Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Cunning, Design, Technology
For years we’ve heard about the importance of simplicity … intuitiveness … seamlessness …
While it has led to an incredibly improvement in all manner of technology, it has also – to a certain degree – led to an entitlement attitude.
We now live in a society where if you have to actually do something, we see it as a negative.
Get up to turn on the lights?
Are you fucking kidding me!
Have to turn on the music system to hear your favourite music?
You want me to do what!
Look out the window to see what the weather is?
Why are you torturing me!
As I’ve said many times, I appreciate I am a massive hypocrite with all this given I live in a gadget nightmare household.
Wifi lights. Multi-room sound systems. Digital weather stations.
And then there’s the tons of robot dogs, cats and rabbits.
But despite this, I can’t help but say I’m kind of excited by the user unfriendliness movement that has started to show itself.
I’m not talking about tech that has been designed by someone who has no understanding of how humans think and work … I’m talking about people who are actively making products whose goal is to make you work for what you want.
Designer Weng Xingyu has designed a lamp he calls, the Angry Lamp.
It’s a light that, when it detects a room is bright enough to read in – either because of daylight or another lamp that is turned on – turns itself off. In other words, your reading is at the will of Angry Lamp’s interpretation of ‘bright enough’ because it absolutely, categorically, steadfastly refuses to use power if you are not going to the light for good reason.
Genius.
Weng has also created a digital photo frame that automatically starts blurring the pictures appearing on it if you fail to interact with the frame for a period of time.
In other words, it shames you into paying attention to images that you probably claim are ‘important to you’.
Then there’s Albert Clock by Axel Schindlbeck & Fred Mauclere.
This is a clock where it tells you the time by mental arithmetic.
In short, if you want to know the time, you have to do the maths.
Yes, I know it’s horrific … but it’s also massively cool.
OK, so maybe I’m the only person who is excited by this sort of stuff, but I like that this technology is offering you something more than just ‘making your life easier’ … it’s offering you the chance to value the moment.
We spend so much time passively engaged with life.
Of course, we will passionately argue that we’re fully focused, but the fact is we’re not.
We watch movies while checking out details on our phones.
We listen to music while playing video games.
We talk on the phone while reading websites.
We don’t get to truly value what we have because – as my wife says about me, far too much of the time – we’re not living in the present.
The wonder of this technology is it changes that.
It makes you care about the book you’re reading.
It makes you truly value the time you’re enjoying.
It forces you to embrace the memories that have importance in your life.
Sure, it may be annoying … sure you might regret purchasing it the moment you are negatively impacted by it … but in a World where we seem to be focused on NOT making people appreciate what they’ve got, I think this is a brilliant movement.
We’ll find out whether I still feel that way, once some of these items arrive at my house.
OK, so this is hardly a new topic.
Any person who has ever bought an Apple product – be it an iPhone or a Macbook – appreciates how the packaging has been designed to enhance the specialness of ownership.
I call it the ‘ceremony of purchase’.
Of course, lots of brands have followed Apple’s lead … from Beats Headphones to pretty much every luxury watch manufacturer in the World, but recently, when I was in Amsterdam, I saw a company present their ‘cheap and cheerful’ [but not that cheap] headphones in a way that I thought was cute … especially compared to all the others that just had a photo of the product on a nondescript box.
Nice eh.
But it wasn’t just headphones they did it with, here’s their USB charging cable …
OK, so their logo design is a fucking disaster, but in the quest to stand out from the myriad of competitors, they realised one way they could do it presenting their product in a way that would attract and appeal to their audiences eyes and heart.
Simple. Clean. Effective.
My wife – an ex-packaging designer – has always said good design solves problems.
Where adland often needs complex presentations and reports to prove their campaign has been effective, great design often speaks for itself.
It’s something we could all do with remembering as we develop work.
And I include clients in that.
In other words, make the idea so good it can’t be denied.
If you need copious amount of words to explain why it’s right, it’s probably not right.
I must admit, I have a soft spot for print advertising.
Not the stock-photography shitty stuff you see 99% of the time, but the stuff that is distinctive, crafted and tells a story.
The stuff that is simple rather than simplistic.
The stuff that treats their audience with intelligence, rather than a bunch of retards
The stuff that stands out from everyone else because they’ve appreciated the importance of design, not just shouting.
The stuff that, if truth be told, was the backbone of British advertising.
There’s been a bunch of these ads over the years, but recently, it seems there’s been a lot less.
Maybe that’s because of the way designers and art directors are being trained these days or maybe it’s because of the economic marketing shift towards digital … but it’s probably got a lot more to do with the approach favoured by many marketing departments.
Sell the features, forget the brand.
This could be why one of the last print ads that I really loved was that British secret service execution … but recently I saw one that took me back to the glorious days of print.
Where an image said a thousand words.
And the words simply said enough to make you want to find out more.
And the best bit is it’s for a British company.
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls … cop a load of this:
I love it.
Sure, you could argue you need to know what Bowers & Wilkins do for it to be truly effective, not to mention understand they have a product that looks like a Zeppelin balloon … but I’d argue you’re being too John Doddsy, and even he couldn’t fail to be impressed by the lack of copy in the ad.
Clean.
Distinctive.
Explains the product benefit without having to spell out the product benefit.
For me, it’s almost a perfect print ad.
One you can’t fail to notice and – more importantly – associate with a particular brand, which is something very, very rare these days despite the fact that’s what all work should try and do.
What with the SONOS logo and this, it seems it’s the sound companies who are leading the way in terms of brand building communication.
[Mind you, if you look at this old SONY ad, you could argue they always were]
So take a bow Bowers & Wilkins and your agency.
This is awesome. Just like your audio systems.
So a few weeks ago, I was walking through a shopping mall when I came across these …
Now I appreciate as someone who never wears socks because he always wears Birkenstocks, I may be missing the point, however I have a few questions I’m hoping you can answer for me.
1. What exactly are ‘fashion socks’?
2. Why does the packaging feature men talking on the phone?
3. Are the men actually talking to each other and comparing notes?
4. If the socks are ‘fashion’ garments, why are the models wearing boring suits?
5. Am I taking some dodgy sock packaging way too seriously and need to shut the hell up?
Answers gratefully received. Thank you.
Look, I love planning – not so keen on a bunch planners – but what we do and how we do it has a lot of [underrated] value.
BUUUUUUUUUUUUT, sometimes what we do is – let’s be honest – a bunch of bollocks.
We either do stuff to feed our own ego or do stuff that doesn’t take the brand conversation anywhere new … which not only buggers up our client and bores our audience, but feeds the level of hate many disciplines have for us.
And to be honest, I don’t blame them.
As much as it might be sensitive to say, sometimes the biggest insight is “there’s nothing new here”.
However that takes a lot of balls and courage to admit because essentially, you’re saying you can’t take something to a new place, and that is very hard for the ego to take.
But here’s the thing … it’s not that you COULDN’T come up with something, of course you could, the issue is – whether because of the client request, the category situation or the products overall parity – you couldn’t come up with something that would make a significant difference in the situation you find yourself in and when that happens, the best advice I can give is to give the task to a great creative or design team and sit back, knowing that the biggest contribution you’ve made, was getting the hell out of the way.
I say this because I saw this:
In a whole magazine of ads, these were the only ones that stood out.
AND I DON’T EVEN DRINK ALCOHOL.
Sure, they are just well designed images … sure they don’t say anything deep and meaningful about the brand … sure, they’re not exactly redefining the category … but you know what, maybe they don’t need to.
Maybe they just want to look fresh and fun and attractive so that the next time you’re in a bar or a club, you will ask for Stoli instead of the countless other vodka brands that try and claim to be anything other than a bloody alcoholic drink.
Of course, someone will now tell me a planner was involved in this account … and if they were, good on them, except I would love to know what they actually did given the only difference between this brand and countless others is the name, the design and the flavours.
Planning has a lot to offer and a lot to give … but if the work you do can’t – or won’t – elevate the brand and audience to creatively infectious and intriguing new places [even when they’re old situations], then all you’re really doing is ‘packaging the strategy’ rather than ‘creating the future; and the only people who benefit from that is the agency who will charge you out for essentially writing a bunch of powerpoint decks that no one will ever read.
Fuck, I hope no one in the creative team reads this.
Or my planning team.
Shiiiiiit.