JKR

Subaru, a functional engineering-led car is going for a stylistic makeover (source: Pistonheads)

“We want to broaden the appeal to make it accessible to more than a small, loyal crowd, we need to add a more contemporary element.” says design head Osamu Namba.

It’s a design story as old as the car industry. Model T Fords cornered the market, being for their time the perfect functional design for mass construction and mass consumption. But Chrysler and others spotted a flaw – consumers get bored and yearn for “the latest style” rather than a practical but unchanging vehicle. Ford, initially unwilling to bend to such frippery, saw their dominance slip away.

These days, every marque plays the style game, which made boxy old Subaru, until now, an interesting anomaly.

My brother, a forester, drives a Subaru. Presumably because it’s good on muddy tracks, and the odd dent is nothing to cry over. For his needs, design detailing is an anomaly. Online reaction to Subaru’s new styles has been scornful – with many wishing they would stick with unalloyed substance. Against the received wisdom of the history of car design, I wonder if Subaru are sacrificing a distinctive niche? Could they make more capital out of being the unapologetically anti-designer vehicle, rather than introducing lines and frills which make them end up looking like pretty much everyone else?



Absolut’s latest edition joins a long line of posters and packs where the brand celebrates the local. Absolut Brooklyn is a collaboration with Spike Lee which draws, I think, on the technicolor art direction of “Do The Right Thing”.

Being global and acting local is an engaging strategy, but potentially a headache to orchestrate if one wants to tap into local talent. CreateBrighton is an interesting development on this theme. Showcasing lots of great local designers and artists at the click of a mouse, it represents a true creative community (rather than a virtual one, drawn from all over the world, as is more typical).

If more sites like this spring up, giving big brands a local sensibility will become far more practical, and using more talent drawn from outside the usual capital city hot spots will be a breath of fresh air. I think what’s great (and savvy) about the site is its open and supportive spirit – it creates a scene, whereas in London or New York the various individuals would more likely be ploughing their own furrow and furiously competing.

Below are a few of the pieces that caught my eye on the site…

Abercrombie & Fitch’s art direction is testament to the brand’s ability to take something as universal as the male body and represent it in a distinctive and immediately recognisable way.

Walking along Fifth Avenue this week I saw this ad which provoked an initial reaction of, “what a rip-off of Abercrombie & Fitch!!” On closer inspection, I realised it was in fact a subtly endorsed A&F sub-brand. But with the master brand look so slavishly replicated, why bother at all – isn’t it just a mirror image of the parent brand?

What those in the know understand, and I had to find out, is that Hollister targets teen “surfers” (aged 14-18) with a mid-range price tag, against a slightly older and pricier target for the parent brand. Now, it’s always nice for the kids to look like the parents, but this design seems to me to be a bit too much of a clone.

With the brand’s profits down in the last year ( source: BNET UK, 18 Feb 2010 ), does this junior version open up the market or, by being an apple that has fallen so close to the tree, does it risk putting off the older consumers – nobody likes their younger siblings borrowing their clothes after all.

With all these buff Anglo-Saxon boys, A&F has always, to my eyes, had a hint body fascist about it. There’s arguably some evidence for this in the court case concerning a disabled employee supposedly given stockroom jobs because she did not fit the store’s “look policy” ( source: BBC News Magazine, 26 June 2010 ). So I guess one can expect a certain sameness in the store’s images, but perhaps this was a missed opportunity to go for something a little more diverse?

Below: how the brands stack up…

Burger King’s new packaging, they tell us,  “draws inspiration from the Andy Warhol Pop Art movement of the 1950s, the decade which also saw the world’s first Burger King unveiled in Jacksonville, Florida.” Do you get that from the work?

For me, the design is stylistically less Warhol, more Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein’s comic book style has been used to a shorthand retro Americana for decades – prints of his work are often hung in burger joints of variable quality.

I guess Burger King reference Warhol rather than Lichtenstein because he’s more famous, and quite cool. But it wasn’t “his” pop art movement, and name dropping him is arguably highfaluting. In agency-land we often use cultural references to help frame a concept, but if the work fails to fit with the frame it makes the exercise redundant. Perhaps it doesn’t matter (after all the name-drop has got plenty of PR), but I am of the opinion that frames are important, and should be judiciously used. Perhaps I spend too much time doing planning.

Warhol himself was a lover of strong brand icons – the Campbell’s soup cans and Coke bottles, which he faithfully reproduced in his trademark screen print style, elevating the everyday to the status of art. I think he would find Burger King’s homage amusing, and he was no stranger to brand tie-ins when alive, but the packs he painted were powerful badges long before he got to work. In the case of these particular designs, they are stylistic decoration without the strong central branding which Warhol himself was a fan of.

Warhol

Lichtenstein

Yes, we’ve heard it all before, and enjoyed the hubris of famous failures like Boo.com, but online retail’s having a big week. Ocado’s being floated, Amazon’s about to start selling groceries in the UK, and M&S declare a 49% rise in home shopping compared to ‘09.

For me, Ocado is the model which promises a game-changing creative and business opportunity. Because while Tesco et al stock their vans from the same shed that feeds their shelves, Ocado has one über-warehouse (with another planned) from which it processes massive distribution exclusively for online orders.

So it’s arguably big enough to warrant and organise bespoke packaging for famous brands – packs which don’t need to be designed for shelf standout, or appetite appeal, or invasive hard sell promotional flashes, because you don’t physically see these packs when you buy them (and on screen they can still shout as loudly as they ever did).

Unfettered from the usual clutter and pragmatic requirements, imagine a box of Persil or Pepsi which is designed to grace a kitchen as a thing of beauty rather than as a hard working brand billboard. If it complements and contributes to our home environment, it will promote loyalty.

At the other end of the scale, packs could become truly basic, more sustainable, re-usable and utilitarian, treated perhaps as refill containers that feed permanent branded storage in the home.  Fewer boxes to crush and recycle in this scenario.

Whilst the jury is out on the future scale of online clothes shopping, despite some notable successes, food (especially predictable, reliable, branded food) is thought by many experts to be the likely major player in the online world. As scale of distribution opens up the door for bespoke branding, perhaps now’s the time for super-brands to consider how design could transform their packs if the rule book were thrown in the bin.

When you no longer have to stand out, you are liberated to stand for something in a much more nuanced but powerful way.