My business card is the best card in the whole world and nobody can tell me otherwise! - part 2

I thought this was a fun response to one of Andrew's previous articles about the best business card in the world.

AR Business Card from James Alliban on Vimeo.

Escape into the park - Swansea

Saw this piece van advertising Escape into the park. It's a great event and one that we are happy to hear that one of our clients will be supplying the electricity and lighting for. We re-branded Limegreen Events over a year ago now and are currently working on their new website. We are very happy that we are helping a company continue it's success in a very competitive market.

Anniversary's

This year for me seems to be the year for anniversary's, nearly every time you switch on the television there is an advert taking about a company's birthday. So far I have come across, Karcher, M&S, Google and Sainsbury's it is also someone's 60th but I can't remembers who. What has been interesting about it though is almost a question as to why they are advertising their length of time in our consciousness.

It seems that in these times of uncertainty companies are using their birthday as reassurances that they are going to be here next year. For some companies such as M&S which is 125 years old celebrations are obvious, but 140? I am lost what significance that has in relation to Sainsbury's birthday celebrations. Finally there is another thought that people are growing sick of high prices for foods and products that they believe should be cheaper, but for companies it is not simply a matter of them reducing their prices because people then start to question, why were they not that cheap in the first place? So they need a birthday for the excuse. This maybe a bit cynical and I would welcome other peoples opinion.

Finally the picture of the M&S jam I had to buy it because they have gone back and made the labeling retro, and the retro feel made me go and buy clotted cream and scones. They were yummy.

thistle hotel cardiff

thistle hotel cardiff, originally uploaded by julian marshall sykes findings.

I came across this sticker in the window of one of the hotels in the city centre of Cardiff. I totally understand the idea of the sticker and praise the company for accommodating different ways of communicating. I just wonder if there could have been a different way of advertising a non-visual facility.

The world was 100

I found Toby Ng works on design yak's blog and thought I had post as well as thought they are great. The posters are all showing how the world would shape up of it were only a village of 100.

So how powerful is design?

Another great film by cool hunting. I found the piece interesting in terms of how powerful design can be. While I am not saying design was the only reason Obama got into the white house the way the design work was produced seems so insync with todays thinking around ownership and social media communities.

The future of print media???

Print Media RIP?

View more presentations from Dirk Singer.

Swan Vesta - Brand development

While branding is not just about the physical brand identity and packaging, it is still what people associate immediately with that company. If you think of something as iconic as marmite, you probably think about the brown jar with yellow top and the red badge, and white name on the front. In the same way I recently visited the Museum of branding and packaging in London, where there are some great exhibits that show the development of some of the nations best loved packaging. Among them was the below shot of the development of Swan Vestas. It is a really interesting look into how the packaging went through both visual, dimensional and also technical changes through advancements in production techniques. 

Billboard give away

I recently attended a lecture given by Peter Snadden, his talk was about Japanese culture such as Hello Kitty. As well as talking about Hello Kitty he also spoke about current retail spaces and how they could potentially change in the future. In particular there was the question of retail spaces crossing over into galleries. I remember reading 'The Value of Things' a number of years ago which spoke about the relationship of how museum's have heavily influenced the original department stores such as Le Bon Marche and later Selfridges and Harrods. In recent time places such as the Californian cafe/shop/art space ROYAL/T, which looks at the relationship between this even further. For somewhere closer to home there is Dover Street market in London's Mayfair area. All of these were used as examples to show how the retail space is more and more becoming an experiential space that is not always obviously about selling 'kit'.

I was particularly interested though in the really challenging idea of those spaces that are even more obscure or indeed temporary. In a previous article I spoke about pop up stores and it is this idea of temporary and also the idea of pet architecture which was introduced to me for the first time through the lecture that really intrigues me. Pet architecture is  a really fun study of buildings that have 'grown' or 'chiseled' or 'fitted' into what many people would see as hugely built up areas. I will try and post a few images to demonstrate the idea in a future post. A very interesting piece of news I came across a few days ago, it made me think even further of what is a retail space. The above image is from Austrian Outfitters Northland Professional who produced a series of billboards that had samples of there clothing range attached to them. Each day the samples were replaced and the campaign took place of a period of a month. the idea is interesting on a number of levels. Firstly what has become known as tryvertising and trying before you buy also in this case the item can be kept and even passed on. For me I was interested how the billboard had almost for that month become a shop front for the company. A retail place if you like. 

Pop up shops required

Saw this piece in Design Week recently. Ethical shoe retailer Terra Plana is seeking designers to help create a series of pop-up shops. Starting this year, Terra Plana hopes to open pop-up shops across the world, beginning in London.

The company says it is seeking ‘creative ideas and approaches, centred around sustainable, mobile, short-term shop design’, according to a statement.

It adds that it is seeking designers who ‘are able to produce imaginative retail solutions to a limited budget’.
Terra Plana opened its latest permanent store at Westfield last autumn, co-designed by furniture and product design group Hotcakes and Terra Plana’s head shoe designer Asher Clark.

It reminds me of the Japanese stores that spring up every now and again in Tokyo.

Twitter joins top 100 - trebling it's traffic in one month

Robin Goad from Hitwise reports Twitter last month dropped into the top 100 visited websites "Last week Twitter became one of the 100 most visited websites in the UK for the first time. It ranked 91st, placing above online heavyweights such as Expedia UK (96), Gumtree (100), easyJet (101), Digital Spy (103) and Money Supermarket (105)."

Pizza anybody

A great piece of advertising by the Economist see full story at the cool hunting website

New Website

Well it has taken us some time but we have finally got our new website up and running. We have tried to make it much more informative this time around. See what you think at www.hoffi.com 

The site is very much in line with our current thinking of concentrating on our core products of branding, brand communications and digital. We hope you all enjoy the new site and find something of interest. We will be uploading new projects on the website very soon.