Weighing the pig more isn’t making it any fatter
It’s a curious paradox that as business grows more confident about the value of design, it’s becoming less confident in exercising judgement about it - to the extent that few organisations will today implement even cosmetic design changes without extensive pre-testing.
The prevailing culture of accountability and management by measurement suggest this trend is set to continue. While it has undoubtedly brought some benefits with it, creating a great body of work for design to be benchmarked against and rewarding the elevated status of design with its own studies, rather than a few minutes discussion at the wrap-up of an advertising focus group, it certainly hasn’t been making design better.
With the recession, many marketing budgets are being pruned, so design testing isn’t receiving incremental investment, but frequently being funded by the reallocation of money away from the insight gathering that might otherwise inspire more transformational design. Put bluntly, the current trend in research is at best making design safer, not better.
The research world shouldn’t regard the situation with complacency, however. The legacy of high profile failures of ‘extensively researched’ re-designs, such as Tropicana in the US and Mr Kipling cakes in the UK and a thus-far more quietly expressed disquiet about disappointing paybacks from positively tested design revisions herald an urgent reassessment of the role of research in design and how to improve it.
Paradoxically, this recession isn’t the time for Market Research to play it safe, it isn’t the time to be doing the wrong type of research a bit righter, it’s the time to invent techniques that exploit newly available technology and insights into human psychology to help organisations to design better.
Up for best animated short at the Oscars, is the work of French group H5 for Logorama. Lots of subversive in-jokes at the expense of various corporate mascots. It looks fantastic, in large part due to the talents of the original logo designers (I wonder if all 2,500 logo creators will be thanked in any acceptance speech?).
I guess what any brand owner might ask themselves is “Would my logo be recognisable in this context? Have I created enough meaning in the mark to make it parody-able?” because I guess that’s a bar call these logos have cleared. They were all used without permission, but one assumes their inclusion is the sincerest form of flattery for any designer involved.
To publicise Puma’s “commitment to bio-diversity in Africa” they have launched this Unity beer. One might be forgiven for wondering if it is as much about capitalising on this year’s World Cup as it is concerned with raising eco-awareness. I wonder, is it not sometimes more engaging to simply celebrate an event without tacking on the do-gooding PR? Or is such a cover story needed if a beer and sporting event are to inhabit the same promotional initiative?
Nevertheless the packaging is striking. And a little light digging online shows that the “artisinal” brewery behind the beer, Collective Sao Gabriel, certainly has its act together design wise – managing to create a unified brand look which is at once both modern and crafted. Love the brewery posters too…
In fairness to Puma they have also created a “continental football kit” for all twelve competing African nations, with sales from replicas used to fund the protection of endangered African species. What do you think of them?
Creative Review has been heralding the arrival of the RED (ultra high-res digital moving image) camera – essentially (as I understand it) a camera which can capture film, but where each still is of good enough quality to generate a poster sized image, and combines the resolution of still images with a sense of movement. Love magazine have created this 60 second film to promote their new issue using models from the magazine on the camera.
Prada are also using promotional films to generate campaign stills (below) on the camera. Here the technology gives a distinctively jerky quality that feels somewhere between a flicker book and a dream.
One more example of the way movement is morphing with the traditionally still (as on London Underground animated advertising billboards), which points the way to a future where brand iconography will be judged on its ability to animate and move. Static is so twentieth century…
Here’s Zakumi, the androgynous mascot for the 2010 World Cup. It prompted some questions in my mind: Why the green hair? To emulate the Jolly Green Giants sidekick, Sprout? To make it more lion like? And why did Germany in ‘06 use a lion? Didn’t they consider leaving that for Africa? I guess a teutonic eagle or wolf were out of the question, but why not a bear? I get Frances Footix from ‘98, but what the hell’s going on with Korea’s ‘02 characters?
Could the U.S.’s ‘94 mascot Striker the dog be any more generic and forgetable? Was it a homage to Hong Kong Fuey? And does Italy’s “Ciao” from 1990 prove it’s altogether better to stick to cute anthropomorphic animals rather than get a bit abstact and designer?
And finally what is the point of these mascots? Presumably to generate some lucrative licensing, to engage with young fans, and to present a friendly non-corporate face for the World Cup. So why, given the prestige of the event, do the mascots always look so second rate? Has nobody got Pixar’s number? Or any of the thousands of talented cartoonists out there? Javier Mariscal’s dog for the Barcelona Olympics proves an artists idiosyncratic style can deliver a more engaging mascot.
These posters (a self initiated project by designer Albert Exergian) are modernist distillations of various well known TV series in poster form. Very groovy and witty they are too. But I think they are also a great illustration of how, if the content is distinctive, it can be boiled down to incredibly simple logo like shapes that evoke the whole story. Not a generic product shot or unnecessary piece of copy to be seen. Quite inspiring from the perspective of boiling things down to their essentials, and proof that you don’t have to spell out everything literally to express a brand’s USP.
It’s one of those rare brands whose name describes the entire category. The classic white squeezy bottle has been brought back to create some PR around the brand’s 50th anniversary (in line with the almost legal requirement for any brand out of its teens to evoke nostalgia during the current recession).
But how does the old design stack up against current packaging? The old pack could at a pinch be called “iconic”, in that it visually defined the category it lead. The simplicity of the design and iconography meant that, although the physical was category standard, it had a distinctive look. In the UK it also holds a special place in the hearts of those who grew up in the 60’s-80’s, as it was also a staple ingredient of many a craft project on the programme Blue Peter.
The new pack, being clear, has made range expansion (into different scents etc.) much easier. And it looks of today, which is important when a sense of efficacy is as compelling for consumers as yesteryear charm. But the striding baby, once divorced from his/her little green cameo has lost visual presence even though it’s bigger. Across the range, the baby switches direction and position. This dilutes the iconography rather than amplifying it. For me, the original’s simplicity and distinctiveness has over time been camouflaged in whooshy lines, bubbles and other such improvements. I also wonder if the current physical is more, or less, sustainable than the original? I’m guessing it gets less re-use from kids, but then they are probably on their Xboxes these days anyway.
I think it was both right and inevitable that Fairy should move with the times. But I wonder, did they throw the baby out with the bathwater when they chose to move so radically away from the white bottle? Initially, I guess this set them apart from imitators, but now the bottle looks just like everyone else again.
Would a more contemporary evolution of the original have been a smart move do you think? Or was Fairy right to cut the apron strings? I guess the answer lies in the fact that P&G can justifiably describe the old pack as iconic, but would struggle to claim this for the current one.
The new design for the reverse of the Lincoln one cent coin is a neat example of digging into the past to find a relevant solution. The design features a union shield – emblematic of Lincoln’s preservation of the United States as, er, united. This small piece of heraldic story-telling incorporates the old design’s Latin inscription E PLURIBUS UNUM - “out of many, one”. So old motto and new motif combine to express the concept of union and “one-ness” of the denomination. The front (obverse) side of the coin has remained unchanged since 1909.
Less an example of typical retro design, more a shining example of finding extra meaning in the design archive and graphic traditions of the “brand”.
Below are the original reverse, and the limited editions of 2009 which picked out key stages from the president’s life and achievements.
I love these new designs for Chiquita banana stickers, designed to the dream brief “make bananas cool”. Twenty five cool characters in Chiquita’s distinctive yellow and blue style, and additional stickers carrying playful messages. But here’s the rub – the root of the idea was in using good/bad characters to dramatise the idea of not letting one’s banana go bad in the fruit bowl. “Be a good banana” goes the central message.
While not wanting to get all “No Logo” on the case of these charming designs, Chiquita takes plenty of flack suggesting that it is far from unassailably “good” (check out article). It can’t be easy to run a squeaky clean brand when the produce comes from Colombia, but allegations of paramilitary support and workers’ rights violations are numerous for the company. I stress the word alleged, but given the amount of smoke one questions if setting oneself up as a “good banana” is prudent.
Design work in the commercial sphere is always going to operate in a morally grey area, and unless one wants to turn away the vast majority of business then there are always going to be choices and moral compromises, be it over un-environmental substrates, animal testing, salt in food - whatever. In other words, the designer who chooses to cast the first stone is either self-deluded or ignorant. Nevertheless, the strategy informing this work does seem to be remarkably divorced from a cursory reading of the brand’s Wikipedia page.
If you want to skip the politics and just enjoy the fab work, there is a great feature on design related
“I’m interested in designing for posterity. People who buy McQueen are going to hand the clothes down to their children, and that’s very rare today.”
Alexander McQueen, 1969-2010
Unless otherwise stated, our Design Gazette is the personal view of company man Silas Amos. It aims to offer topical and design literate thinking for marketeers. Feel free to refute or recycle the opinions offered!
