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.

If you have ever tried to choose a new pair of earphones without too much knowledge of what’s good and what isn’t, you probably glazed over as quickly as I did. In the end one picks out a product within budget in the same random way that wine is chosen – not the cheapest, not the most expensive and, oh, they look the part, they’ll do.

The “EarBudeez” shown here won a Pentaward for packaging this year, and rightly so. Cringe-worthy name aside, not only are they eye catching (they do, after all, literally make eye contact), but they also exploit an obvious but underused truth of the category: earphones are a lifestyle product rather than a technical one, but the convention is for serious and techy looking design. Breathing a bit of fun into the category makes a generic product really engaging. “Reason to believe” focussed communication has its place, but this design shows that it can be just as valid to lighten up and not explain too much.

Could Aristide Bruant be the father of shelf-blocking? He was a just another chansonnier in a crowded market, but he obviously had an eye for design. It was he who personally insisted on having his poster for a residence at the Ambassadeurs designed by Toulouse Lautrec (one of the artist’s first poster commissions). Lautrec stripped things to their essentials, and played up the singer’s dramatic red scarf. When the posters went up on the theatre, the less visionary owner described them as “pigwash” and ordered their removal. In a lovely piece of client/designer solidarity, Bruant countered “You leave it there. What’s more, stick it up on the stage on both sides. And if it’s not done by quarter-to-eight – eight’s no good  - I’ll chuck in my number and disappear”. Surrounded by his image, the reaction to his performance was an overwhelming success. The poster went up all over Paris, making his name and that of the poster designer.

Now, keeping things simple and striking might sound obvious. And that such an approach lends itself to fantastic results when shown in multiples equally obvious. But sometimes the obvious is easy to forget. The new design for Coco Pops might not be hanging in the Louvre in a century, but it has benefited from following this approach. While the old design was OK, its even arrangement of key elements did not add up to the power of the new one. The design focusses full bloodedly on the monkey, and so catches the eye brilliantly when blocked on shelf. The monkey might be no chansonnier, but a simple design gives him the room to be the star.

The lifestyle and homeware brands which dictate/reflect our tastes have a big influence on design in general, including branding (only last week we got a brief requiring a move of an FMCG snack “from Fortnum and Mason to Harvey Nics”). So the opening of US homewares store Anthropologie in London is not insignificant. Everything in the store has a one-off artistic quality, but it’s a chain store with chain store prices. As you can see above, it fits the “pinnie porn” fanciful make do and mend pigeon-hole (indeed, the rolling pin would be my nomination for the design artefact which sums up 2009).

I think its got a lot of appeal – it conjures up in my mind a car boot sale entirely of Peter Blake’s cast offs, and I mean this as a compliment to both the artist and the store. But I think it’s also indicative of the way the de-mac, hand whittled trend is moving, from a resurgence in the use of drawing, to a kind of faux folk decorative feel. There has been so much written this year about consumers seeking comfort from famous homely brands in the downturn, but I think there is just as much evidence that at a boutique level things are becoming more decorative, offering a warmer alternative to designer minimalism. The evidence that much the same is happening in food packaging can be seen with a two minute scroll through packaging blog The Dieline (examples below), and I predict it won’t be long before this style infuses more mainstream FMCG packaging. If one were looking for a hot design recruit right now, perhaps Ukrainian grandmothers would be a good place to start.

Along with generic price war advertising, supermarkets are all promoting their own value lines, which generally share a common design aesthetic…

When launching a line of hundreds of products to be dotted about a giant supermarket it clearly makes sense to go for a simple and impactful design system. And using one’s brand colours makes equal sense. And if you are selling a “no frills” line then the easiest way to communicate your proposition is to get rid of the visual frills. But does such an approach, taken to extremes, look so basic that it devalues both the products and the store?

I won’t forget an impassioned argument put forward at a jkr company chat by designer Martin Francis a few years ago, where he laid into value own label packaging for looking not just cheap but ugly. His point was not a designer lovey one - rather he was saying that everyone, no matter what they are spending, deserves to have nice looking packs - why make folk feel like they are getting the cheapo rubbish with design to match? Making the basics range look more attractive might confuse a “good, better, best” strategy, but I suppose there are degrees of design refinement that can be applied. At the other extreme of the product spectrum Chanel No. 5’s box is simple and basic but it has enough nuance to also be beautiful. Still, Coco wasn’t stuck with making a bright yellow pack look appealing.

John Ruskin, who thought deeper and knew more than most of us ever will about aesthetics, was a progressive champion of the importance of art and beauty for the “common man” - although his writing came before the age of the soundbite, so I’ll leave the last words to him. “A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.”

I do, that’s the problem – but do you find you cut some brands more slack than others? That in fact the more you respect a brand the more you ask of it? I have loved National Geographic since I was a kid. I’m not sure if its photography is always the very best in the world, but put that yellow frame around an image and the image itself is elevated in my mind. As a magazine it reveals the beauty, drama and fragility of life on Earth in each issue. It’s on these high standards that it has been able to diversify into retail, television channels etc. And the yellow frame has become an instantly recognisable badge which is flexible enough to look great in myriad brand contexts. That  yellow frame is a promise of quality and gravitas.

So these Ambi Pur natural scents which team up with the National Geographic brand raise some questions for me. I can see the product to natural expert fit. And I get that the outer packaging is recyclable. But this still feels like a far from green initiative. So why worry? After all, it’s not like there aren’t plenty of these things around, and all National Geographic is doing is endorsing another one. But that’s the trouble with brands which have values, and brands that get you to love them. When you feel like they aren’t being true to their principles, one can get a bit emotional. Perhaps the magazine has no control over such deals. In which case, it’s risking its good reputation by appearing to be happy to sell their good name to things where the fit to values seems curious. I guess the point I am making is that once a brand shows an awareness on certain issues, it has to also act on that awareness. As my boss Andy Knowles often says “ a principle is only a principle when it costs you money”. And ironically, values aside, this does look like a somewhat arbitrary use of the National Geographic logo on the packaging.

What makes a brand cool? The movie adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are came out in the States on Friday and the buzz suggests it is the very definition of cool. Meanwhile, the Coolbrands 09/10 supplement in yesterday’s Observer newspaper was peppered with expert opinion and theory on why some brands are cooler – plenty about first mover advantage and the like, little about the basic (self evident?) contribution of bold design and clients. However, Mark Blenkinsop of agency Exposure made some points which I thought were enlightening. He talked about the notion of “distribution as communication” - where the brand is sold, how, who to, and how the competition on adjacent shelves can all combine to give a brand the right image for cool consumers.

I thought of this when looking at the promotional tie-ins for the Wild Things film. Cool book, cool director (Spike Jonze), cool soundtrack and uber-cool merchandising and marketing. The following images were posted on (of course) coolhunting. It’s all so “now” it could almost be a parody of overblown marketing trends, from “pop up stores” to high fashion tie ins, via designer sneakers and jewellery:

The pop up store in LA:

The exclusive on-set photography prints at Urban outfitters:

The jewellery collection & furnishings:

The fashion collections:

The collectable kubricks:

The inevitable sneaker editions:

Looking at all this it occurs that while being a cool brand is desirable and lucrative, it is an approach which intentionally limits the brand appeal to the “right” people rather than the masses. Limited editions, limited availability, limited time only - even the plastic figurines are collectible “Kubricks” rather than something which comes with a happy meal burger. I’m not sure how many adult sized wolf outfits they will sell, and I doubt that this is the point. This is not to knock all the wonderful creative work which seems like a smart way to promote the film to the kind of hipsters and kidults who are presumably the target audience. But the obvious conclusion I came to is that while being cool is some kind of marketing holy grail, the cache one creates in such a distribution strategy by default restricts the brands’ potential to reach everyone. Which presumably suits the hipsters very well.

What do you think of the logo above? Does it make you feel anything passionately? Because the addition of owner Yahoo’s emblem to the identity has got flickr users very vexed online; “I don’t like it”, “Yuck”, “Hate it”, “That’s it, I’m starting a protest group” etc. etc. Calmer voices have suggested that in the global ranking of bad news this might not be the end of the world, but the fact is any topic, including brand evolution, is now subject to instant opinionated review in the public forum of cyberspace.

As the cover above indicates, the power lies with popular opinion. My own observation is that a healthy slice of this opinion comes courtesy of the green ink brigade who have two default settings when it comes to commenting upon the merits of design online: “awesome” and “awful”. Opinions are posted which display no sense of balance, room for debate or grasp of context (a recent favourite of mine gave our Guinness can design a thorough kicking, and concluded with an exasperated “I bet the public will love it”. Well yes, chuck, that is rather the point). But such opinions, however wrong-headed, cannot be discounted  -  some stats doing the rounds: 78% of consumers’ trust peer recommendations, only 14% trust ads. 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands. Twitter was famously a conduit for public opinion and catalyst for demonstrations following the elections in Iran and is affecting the way Hollywood is launching movies: until very recently producers and the film industry were fixated on the big opening weekend - land one and you were made, lack one and the publicity budget for roll out evaporated. Now the indicator for hit or miss is 11.00pm Friday night, because that’s when the first night audience emerge to tweet their opinions. Millions of dollars of investment are at the mercy of a semi-literate 140 character review. And of course wittily acid reviews get much more traction than something along the lines of “quite good in parts” - just ask Dorothy Parker. I guess one might say “how bracing – perhaps the general standards will improve?”.

So what to do? Pandora’s Box is open, and trying to control public reaction is becoming the luddites option - although it’s the line taken by movie studios to professional reviewers, requiring them to sign away the right to tweet their thoughts in advance of a prescribed date. Influencing is another matter, although it would take skill and effort beyond most of us to bother with. But perhaps the best choice is to roll with the new world, throw one’s work out there and develop a thicker skin. After all, the alternative is to reject democracy just because some of the citizens are apparently prats. And we can console ourselves that Van Gough, famously, barely sold a canvas in his lifetime, so the public is not always right. For myself, I’m not blind to the irony in writing about opinion via a blog, but this wave of smart-arsed negativity is influencing how I choose to write this blog – hopefully in a reasonably even-handed manner, even if that means tempering opinions when the facts are not self evident.

As London Fashion Week comes to a close, did any brands make any kind of impact on you? Interesting to see that Burberry is bringing the “vintage house check” proudly back to the catwalks, bullishly shrugging off the media fixation on its appropriation by footie hooligans and the like, attention the brand considers “snobbish”. Also lovely to read that the brand decorated the venue in beige which it re-christened “trench”. A small prize to the first reader who can tell us which famous song was inspired by a Burberry mac.

Not at fashion week but in the same vein comes the limited edition Vivienne Tam HP laptop. While “designer decorated” editions are becoming commonplace, this one has a neat twist – it’s being marketed as the first digital clutch. What a neat idea.

Recently we commented on the current trend of budget advertising which, more often than not, dilutes the value of the brand by using generic price flash tactics - step up Tesco, Asda and the like.

The new campaign by Dixons on the other hand has memorable copy, a distinctive brand feel, and turns rival brands’ visual equities against them. By openly acknowledging Dixons as “the last place you want to go” in the ad’s tagline, the sign-off cleverly chimes with consumers’ perceptions – it’s obviously a double edged sword to so wryly acknowledge one’s own weaknesses, but such honesty is a strong trend at the moment.

It’s a refreshing change from cluttered value ads with big price stickers, even if the promise that Dixons is the cheapest might be more perception than unassailable reality.

Above: Back when it was all about price, not emotion.