/ VIVID SYDNEY 2013 – A BRANDED CITY
Sydney Australia gets a new look for the 18 day annual festival: Vivid Sydney. The festival celebrates creativity and inspiration in a playful way through music, ideas and most fascinating: light. Major landmarks like the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the iconic Opera House, are transformed into colourful architectural art pieces.
The sails of the Opera House are illuminated in thought provoking imagery.
At the Sydney Harbour Bridge, attendees can select parts of the bridge to light up.
Check out: vividsydney.com
By: Byron Dowler & Kimberly Ross
/ STAR WARS MOVIE SET IN THE DESERT
No start to the week would be complete without some reference to Star Wars. Until now, your faithful stewards at CC’d: have resisted the urge to add yet another coal on the fire of this pop-movie icon. But these original abandoned movie sets built in the south of Tunisia have fired up our collective imaginations.
Unexpectedly the Star Wars sets have been left on location, probably because they’re in the middle of nowhere and because no-one complained and now have become strangely unique archeological sites.
The hot and dry climate has helped maintain intact many parts of the sets, or buried under the sand just sections of it. Bizarrely enough, the abandoned sets photographed by Rä di Martino seem to fit in with the natural environment around them as they slowly fade into the desert.
By: Byron Dowler
/ CAN BRAND PACKAGING DESIGN BE MORE SUSTAINABLE?
A while ago, a Client asked our agency to look at redesigning their retail brand packaging lines. This time they wanted us to explore some alternate materials to give it some edge, reduce production costs and ease handling issues. And, look for a more environmentally friendly alternative to the paper stock they were currently using. As an active lifestyles company, they felt an obligation to their customers to take environmental stewardship responsibly.
So we excitedly started looking at different materials and how they could be integrated – taking into consideration all of the above. While searching and discussing materials with our team, it became blaringly obvious how unsustainable some of these were. These weren’t exotic materials by any stretch of the imagination, they were in fact materials we see everyday.
This lead us to look even deeper into packaging material options and what impact they could have on the environment. Here are some eye-opening findings we uncovered on approximate decomposition time of some common materials:
- Kraft brown paper: 1 month
- Cotton: 5 months
- Leather: 40 - 50 years
- Rubber: 50 - 80 years
- Tin container: 80 - 100 years
- Aluminum container: 200 - 500 years
- Plastic (6 pack rings): 450 - 1,000 + years
- Styrofoam: 1,000,000 + years
It’s my job to increase product brand exposure and create impactful packaging that sells products for companies. Although exciting and rewarding, it’s a sobering thought – thinking about how much stuff we’re putting into our landfills and oceans. While we only have so much control over what materials we can use, we have full control of what we make.
[ The challenge ] Create something that’s easier on the environment and still provide maximum impact and value.
Part of the solution ended up sourcing an FSC Certified recycled paper with the smallest environmental footprint we could find. Then we worked with the pre-press team to extensively modify our packaging design to take advantage of every possible inch of the paper sheet to increase efficiency. We ended up with more packaging for the dollar and used less material and resources (like water and electricity) – and still came up with something really cool.
Ultimately, we still need packaging to house and showcase product brands. But if we think about what happens after, we can do a little more to minimize our impact on the planet.
By: Byron Dowler
/ SOFT LIGHT BULBS
“How do you reinvent the light bulb?” I was asked that in my Grade 10 Science class. I literally had no idea. In fact, the conventional lightbulb hasn’t changed much since its inception. It’s hard, extremely fragile and has that funny round shape.
Spanish designer Nacho Carbonell has changed everything by using rubber instead of glass. It’s durable nature makes the bulb soft yet unbreakable, and can be pinched and squeezed.
This new LED light bulb can adapt to existing lamps and environments or just be used by itself creating a synergy with its environment.
This is a smart lighting technology who’s time has come.
www.nachocarbonell.com
By: Byron Dowler
/ STRATEGY GIVES BRAND DESIGN LEGS
At Coastlines, we talk about a lot of stuff. Like; approach, process, positioning, customer perspective, true purpose and so on. And, we talk about strategy. It’s important to us. The term ‘strategy’, like ‘branding’ has a ton of mileage on it these days. It tends to be applied like a blanket to cover a myriad of marketing touch-points from both client and agency.
But wait a minute… If applied correctly in the right context… just how integral is strategy to an agency campaign? In my opinion, the overall success of any given project depends upon a solid strategy and its implementation.
During the project execution process, it can be challenging to stay on track and resist the temptation to dive into the creative… bright shiny objects tend to captivate us so easily. It’s a line I’m sure we’ve all crossed at one point or another.
Some clients, working on limited timelines, yearning to see how it could look – discard the strategic approach completely and say, “We have a pretty good idea of our needs, all we need now is a great layout to knock this thing out of the park.” With so much hinging on the campaign along with all its moving parts – they can’t afford not to stay on track. Gut instinct is great, but a strategic process reveals the deeper motivation, a stronger purpose and ultimately – longer lasting results.
We put this to the test at our studio. At this time, we’re working to create and build our new Coastlines responsive website. The plan requires an incredible of research, planning and content organization before we even start the creative process. Sure – we’ve got design and layout ideas… lots of them, and it’s tempting to skip a few steps and get to the fun part. I can empathize with clients who are in this situation especially now that the shoe is on the other foot. But already, I can see that sticking to our plan will reveal the site’s true purpose and the collective strategy behind our team’s approach. And, a finished product that will last longer, work better and have the impact we planned for.
By: Byron Dowler
/ GIVE YOUR IMAGINATION A BOOST
Sometimes years go into creating a video game. Many people working hard to create realistic backdrops, cutting edge graphics and sound – all to get you as close the experience as possible.
For about $144,000 you can bring that experience a step closer. CC’d: likes this simulator. There’s racing and flying simulators. And there’s this one from FMGC International. A full-scale Formula 1 replica racing simulator carefully designed to look like a real F1 racer. It literally puts you in driver’s seat.
This full-size replica houses a custom racing simulator, complete with three 23-inch screens, a 5.1 surround sound system, and a custom computer powered by an Intel Core i7 processor. The details continue with a full set of pedals, an F1-type quick-release steering wheel with force feedback, your choice of a silver, red, or black paint job, magnesium alloy wheels, and Pirelli F1 show tires.
It’s obscenely expensive, but at least you won’t have to fill it up with gas or bring a pit crew into your living room.
By: Byron Dowler
/ ENERGY SOLUTIONS CAN BE ATTRACTIVE
Shine - a heating radiator and LED light source encompasses energy efficient radiant heat coupled with LED lamp technology. The amazing part about all this is how the designer James di Marco has brought the elements together into attractive, functional pieces of art.
Visit www.jamesdimarco.it
By: Byron Dowler
/ WHERE IS ONLINE NEWS CONTENT IS HEADED?
The New York Times is redesigning their website, moving toward a cleaner more immersive, single-page-style experience and it’s creating quite the buzz. Some people including us at CC’d: think it’s a notable signal of where the web is moving.
The fact that they’re moving toward a scrolling touchscreen-like reading site is a big deal. They realize readers want a cleaner, user based experience from their news outlet – so the NY Times can’t afford to stick with the status quo anymore. Why? Partly because many news businesses are struggling against an abundance of online news content, blogs, news outlets and social media sites and – they need to stay relevant to stay in business.
Touchscreen culture is here. It’s all about a more clutter free, more engaging experience, without myriads of information spilling out onto your screen. With a leading news site like the NY Times and social networks starting to converge in the experience they’re delivering. It shows we’re absorbing digital information differently, and as communications designers, a change in how we create user based experiences.
Visit: http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/prototype/index.html to see the prototype.
By: Byron Dowler
/ HOW MUCH IS YOUR BRAND WORTH?
It’s about $77 Billion if you’re Coca-Cola (Interbrand’s annual brand value analysis) making it the #1 brand in the world. In fact, it’s up 8% over last year where it ranked – you guessed it #1.
It’s a fact in today’s economy that the most successful brands earn their brand trust by making bold promises and ultimately fulfilling those promises to their customers. This isn’t ground-breaking news, but companies that take design, branding and positioning lightly will have a hard time of it, or even worse, not survive.
As barriers to the markets are eased by technology, competition among companies will increase and the ones that ‘reach their target customer’ with the best messaging, ultimately building the most effective brands, will be the winners.
By: Byron Dowler
