Markus Kayser - Solar Sinter Project from Markus Kayser on Vimeo.
Such a beautiful film about a hugely interesting concept. It reminds me alot of other Royal College projects that I have seen. They are what I call parasite type designs. They use resources that are being already used or produced to deliver other experiences. I think I remember from a good few years back a project that was a bug which fed off the heat from a lampshade being on. The bug was a mini radio that held enough power to play music when the lampshade was on and also the shape of the shade helped direct the sound.
This year was the second year a TEDx has taken place in Cardiff. Unfortunately the shear popularity of the event ment that tickets sold out in about 45 minutes and so I didn't manage to go (I was also moving so that kind of got in the way as well). The event run by Neil and Claire has grown form their work on the ignite events over the last few years. Anyway it has been a few months since the event and it is only now I have managed to get a chance to look through the talks. The one below is particularly interesting, particularly for the elements of collaboration and co-operation that have been born from the internet and social elements of it.
Posted by Julian Sykes
So the show is up and you are thinking about the summer, maybe some of you are thinking about going travelling. Others are thinking about looking for a job and some just a bit of work experience / internship. So for the ones out there looking for a place in a creative studio what do you need to do to get some experience?
Firstly let's say there are around 30 odd students in your uni class, there are probably about 5-6 courses each with students who might consider themselves capable or getting a design job, then say there are around 100 or so uni's who do creative courses. That is already about 18,000 people. Then you have people who havn't got a job yet from last year and others generally looking for a career change. So that is a lot of people.
So here are a few things to be thinking about:
Hope this helps...!
The seminar is for individuals that wish to develop their organisations brand.
Hoffi's brand seminar is perfect for developing an understanding of branding and how it is integral to your company. We will work through some examples of what branding is and what it is not. We will also look at why having a good brand is valuable for your business and what the key ingredients of a good brand are, we will be particularly concentrating on how to use your brand to position itself in the marketplace.
When: 9am - 12pm Thursday 14th July 2011
Where: Enterprise House, Cardiff Bay, CF10 5LE
If you would like to attend our next seminar please e-mail elin@hoffi.com or call Elin on 029 2048 7941
Since December 2010 we have been working with Neil and Zoe; owners of The Grove, a luxury boutique hotel based in Narberth Pembrokshire.
They approached us to develop the Grove brand and enhance its positioning as a luxury hotel and restaurant based in Wales. The superb 16th century building had been restored to the finest specifications and is now a true indulgence, a great venue and already with several high profile hotel, food and wine awards.
We approached the brand through a series of refinements; making subtle changes to the typography, colour and treatment used throughout all of the Grove's brand communications. Over the last few weeks we have been putting the finishing touches to the Grove website, which launched on the 11th of June. Like the refinements made to the brand identity, the website was approached in a similar way; working through the previous content with a copywriter to achieve a consistent tone of voice, tweaking the interface to ensure that the design is centred to the user and functional across browsers and screen resolutions.
Visit the Grove's website www.thegrove-narberth.co.uk
Even though it's called the Cardiff Design Festival it always covered design from all over Wales, sometimes outside of Wales. Last year was the festivals biggest year and this year it's looking even bigger with interest from design agencies in Newport, Swansea and Wrexham putting on their own fringe events in the cities.
With this in mind we created sub brands for each city, highlighting that there are Cardiff Design Festival events going on in those cities. The idea behind the brand being, Cardiff is always central in the brand, with each city sitting alongside it as it would sit geographically to Cardiff.
The festival hopes in the future that more cities will come on-board creating a whole network.
I came across the video above while visiting our neighbours blog (seewhatyoumean). The video is a really interesting visualisation by Vodafone as to how mobile phones have developed not only in shape/aesthetics but also in terms of content and how they have moved from a businessmans brick to ubiquitous objects which people can't do without.
Posted by Carwyn Jones
On Saturday I completed my 5th Photomarathon! High five to me!, but what is Photomarathon you ask?
A Photomarathon is a photograph competition with a twist: Over 12 hours you have to take 12 pictures on 12 given topics. It’s not your physical condition, but your sense of improvisation, fun and creativity that is stressed throughout the Photomarathon.
At 10am on the day of the Photomarthon, each entrant will have their camera and memory card checked and verified and then will be issued with the first set of 4 topics. They have the next four hours to shoot one image per topic, in the same order as the topics are listed. Four hours later at 2pm the next set of topics are released. Each entrant must personally collect the set of topics from the HQ, and have their entry card stamped to prove attendance. This process is repeated again at 6pm. The HQ will then receive the completed entries – via direct download from your memory card – from 7pm until 10pm.
As always, it's a fun day, mixed with stress, excitement, creativity and a little bit of skill! This year I was quite methodical about the planning and instead of wandering around looking for something to fit the topics, I sat down and planned what I was going to do, did this work? I will find out at the end of July when the winners are announced.
Find out more about Photomarathon here: http://www.photomarathon.co.uk/
View the rest of my entries here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21607251@N05/sets/72157626814068571/with/58...
Well we have been working on this for a year or so now. After years working on the brand communications for Calon Wen, we have developed a new series of packaging for Milk and soon to be Butter, (there might even be a few more things as well). The project has been interesting for us mainly due to the project being a genuine brand development project. It is quite rare to get these as normally they are a total re-brand or it's a start-up with no visual language.
So to develop a brand and it's message while not alienating the already existing market. So what about Calon Wen? what were they changing? With the recent recession 'Organic' products have suffered. Perceived luxury products are always going to have a hard time in a shrinking economy, in particular products that are seen as everyday (like milk). So we had to develop Calon Wen beyond being organic and provided a richer story that was based on people. The labels themselves are a small micro-representation of this. The previous labels were highly successful however 'ORGANIC' was over powering in comparison to the brand name. Also the fun playful element of the cows was limited to being in a traditional stamp design above the name. So the cow's have been integrated into a scene that allows for a richer and more engaging label. Finally the roundel that we have developed for the other products such as Cheese has been incorporated into the label.
The story of family farms being for us a hugely important in who Calon Wen are and what they are about. This was kind of lost within the sides of the Calon Wen story and label so we wanted to bring this to the front. Above you can see the new label and below the older version. It would be great to hear peoples thoughts on the labels and thinking behind it. You can also visit the Calon Wen facebook page to see a lot more of the work we have been doing.
Midnight struck, and all change for National Theatre Wales (NTW). The year two program was launched and with it a change in this years approach to the NTW website. This year there was a shift from that of a journey around Wales to more of an adventure or party. Indeed the homepage is ment to capture the idea of a surreal party that has elements of all the productions/elements of NTW throughout the second year. The image was created/directed by the guys at elfen and photographed by Phil Borman.
For us the homepage functions in a similar way to last years however with fewer streams coming in from the community site. The What's On pages however were the real investment in time for the revised website. It was clear that there was a need this year to develop the site to be able to cope with more than one thing going on at a time. Unlike the first year where it was basically a new event per month. The second year has a number of occasions where there are two or even three things going on at once, and unlike last year these events are not all in Wales.
We therefore decided to break the experience up into three key users:
User one - Browsing
User two - Looking for an experience or gift
User three - Looking for a certain production/event
From these three profiles it was clear that the users would want different ways to navigate and search the information. While the information is quite minimal at the moment the search will allow in the future to gain access to a rich stream of information that it is hoped will also provide experience and recommendations. It is still very keen on content but as the content grows for the site we hope the experience will and other new elements will be added when necessary.