Gallery is an international magazine published bi-monthly which features reviews dedicated to present the best new graphics from all over the world.

It includes packaging, identity, publication, poster, DM, promotion material, ad campaigns, website design, environmental design, book design, point of sale, photography and illustration.

We were contacted by their Shanghai HQ to be interviewed for both our Eurostar & Royal Greenwich rebrands.

Both of which they have featured heavily!

Very flattering and great to see our work spreading further and further afield… we’ve yet to work in China (we’ve come close!) — but hope this could help our desires to collaborate in this exciting part of the world.

The National Maritime Museum
The Queen’s House
The Royal Observatory Greenwich

We introduced the new brand of Royal Museums Greenwich to help better tie the three venues together and it’s working a treat.

We are of course delighted to have been shortlisted under the Best brand architecture solution category.

Best brand architecture solution seeks to reward the most efficient corporate organisational strategies developed in a rebrand.

Fingers crossed we get to make it three wins in three years… we’ll keep you posted.

Consumers are more powerful than brands.

In a world of ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ — the rise of the ‘Prosumer’ (those evangelical brand fans that shape a product, service or organisations reputation) is going to affect the way branding is approached.

This year will see a clickover to consumer-driven communication hosted by brands on a massive scale.

Personal connections in physical locations are lessening.
The high street as we know it is dying. (Have you actually been in a branch of HMV recently?)

Colgate telling you it is trusted by dentists is less effective than a dentist telling you – and you then telling friends – and then people you have never met reading your positive response. The opinion of a person you’ve never met about a product you’ve never bought from a brand you’ve never heard of is more important than what that brand says directly to you.

Brands and branding needs to move away from the one-way mirrored-glass of logo-based branding (where all they can see is themselves) and towards a user/consumer/people powered series of choices.

Mass-customisation.

Adaptive BrandWorlds will become more important than ever to host these conversations.

Deeply crafted.
Beautifully made.
Interesting.
Involving.
Useful.

A café for ideas, a second digitally powered enlightenment – not solitary confinement for one average idea repeated ad infinitum.

(sm)

We’ve been to Iceland (the country, not the supermarket) — Paris (Thanks to our lovely clients Eurostar), Barcelona, Hamburg, Copenhagen… all fantastic parties…

This year, to tie in with our work for the London 2012 Olympic Games, we chose to host our very own Winter Olympics.

We flew to Olso in Norway at Stupid-O’Clock, travelled north for 2 hours and met the Olympic setting of Lillehammer.

Lillehammer (literally “Little Hammer”) is a town and municipality in Oppland county, Norway.

The city centre is a late 19th century concentration of wooden houses, which enjoys a picturesque location overlooking the northern part of lake Mjøsa and the river Lågen, surrounded by mountains.

Lillehammer hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics and will host the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics. And last Saturday saw the SomeOne team try their hands (and legs, and arms) at being Olympic Athletes.

We were of course fantastic.

Archery in the ice forest. Ski racing around the snowy track. Target shooting… there was no end to the events that tested our mettle.

But it was the Olympic Bobsleigh track that we had really come to tackle.

Yes, every member of SomeOne (apart from David who’s was expecting his first child on Saturday*), and our Digital compadres SomeOne/Else raced each other down the course picking up speeds of up to 100kph and experiencing up to 3g (the downforce, not the mobile phone speed).

It was amazing.

We hope you have an equally thrilling Christmas & a prosperous New Year — we’ll be back Jan 3rd… ready for more action on the front line of Branding…