, very kindly invited me onto their page to report from the D&AD Judging last week. So I did, and rather than repeat myself here I'll just give you the link.

The results, up to nomination stage, are on the D&AD website. (You need to have registered to see them.)

 

As you probably know, judging started today on the D&AD Awards, to be presented on June 16. I'll be there tomorrow, judging Writing For Design, as I did in 2009.

There are lots of good innovations this year, notably the introduction of guided tours of the judging process. This can only be good for opening up the process.

You often hear awards muttered about as old-boy networks where a bunch of mates give awards to each other, and ignore everyone else. Having done this once before, I can testify that, at the very least in my jury, this wasn't true. (And what are the odds of me happening to be in the single untainted jury?)

Letting people come in and nose around seems a good idea. They can't learn any results – not even the judges know the results, only the shortlists. And hopefully they'll go away impressed at the organisation and professionalism of the whole business, as I was when I judged for the first time.

Other Good Innovations include combining Professional and Student awards in one ceremony, and rewarding judges with a year's free membership and a 50% discount on the ceremony ticket. (I'm especially happy about the latter two, obviously.)

You can see the judges' tweets by following the #DandAD2011 hashtag on Twitter. And to make that really easy, I've made a page showing just those tweets (as seen above). You're welcome.

 

 

 

A rather belated (okay, very belated) mention of my recent (okay, not very recent) work for Northern Ireland's latest design hothouse, Thought Collective.

Formed at the end of 2010, Thought Collective grew out of Fishbone, perhaps the region's best-kept design secret. Fishbone's Director, Sam Bell, teamed up with digital designer Ryan Mitchell and graphic designer Richard Weston (best known to the design world as top blogger AceJet170), and they've been storming ahead ever since. The recent work for The Zimbabwean shows this is not a team that's thinking small.

I was the lucky writer they approached to create the profile page of their site, and together we put together a sort of manifesto for the brand:

(Ryan wrote a good blog post about building the site, by the way.)

It's been a pleasure working with the Collective, and Richard has written an extremely kind testimonial for this site off the back of our collaboration. We're actively looking for new opportunities to work together again, so watch this space.

 

This is the white paper I worked on recently for Tim Greenhalgh, Chief Creative Officer of Fitch. It's an interesting thesis on the value of play for brands – in terms of products, retail spaces and customer experiences in general.

The paper ranges from playful offices to stores that don't sell anything; from Lego and the Wii to the School of Life, exploring the way play and playful brands connect with people at a visceral and powerful level.

I learned a lot writing it. For example, did you know that simply holding a product for a few seconds creates an attachment with it that has serious commercial potential?

A study showed that people who got to hold a simple coffee mug for 30 seconds were prepared to pay a lot more for it than those who only got to 'play' with it for 10 seconds. Human beings are deeply irrational creatures, when it comes down to it.

You can read the article online, or download it. Tim will be presenting his ideas about the value of play at Euroshop, the retail trade fair in Düsseldorf, this Sunday (27 February).

 

 

Am I the only one left cold by this ad? The millions of hits and viral links would suggest so. I must be getting old. To me it's just a manufactured moment that feels like a faked YouTube clip.

I have long been fooling my own boys into thinking our cars are saying hello by remotely flashing the lights at them. It's not hard to imagine someone doing the same thing and videoing it for YouTube.To me, this ad is that real-life moment with all the spontaneity and authenticity sucked out of it. (That slow, self-conscious zoom on the doll is the moment it loses me completely.)

Even worse, the commercial fails the most basic advertising test of all: the 'cover the logo' test. It could be for Audi, Peugeot, Ford, Honda... Okay, it might not suit their brands as well, but all I know about the new Passat is that it has remote locking. Like every new car from about the last 15 years.

Mind you, the engine roar suggests the VW may also have remote ignition. Really? If so, standing small children in front of it as you press the button seems downright irresponsible. (Somewhere on YouTube, perhaps, there's an out-take where Daddy accidentally leaves it in gear, and Child Actor #1 is hospitalised, necessitating a hasty re-shoot.)

I know, I know. It's branding. It's emotional connections. All that. I'd still like the ad to leave me with some vague notion as to why I might buy the Passat over another car. Is that too old school?

The other big VW ad of the moment seems much better to me:

 

It's a teaser, so it can get away with providing less information. And yet the way the beetle character moves - fast, nippy, fun, way ahead of the rest - tells me hugely more about the experience of owning a Beetle than the Darth Vader ad tells me about owning a Passat.

To me, that's the proof that you can do these viral, emotive, apparently throwaway films and still get plenty of good old-fashioned product detail into them.

 

It seemed about time. My plan is to use Facebook for interesting little links and bits of news that may not always seem worth a blog post here, to hopefully get the odd conversation going, and of course just to spread the profile a bit wider.

Feel free to pop along – and Like me, if you like.

 

 

Christmas is always good fun in the design world, as we all try to come up with the best ideas for festive communications. (I didn't this year: I did the party instead.)

If viral reaction is anything to go by, the clear winner for 2010 was surely Quietroom's Santa brand book. You've seen it already, I'm sure: their tounge-deeply-in-cheek set of brand guidelines for Father Christmas.

Oops, sorry:

This is just one of the many excellent jokes in the book, which raise it well above what might have been.

It's easy to suggest that a set of guidelines for Santa is an easy idea to come up with. (Chris Doyle's equally hilarious personal guidelines set up the basic concept, after all.)

What's not easy at all is hitting the bullseye page after page in the way the Santa book does. Perhaps many people could have come up with the idea, but it takes genuine comic gifts to come up with stuff like this:

 

Or this:

The comedy is silly, but intelligently and perceptively so. There's a thread of obvious anti-branding-bullshit in there too, which is my only quibble with it: it's occasionally heavy-handed on that score. But it matters little: if I'd done this, I'd be very proud of it.

 

Magpie find some more gems

My other favourite Christmas mailing came from Magpie Studio - surely one of the best of the current crop of smaller design agencies. Their work is consistently witty and frequently beautiful.

For Christmas, they did The Charity Thing with typical charm and craft, producing posters of Holly and Ivy, two older ladies supported by the charity Contact the Elderly.

 

Everyone involved waived their fees in favour of a joint donation to the charity. Lovely. (The shots by John Angerson are superb.)

Right. Better get thinking about my 2011 Christmas card.

Congratulations to Thought Collective, who launched today. It's the new incarnation of Fishbone, a design group in Belfast who have been around a fair while doing lovely work, but hadn't quite got around to a website or anything.

They've taken the opportunity to completely re-invent themselves, and have also recruited Richard Weston, of the famous AceJet170 blog, to their ranks.

I was very chuffed when they asked me to help write the copy for the profile page. It was a bit of a scramble at the end of last year, and will soon be updated. But it's got them off to a good start.

I love the line they came up with: 'Goodbye ordinary'. It's a brave one - they've got a lot to live up to now. But good for them for not playing safe. I'm sure we'll see lots of interesting stuff coming out of the TC studio soon – and it sounds like I may even get to work on some of it, too. Good news all round.