New Service for Orange Phone users

The recent Orange Phone advert for their pay as you go customers is really interesting. Apart from being a really fun advert it does have a few other things that has been really interesting to investigate. Firstly there is an interesting idea of 'pay as you go' versus 'contract'. Traditionally my experience of the treatment of these two types of customers has been very different 'pay as you go' being seen as the lesser 'customer' compared to contract. While this may be only a perception and perhaps something to do with the fact of the culture within phone shops that seem to be catering much more for contracts (maybe due to commission??).

So the new service that has been introduced for pay as you go customers to pay for your next phone. In terms of service and adding value compared to their competitors it seems like it is a great idea. On another level their is also the element of you saving for a new phone. The idea of having to save and building compared to the last decade of spend spend spend is also I feel important and seems to bring an awareness to this. I almost think this could be made more obvious in contract phone contracts.

Finally for me there is also an interesting development of consumption and knowledge of consumption. What I mean by this is that by introducing people to the idea of saving and also the idea of products being hard to buy and not instant then it perhaps may also give an appreciation of the real value of phones and the elements they are made up of.



Would be interested in what people think?

ariel advert

designing sustainable retail environments

Check this article out for information about some great thinking about retail.

repair things

I remember in my final year in University I was working for a furniture company in Tokyo. The company called SUSU was based on the idea of the slow life and getting away from the city life of Japan. Nearly all of the products were made out of wood and you would look after them by rubbing in oil to keep it looked after. The culture we now find ourselves in is very different from this concept products have been developed where it is now not possible to look after and repair products by the way they are produced. However in these times of thrift you only have to look at sew machine sales going up by 300% that there may be a new market. I came along platform 21's manifesto the other day and think it is once again a fun awareness campaign for everyday items. The pictures are some examples.

It has a hole in it

Found a great piece of soap design on the psfk website from the James Hotel in Chicago. The hotel has a strong belief in eco-design and sustainability and the idea of the soap bar being guests do not use the middle of a bar of soap. I would be very interested in learning what the ingredients of the soap are, but it does seem to be a nice take on a concept and in some ways is just as good as a making you think piece as a functional item.

source:

Barcelona football shirt - UNICEF

Over the last few months I have started to realise the power of companies have for change. It has been around for years but for me it is the variety of companies that can put helping the community at the fore of their brand.

An example of this is the recent Champions League winners Barcelona, for 107 years Barcelona Football Club had held up a hugely ethical/community orientated stand about their football kit. Being one of the largest clubs in the world they could have easily earned millions of pounds by having a sponsor emblazoned on the front, yet they did not. The club is a unique club in many ways with the club actually being owed by their supporters. It was not until Barcelona chairman Juan Laporta admitted in 2005 that it was inevitable that they would have to get a sponsorship deal to compete in the marketplace. At first it was reported it would be a large company from Qatar that would be taking the coverted space. This announcement was hug in Barcelona and something the world of football could not really understand, it was also interesting how people instantly associated the sponsor with huge multi-nationals. 

Then in 2006 At a UNICEF committee meeting Juan Laporta announced the deal.

"It will not be the brand name of a corporation. It will not be a commercial to promote some kind of business. It will be the logo of 'Unicef'. Through Unicef, we, the people of FC Barcelona, the people of 'Barça', are very proud to donate our shirt to the children of the world who are our present, but especially are our future."

Now this is a hugely interesting and classic modern brand development project. The obvious would have been a huge company backing a huge club. i.e. Chelsea and Samsung. But fundamentally Barcelona are about community and about people above them being a business they are part of the Catalunya way. Through their club they compete against their fiercest rivals Real Madrid. For them it goes beyond football as well. But once you go back to basics the brand of BFC is giving their people a place for enjoyment, a place to call home and a place meet friends. 

With this in mind UNICEF is perfect to work with. The brand values are very similar and also the stand Barcelona has taken in giving something back not only to it's people but to the world beyond. That is why true brand development that has it's principles and ethics within a common community goal being some of the most exciting at the moment.

Biodegradble t-shirt

Following on from previous posts, cradle has had a great response from twitter members and has been pointed to a number of new products. One being from trigema which is the first biodegradble t-shirt, also cradle were directed to Triumph Underwear who do a 'pure origin' product range that has also been accredited cradle to cradle.

Watch for further developments, here or on twitter. The project is the brainchild of myself but it would not have gone this far without the aid of the rest of the guys from Hoffi.

Howies sample sale

Well I spent way too much money but hey once a year is fine. I loved the store though. They (howies) set it up in what used to be Woodies Emporium. It was a nice mix of finishes and also very in line with the pop-up retailing outlets I have been looking at over the last month or so. Even the blutac was green.

Finally taking shape

Well it's taken some time but we are nearly there. 'Cradle' is a project I have been working on now for the last few months (as you may have gathered from my previous articles about new products and cradle to cradle – C2C), Cradle – will fingers crossed be launching in a few months time and is aimed at selling only C2C products. The project is one of the most challenging I have been involved in as the current C2C products out there are few and far between, also they are from hugely different arena's. For example Steelcase has a number of it's office chairs that are C2C, then there is a surfing company that has had it's sex(surf) wax accredited as C2C. With regards to the branding and the project I will keep you informed on this blog, however 'Cradle' launched on twitter yesterday so check out how it's going on a minute to minute basis. Just search for cradlecardiff. We have grand plans for developing and evolving the brand over the next 5 years or so, so it is an exciting time for all of us involved.

think sneaker

A modular trainer designed to disassemble easily to make the trainer as cradle to cradle.

Puma 917 low

Great blog

Puma retail experience

See full article here.

What people actually meet up??? no!!!

Taken from gear fuse, the article explains these new 'mascots' that can be used to exchange your social networking information between person to person by a high five.

It's Alive - new fibres

Having been looking into cradle to cradle materials and processes recently, I came across this article about innovations in fibers. The article shows 5 of the latest fibers that are an advancement in eco-friendliness. The image above is 'victimless leather' the leather is actually grown so no animals are killed in the process. Very frankenstein...

Print is dead??

After one of my recent posts about the end of printed media I thought I would share this experimental piece of work by Simon Elvins,the piece is an interesting look into how printed media can be used in conjunction with other senses in this case your hearing. The piece works so as you move over the surface the pen interacts with the graphite so causing sounds and in some cases music.

I always like this kind or work is set between art, science and design as generally I feel this is where true innovation takes place. While not the final piece you quite easily imagine this setting minds ticking about how similar systems could be used for partially sighted people, or possibly in way finding through a city.

Triple Velvet

The Future and all of it's guises

Having looked at the future in consumption and both bio and mechanical products I was really interested in how one of the biggest companies in the world saw how things might evolve. This video from Microsoft shows how they see the world in a mere ten years. I think the whole compatibility issue might be intriguing to overcome but I do like how technology almost wraps round our lives which makes it very plausible.

ATM for books

I have been meaning to put this on for a few days know. My father actually spotted it for me. The piece was written in the Friday 24th April edition of the Daily Mail by Daniel Bates. The machine known as the Espresso Book Machine is designed to print and bind books at a simple click of a button. In Britain Blackwell bookstores will be fitting the machines into a number of their stores over the next few months. 

For me this piece comes at a really good time as the question of making items onsite and to order as opposed to stack it high mentality, very similar to a piece my colleague Andrew found a month or so ago. It would be interesting to know if in the making of the book people become more attached to the volume in comparison to one just bought off a shelf.

For a quick description of how it works:

1. Customer chooses book on list or prints their own by inserting a cd or usb, they then click the 'Make Book' icon.

2. book cover is printed on thick paper and waits for rest of book to be printed.

3. printer prints book pages at 105 pages per minute.

4. pages are printed collated and clamped ready for glueing.

5. the spine is roughed up and glued together and cover is attached.

6. book is now trimmed to required size. 

7. Finally finished book is received with the whole process taking no longer than five minutes.

no-frills

Picked up this post relating to Future laboratories findings about affluent people seeking minimal aesthetic. It seems to be a very similar trend/reaction to what we saw in the early nineties with the move towards 'NO Logo' type brands. In fact at that time in Britain it coincided in the rise of the Japanese brand MUJI. 

Link:

My trip in fontainebleau

I was lucky enough to get a few days off over the easter break, and managed to get down to Fontainebleau just south of Paris. I managed to meet up with one of the guys I met during my trip in India earlier in the year and also some other friends from Boulders Climbing Wall. For those people who do not know Fontainebleau, it is one of the worlds Mecca's for bouldering. We went out there for 10 days and had great weather all in all. There was only one day that it rained and luckily it was one of our rest days. Apart from totally trashing my finger tips and injuring one of my muscles in my arm I had a great trip and managed to get up a good few problems that I did not think I would have been able to go.

What was really interesting for me though was on Saturday night at our campsite a traveling pizza van visits. The van goes to a different venue every night, and while in Britain we would think of this as being nothing new the amazing thing about the van was the pizza oven. It wasa real wood burning oven. This for me tied into a number of research pieces I have been looking into for a project I have been looking into over the last few months. It also answered a few other pieces and tied them together. I have previously written about story telling and authenticity but I have also been looking into the spontaneous and temporary as such I feel this particular example of the movable retail outlet. It had something special about it as well as have the basic delivery of a product and service it gave a experience and novelty and also in someways a story through the knowledge we all have about Italy and Pizza.