Do brands matter in a recession?

Ije Nwokorie, Senior Strategist, Wolff Olins.

Award wining work

The BBT advertising pieces I created while at Base One have won the Best Use of Advertising, at the Construction Marketing Awards late last year. Excuse the lateness of the news but I only just heard about it.

The Winning Campaign - “All Consuming Ambition”
(Technical & Professional)

Using a humourous hook and eye catching imagery to stand out from our competitors in industry publications, the winning concept uses visuals of structures relevant to sector(s) created out of everyday meals or snacks to demonstrate all consuming ambition.

We have adapted and worked with the designs, not just for publications but E-shots, flyers and posters, as well as banners and exhibition stands. These adverts have proved immensely popular with clients and candidates alike, prompting positive feedback and praise, even from our competitors.

We are extremely proud of the success this advertising campaign has had, and thank you all for the support and feedback you have given over the past year.
More here

Funny how there is no mention of the Base One creative team there… So to rectify that, props to Dave Thomas (CD)and Dan Cummings (production whizz) at Base One and Chris at Storm for his legendary skills with the Hasselblad.

Paul Elliman at TypeSHED11

Paul Elliman is an artist and a writer, who uses letters and words in their most abstract forms to create pieces of art. I’ll be honest and admit that I didn’t know of him before he presented his work and ideas but having seen him talk I feel I have missed out a bit. Years ago I got my masters in perceptual psychology, and my dissertation was on object perception. The work I did then on lanellas and typical contours was pretty much forgotten until Paul’s presentation. Typical of his work is the distillation of an object representing a letterform to a single cross-section, its silhouette it you will, and then creating a message/idea from a collection of these forms (he never uses the same form twice). Much like Build’s Objectified piece.
He further abstrated the idea of messaging in a piece where the male and female voice artists commonly heard on the metro in Barcelona gave instructions from Spain to his house in London. Very interesting stuff and a name I will not forget.

Donald Beekman at TypeSHED11

Donald is pretty much single-handily responsible for all the drug (legal) and alt-drug branding and packaging to come out of Holland, through his company DBXL. And a fine man for the job really. Being in a variety of bands since his youth led him to combine his influences of music/psychedelic/acid house/punk etc into packaging that makes your eyeballs throb. But don’t just take my word for it, check out his website for a trip back in time or on my flickr for some eye-candy.

Experimenta at TypeSHED11

I have a soft spot for the guys at Experimenta (you won't see much in their site, it seems to be a blank one for now, so see our flickr). I have seen Duncan show his wares on more than one occasion and appreciate the craftsman approach, the constant struggle of setting up and maintaining design integrity. Their work is top notch too, although I sometimes feel it is a little cold. Not in the piece shown above though: they managed to get the symbol from the U.N.C.L.E into the branding for the Global Leaders Consortium. Nice.
There are obvious comparisons to the legends Experimental Jetset (and not just in name) but it is early days – they are not even 2 yet) and they have got a bright future ahead of them in my opinion.
More on Flickr.

Sydney Shep at TypeSHED11

I'll be honest and admit that the idea of sitting though a 45 minutes history lesson of what I tend to regard as a naff bit of laziness didn’t interest me much, however I was to be proved very wrong. Sydney presented a very interesting piece indeed and if you were to take home anything let it be this:

“The smiley was born on 16 February 1882”

At least that is what her research in the much loved St Brides Library tells her.
More on flickr.

Mother of All Funk Chords

A wee musical interlude from the TypeShed11.
Let the people do your work.
More here. Via UrlGreyHot.

Masayoshi Kodaira at TypeSHED11

Hold crap this guy is the biz. Without a doubt Masayoshi has the BEST way of presenting his work I have ever witnessed. Not that he needed it. His work is outstanding. His understanding of print processes and finishing is phenomenal. My account won't do it justice. My cheap, blury snaps are hardly worth showing. Hunt out all the work you can find and study it. And try to be half as good. I wish.

Bruno Maag at TypeSHED11

I have always respect what Bruno has had to say (I even have a set in my Suitcase of ‘fonts that Bruno recommends’ that I gleaned from an old issue of Baseline) so was keen to see him in person and witness his passion, and man, is that guy passionate about what he does.
He spoke primarily about the global village and how one shouldn't neglect the cultural aspect of an area by forcing Latin alphabets on them, nor by just dropping in whatever alternative tanslation you can find. An example: Dalton Maag is working on Dubai's metro system where the signs need latin and arabic information. If one is going to do it properly the arabic needs to match the latin (or vice versa) in which case one will have to create it from scratch. And to do it properly one needs to know about the language, the letterforms, how it is written (the angle of the pen is differnent by 15 degrees for a start). So Bruno's team are all off to learn Arabic.
He also had some strong words to say about the 2012 logo and the typeface, but that is old news.
Oh, and he is more passioanle about food. Seriously, if you see him ask him about food. He knows one or two things.
Photos on Flickr.

Indra Kupferschmid at TypeSHED11

Picking a typeface, the right one, not just anyone can be a mare, but like the Lone Ranger on Silver Indra Kupferschmid came the the rescue with some thoughts on how to think outside the box. She is also responsible for the new font classifications, like the one the FontShuffle iPhone app I think. If there was one idea to take away it was “don't worry, people generally will read it anyway,” a thought that helps me sleep at night.
Photos on Flickr.