Stream of Thoughts

Bauhaus: Oskar Schlemmer

Marpi Studio: Aquarium 

is an experiment in organic procedural generation, visually inspired by the ornate, spiny beauty of lionfish, the merged flora-and-fauna qualities of seadragons, and the hypnotic patterns of cuttlefish.

Marcus Brown: CANALS 

is a beautiful personal passion project, celebrating the history and creation of the iconic Amsterdam canals through an editorial style, visual design piece.

The Frontier: Within

is a web experience that transforms the circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems into an interactive portrait of the human body.

A Space For Being: Google Milan Design Week 2019

Demodern:  Discovery Dock

is an immersive, permanent exhibition at the Port of Hamburg, which aims to take visitors from all over the world to those areas of the port they wouldn’t normally have access to. It’s open to the public and serves as ‘edutainment’ as well as unlocking future-thinking revenue streams for businesses at the port.

Reference: Animation

Connection: Be More Like a Human

instead of posting highly organised brand content scheduled to the minute. Many companies pump out content that sticks rigidly to their brand guidelines, ticking all the colour, tone of voice, messaging and aesthetic boxes. In essence, doing everything ‘right’.

More progressive brands dare to stand out and understand that when you live and breathe a brand, and truly understand your consumer, you can afford to loosen up a bit.

So, what does this look like in practice? It starts with an understanding that consumers are simply people. They’re a mass of contradictions and, as such, are rarely consistent in what they’re looking for online.

Strong brand relationships are built on emotional connections so it’s not surprising that we’re more likely to follow social media accounts that don’t feel curated or forced. The ones that feel more human, not like faceless machines or, frankly, brands. They reflect our values, and this is only achievable for brands that really know who they – and their consumers – are.

The humanity of a brand is crucial. It elevates them beyond the product, enabling the creation of unique, engaging and relevant content that stops social media looking like a supermarket shelf and makes it feel more like talking to your mates.

As an example, Refinery29 which has built a mammoth following of 2.3 million by sharing a wealth of easily re-postable content that connects with their followers’ values. People like, comment and share because they connect with the sentiment. They engage because it’s fun and playful, or powerful and meaningful. And they return because they’ve found a like-minded community.

Image feed from Dirty Lemon

Lapiz: The Tequila Cloud

has been on show in Berlin and lets visitors fill a shot glass with freshly-rained tequila from the cloud. An installation commissioned by the Mexican tourism board to encourage the people of germany to visit their country. 

Visual Reference: Arena

Film by Páraic McGloughlin

A brief look at the earth from above, based on the shapes we make, the game of life, our playing ground - Arena.

Numbers: Value of Design 

is clear from the results. The McKinsey Design Index research found that top scorers increased their revenues and total returns to shareholders substantially faster than their industry counterparts did over a five-year period—32 percentage points higher revenue growth and 56 percentage points higher total returns to shareholders for the period as a whole.

The report concludes with four key areas of action companies must take to join the top quartile of design performers. First, at the top of the organization, adopt an analytical approach to design by measuring and leading your company’s performance in this area with the same rigor the company devotes to revenues and costs. Second, put the user experience front and center in the company’s culture by softening internal boundaries (between physical products, services, and digital interactions, for example) that don’t exist for customers. Third, nurture your top design people and empower them in cross-functional teams that take collective accountability for improving the user experience while retaining the functional connections of their members. Finally, iterate, test, and learn rapidly, incorporating user insights from the first idea until long after the final launch.

Companies that tackle these four priorities boost their odds of becoming more creative organizations that consistently design great products and services. For companies that make it into the top quartile of MDI scorers, the prizes are as rich as doubling their revenue growth and shareholder returns over those of their industry counterparts.

Extract from McKinsey Design Index by Benedict Sheppard is a partner in McKinsey’s London office, where Garen Kouyoumjian is a consultant; Hugo Sarrazin is a senior partner in the Silicon Valley office; and Fabricio Dore is an associate partner in the São Paulo office.

Shaping Society: Marketing and Advertising 

play a huge role in shaping our society — the way we see, think, understand and act. With over $180 billion spent on US advertising last year, the average American is exposed to over an hour of TV commercials, and as many 5,000 ads every day. The advertising we’re constantly consuming paints a picture of society, thus shaping how we view ourselves and what many aspire to.

Even more profound than influencing our consumption behavior, advertising has the ability to shape our aspirations. A great deal of damage can be done in setting unhealthy or unattainable expectations. Mainstream advertising often depicts women as over-sexualized, underweight, and photoshopped to ‘perfection’. Studies have found that exposure to this unrealistic, thin, sexualized ideal is linked to disordered eating attitudes, lower self-esteem, negative mood and depressive symptoms among our young girls and women.

Given all this, it’s no wonder advertising is generally seen as a negative influence. But it doesn’t have to be. While unrealistic, unhealthy images can have very real, harmful effects, advertising with positive messages, depicting an inclusive picture of society can also impact us for good.

Photo of Steve Bishop, ‘It's Hard To Make A Stand’, 2019

Universal Everything: Leonardo, A Life in Drawing

at Millennium Gallery is the newest installation from Universal Everything. Taking its name from Leonardo Da Vinci’s description of water, the Vehicle of Nature is a response to the groundbreaking studies of water that the artist created over five hundred years ago.

I’ve always loved their art direction and use of projection!

Pictures are borrowed from Universal Everything.

Studio Swine: Infitiy Blue

is an 8.5-meter tall robotic sculpture made from ceramic tiles in a pattern found in nature from zebras to coral. From the sculpture, 32 vortex cannons fire smoke rings whose scents tell a layered history of the earth’s atmosphere.

The installation was made in collaboration with Paris perfume house Givaudan to develop fragrances inspired by the aromas of primordial worlds.

Design Studio: IN FOCUS

is a creative studio in Tokyo centered on the fields required for digital contents such as web, graphic design, video and photography.

Design Studio: StudioWMW

have recently been selected for the Tokyo TDC Annual Awards 2019. The award recognises the studio’s design work for the Hong Kong International Photo Festival’s visual identity, created at the end of last year as a refresh to the annual festival’s brand.

https://hkipf.org.hk/

Numbers: Box Office Sales

study found that female-led movies outperformed male-led titles at the worldwide box office during the 2014-17 period. The report also noted that every film that surpassed $1 billion in global box office also passed the Bechdel Test, in which (1) the film has to have at least two women in it; (2) the two women speak to one another in the film; and (3) they speak about something other than a man.

Seeing women and girls on screen is not only good for everyone – especially our children – it’s also good entertainment and good business.