JKR

This annual report from Adris seeks to dramatise their credentials as a socially responsible company by producing a book that has an unexpected weight. How heavy exactly, I am unclear. It appears from the film to be very heavy. This seems a curious design choice, as I would have assumed a commitment to sustainability etc. was better served by using less, not more materials. Indeed in our digital times, surely the challenge is to produce design of substance with the footprint of a few pixels?

When in a hotel, which do you prefer – a thick fluffy towel, or a thin threadbare one? I guess the answer is obvious. But according to an article in Intelligent Life a few months back,touch is our most subconscious but most influential sense. This was explained as the result of it being the first sense that we develop to make sense of the world as infants. It’s nothing new to design in a little tactile gravitas, as years of embossed and textured business cards with ‘nice snap’ can attest to. But I guess it is not necessarily a designer’s first consideration when beginning a project, as might be expected if it is our most sneakily persuasive sense.

Which brings me back to substance in the times of sustainability. Light weighting materials can reduce their innate sense of quality. It’s a challenge, because while we might logically understand that the packaging is more responsible, subconsciously it somehow appears a little ‘less’. It’s a cliché example, but I think Method’s packaging shows how to make a virtue of this situation, by imbuing the light-weighted design with a style and grace which more than compensates for a lack of heft. Further, the product inside tends to be concentrated, so less goes further. Another tip that could apply equally to print design. If ‘less is more’ then in terms of quality perception, that means more attention to detail and verve, to make a featherweight design have true substance.

“The basic fact about art is that you, the viewer, decide how much time you’re going to give it. Other art forms give you no choice.” That’s the opening line of a fascinating piece in the Daily Mail which studied how long visitors to the Tate Britain gallery took to look at various famous and infamous artworks. It’s a really good read. But can their findings teach us anything about the art of getting noticed and chosen on the shelf of a supermarket? What can we draw from the fact that a Tracey Emin self portrait got 177 viewers who typically gave it five seconds, while Millais Ophelia pulled 562 viewers who typically gave it almost two minutes of their time?

Like, art the attention packaging gets is entirely at the discretion of the viewer (unlike say, a TV ad which we tend to sit through however impatiently). In the supermarket we wander the aisles like magpies, our eyes alighting on this and that as we distractedly natter to our partners and call back errant children – our autopilot behavior not unlike that on a typical gallery visit. There is much more to look at than we have time to properly absorb. When one divides the number of goods in the typical supermarket by the average time of a visit, it appears we have to choose from around 1,500 packs a minute.

Here’s what the Daily Mail ‘discovered’: in a nutshell the older classics won hands down. It’s worth pointing out that visitors to Tate Britain are typically less interested in conceptual art than they are in ‘nice’ paintings – I have this on good authority from a colleague who worked there.

The Mail wondered if contemporary art got less viewing time because “It might be that contemporary artists strive to make an impact rather than provide a complex emotional experience. It is shocking to see a dead sheep in an art gallery, but it’s not something to go on looking at for half an hour.”

To this I would add that manifest skill could be scrutinised and appreciated for longer than, say, an arty photograph. So, in galleries it’s depth, storytelling and quality of craftsmanship that win out over simpler, more attention grabbing works. But of course packaging isn’t art. Few of us want to linger in the supermarket, so it is work that can be quickly processed that will be more effective. There is a lot of theory around ‘emotional branding’ and suchlike, but at the moment of choice it tends to be a bit more ‘wham bam thank you mam’. So while on an art trip we might enjoy lingering and developing connections, it’s the ‘one second world’ of contemporary art that is closer to how we interact with packaging design.

So in this context, which of the pieces of modern art the Daily Mail studied got the most (and least) attention? Damien Hirst’s dots got a scant 5 seconds from those who stopped to even look. For most it might have been wallpaper (or as one viewer commented ‘nice wrapping paper’). So much for it being ‘iconic’ then. I wonder if Joe Public is equally cool under the collar about brands that are praised to the heavens for their ‘iconic’ packaging in the marketing press? But his pickled lamb did fare better at an average 38 seconds viewing. From this, might one un-scientifically conclude that one gets more attention by doing something original that structurally and visually interrupts our journey? The classic ‘zig as the world zags’? Or is the sheep just more interesting to look at as it changes scale from different angles. And is a bit odd?

Here’s a thought – to get a pack off the shelf, perhaps go for the bravura and impact of contempory art. But then the pack (unless it is a household staple) is turned around and given a quick scan in the hand. Here’s the moment, ever so simply, to try and drive some of the emotional connection and resonance that Millais and his like made back in the day. Because while his Ophelia reveals plenty over a thirty minute gaze, it can also be appreciated as wonderful at first glance.

There were two stories in Monday’s Times which illustrate the value of appreciating what you have (and the perils of taking said for granted).

In one piece we see the fate of Britain’s classic red phone boxes. A part of our national iconography since 1924, they are being decommissioned by BT due to falling relevance and the high cost of repairing them from relentless vandalism. They are loved enough by the section of society, which does not look at them and just see a handy urinal, that their future is not too much threatened.

Rather they are being converted into information centres, shops, and even the world’s smallest art gallery. But this is about preservation of something whose time has past. Many may love the old boxes style, but the modern day equivalent design from BT is functional but soulless. They could have had a pillar box red home hub (hey, it worked for Olivetti with the Valentine typewriter), but elected for generic iPod white with that odd little globe logo which is so deeply forgettable (try drawing one from memory).

In the second story, the original Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger is going up for auction. It’s expected to go for $5 million – presumably to someone who once owned the Dinky version. But if you miss out on buying it, you can always settle for the V8 Vantage, still tripped out in the famous silver paint job on their website, and with design features such as the grill still evoking the 60′s classic.

BT squandered its design legacy and visual equities. The old boxes are reduced to relying on the kindness of strangers, and who would ever actively choose the brand on design grounds now? Aston Martin revered its past, and would still put a dent in a bankers bonus because of the allure they have preserved. That’s presumably why they topped the Coolbrand 2009/10. While we rush to jettison brand’s unwieldy pasts, it is sometimes worth considering what else we might be consigning to the trash.

Much ‘corporate social responsibility’ fails to leverage the middle word  – social. Typically the desire to do good comes over as rather more corporate than personal. Dulux, in a bid to ‘banish the grey’, has begun a global initiative to brighten up dreary spaces with both employees and community getting their hands dirty. The end results are uplifting, engaging, accessible, creative, transformational, and a great advertisement for the product. Can your CSR  initiative meet this rather high bench mark?

A great example of how design and creativity (in their broadest sense) can make responsibility heartwarming rather than worthy.

Watch the film here:

Leafing through my wife’s Grazia, filled with page after page of generic advertising for seemingly interchangeable designer jewellery (celeb-model, hands, ring), this advertisement for Tiffany struck me. Firstly because having taken the trouble to build a distinctive brand they can now show just the pack not the product, which is itself much more engaging, and secondly for the retro Americana of the ads. To my eye they conjure up the classic storytelling style of Norman Rockwell, and will probably hang around in the memory for much longer than another close up photograph of a nice ring would. Great translation of the packaging to the square corner branding also.

Speaking of Rockwell, a book has just been published of the photographs he used to base his famous images on. Below are a couple of examples of these, shown to illustrate my point about the Tiffany ad, and because they are just such a pleasure to look at.