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July 8th, 2010
One of the more interesting outputs from the early stages of an otherwise slow-starting World Cup was the extraordinary amount of data generated from the minutiae of the games themselves. With data feeds streaming into news and press organisations in real-time, there is very little that isn’t recorded: for each minute of a match we can see the number of passes, possession and zones of play, fouls and cards, balls won and lost, player touches, shots, corners, the frequency of World Cup tweets on Twitter and, if you’re lucky, even the odd goal.
All this raw information is fired around the Web in the instant after the events occur, feeding number-crunchers and data visualisers everywhere. A nice example is The Guardian’s ’Twitter replay’ tool - an animated visualisation of what people were saying at each moment of a match: the more frequently a term is used, the larger its bubble blooms. It’s the 21st century’s Kop erupting with shouts and cries at a malicious foul or a scorching goal.
The competition provides a concentrated and global focus on stats and data, but this is by no means a World Cup phenomenon. In all kinds of fields we are recording and sharing more data than ever. As more of our behaviour is mediated through digital technology, the statistics of this behaviour are recorded as we go. Your iTunes, Spotify or other media player, for example, may well ’scrobble’ all the songs you listen to straight to your Last.fm profile, leaving behind an ever-lengthening trace of your musical predilections.
Many more complex and sensitive datasets are being recorded and disseminated too - the British dead and wounded in Afghanistan or details of local crime incidents, for example. And the volume of available public data is growing fast, fuelled particularly by the work of Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, who has pushed hard for greater transparency of Government statistics.
But making useful sense of this sea of data can be a complex design challenge. Interactive, graphic and information designers alike are tasked with finding ways to let us mine these streams of words and numbers in meaningful ways. ’It’s no exaggeration to say that we’re at the beginning of something really big,’ says Alex Morrison, managing director of Cogapp, a digital consultancy which recently designed The Sunday Times’ General Election data visualisation tool. ’We’re entering a new world where events, locations and contextual information are open and shared, and it’s going to be huge. Visualisation is the sexy graphic output of that, but the challenge will be in designing information architecture which makes sense of it and allows people to do something useful with it.’
As anyone who has compiled a stats-led report will know, achieving a correct and context-sensitive presentation of data is crucial. But with the volume of accessible data growing, the likelihood of misrepresentations grows too. ’We have access to information like never before and it’s almost overwhelming,’ says Michael Robinson, head of graphics at The Guardian. ’Improvements in software have made it easier to input data, but what people are doing with it creates a whole other problem.’
According to Robinson, the explosion in data visualisations, infographics and mash-ups has produced a number of ill-informed, badly designed and even misleading representations. With certain datasets, this could have serious ramifications. ’With any data you can always do something, but a visualisation isn’t necessarily accurate, helpful and good,’ he says. ’Data doesn’t always paint the whole picture; you have to look at why a particular figure might stand out. Having spent years trying to get people to use graphics in journalism I’m now faced with this wash of stuff that’s not good. And if people just produce stuff that’s visually impressive but not good, it will eventually hit back on graphics.’
But there’s no doubt that data can be aesthetic too. Eric Fischer is a computer programmer from California who used Flickr geotagging data to map the volume of photographs taken around major cities worldwide. The result is the Geotaggers’ World Atlas. ’I made the maps because the photo locations seemed like a great source of information about what places in the world people find most interesting,’ says Fischer.
A second series of the Geotaggers’ World Atlas attempts to reveal the differences between locals’ and tourists’ photographs of each city. Comprised solely of coloured data points on a map, when scaled down these images are a visual treat. But they also paint an immediate picture of behaviour, engaging in both content and form.
And as the range and complexity of datasets grow, this is a trick graphic and interactive representations have to pull off - providing engaging and useful access to information without misleading or skewing the truth behind the numbers. Information designers with considerable skill and responsibility will be in demand.
This article was written for Design Week, 8 July 2010.
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June 30th, 2010
In many ways, design’s star is rising.
Its strategic relationship with business continues to improve and its profile in the media and among the public appears higher than ever. As mass-market advertising flounders, design is inching its way into business structures and boardroom psyches, with major companies now regularly talking about the power of ‘design-led thinking’.
Projects such as the launch of London 2012 mascots Wenlock and Mandeville have sparked debates about design in the national press. Even mainstream TV is interested: in recent months there have been several design-related shows, including the BBC’s The Genius of Design and High Street Dreams, an episode of which featured the input of design agencies Pearlfisher and Blue Marlin.
The very notion of ‘design thinking’ is itself a leap forward because it shifts conceptions of the discipline from something that produces solely a tangible output - a pack, for example - to something that is an approach, a structured thought process that can be applied to many and varied issues. Design groups are keen to promote this strategic clever thinking because it helps them move up the client food chain, earning meatier projects with bigger budgets and a higher value.
Mixed outlook
On paper, the future may look rosy, but in the real world things aren’t so easy. As this year’s league tables reveal, 2009 was tough, with fee income falling significantly for many. ‘There is no doubt that the past 12 months have been an extremely challenging and pretty bloody experience,’ says Andrew Eyles, group managing director of Blue Marlin.
Last year was characterised by the postponement of projects, as clients waited to see when, or whether, the economy would start to recover. Top agency Imagination was one of many to suffer a double-digit fall in fee income and, while agencies of all sizes have been squeezed, those toward the bottom of the table seem to have been hit hard.
Some of that pressure will remain in the year ahead and agencies working for the public sector are bracing themselves for severe spending cuts. The good news, however, is that many private businesses have ended their freeze on investment, allowing NPD and innovation to continue and putting more briefs into the market.
Guy Douglass, managing director of packaging design agency FLB, agrees that things can only get better. ‘(Last year) was really tricky. We only just made a profit, and business and cash flow were difficult,’ he says. ‘But this year is looking positive. There’s lots of work out there, both from existing clients and new business.’
Continued investment during a recession can help brands appear strong. Argos’ brand identity work with The Brand Union, for example, is intended to position the retailer as fit for the future. ‘Customers told us that they want a brand that feels relevant and is well equipped to stay relevant,’ says Siobhan Fitzpatrick, head of brand marketing for Argos.
Research found that customers had a desire to see Argos investing in itself. ‘It sent the right signals out at a time when companies like Woolworths were all closing,’ adds Brand Union UK chief executive Simon Bailey.
Retail spending has just about held up, too, which is good news for those working in FMCG packaging, branding and retail design. ‘The market is still robust enough for consumers to pay for a good quality service,’ says Michael Sheridan, chairman of luxury retail brand consultancy Sheridan & Co, which works with Absolut and World of Whiskies. ‘The value of the pound is also a big factor. Visitors are coming to the UK not just because it’s 50% cheaper than it was in 2008, but because we have a very good shopping experience.’
As Media Square design chairman David Worthington notes, those who stand still in FMCG die. ‘Big brand-owners are very clear on the need for constant innovation, preferring steady and continuous growth, rather than peaks and troughs. Irrespective of recessions, they tend to cut a more consistent path by remaining committed to a product development cycle,’ he says.
Bakery brand Warburtons is a good example of this relentless focus on product development. New business director Jason Uttley says this is what customers are looking for. The company entered the snack-foods sector in March with the launch of ChippidyDooDa pitta chips and SnackaDoodle wholegrain snacks. The brand extension was developed with Anthem Worldwide.
Beyond the shelf
Although FMCG work has remained steady, some of the rules are changing. In particular, brands and design agencies must now think beyond achieving shelf standout, argues Nick Dormon, managing director of Echo Brand Design.
‘Standout is now the baseline - if you don’t stand out, you don’t survive,’ he says. ‘At the same time, supply-chain savings and sustainability programmes have meant the loss of physical presence on shelf as packaging becomes smaller and more lightweight. So it’s about the whole experience. You pick up a product in store, feel it, read it, take it home and use it, put it on a shelf, see it, use it then eventually dispose of it. All these moments are an opportunity to engage with people.’
Norwegian mineral water brand Isklar circles this brand experience with a uniquely engineered bottle design, by Blue Marlin, creating differentiation on shelf but also reducing its use of materials. The brand-product ‘loop’ is then closed by the company’s sustainability efforts, which include full carbon-neutral certification, use of hydroelectric power for its bottling plant and investment in high-end recycling facilities. Each aspect is consistent with notions of purity and nature.
The implications of last year’s precipitous fall in business are still playing out. Although work has picked up, the sector remains fragmented and competitive. In a procurement-driven environment, business has become harder to win and sustain. Dick Powell, incoming D&AD chairman and director of Seymourpowell, believes these pressures are leading to more instances of free pitching and the continued erosion of margins. ‘They are trying to cut the fat out of the design agencies, but there is no fat there,’ he says.
His sentiment is echoed by Eyles, who adds: ‘We are all having to work a lot harder and give a lot more. Some groups have gone for volume and are churning stuff out just to keep the lights running, while other groups have got smaller, leaner and more specialist.’
The pressure is on, then, for agencies to reinvent their businesses. Some are looking to overseas markets for revenue, particularly in the fast-growing BRIC nations. Sheridan & Co, for example, is finding its clients buying strategic and creative ideas to use overseas. As an industry, maintaining revenues from emerging markets requires British design to retain its reputation as a global leader.
Overall, Eyles concludes that the design industry emerging from the recession could look very different from the one that went into it. ‘Design output has to be married to effective strategy and consultancy,’ he says. ‘Often we may not even do any design. It’s now all about the brand - a seamless service of look, feel, tone and qualities. Some clients welcome deep strategic work, others protect their right to control it, but I’m optimistic that design can sit at the heart of this, working from strategy and concept to 2D and 3D output. The squeeze on fees now will just make the industry leaner, more credible and more professional and then the value of its work will come back in.’
THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE
As advertisers increase their focus on dialogue with - and between - customers, they are recognising the significance of the whole experience that people have with their brands, from the moment they first see a pack, ad, piece of copy or web page, through to disposal of a product or their interaction with customer service if they have a problem.
The communications environment is rich, complex and rapidly shifting and brands need help to manage these numerous ‘touchpoints’. Ad agencies, design groups and even some digital groups are vying to lead this work. Yet, whoever oversees the process, collaboration between agencies is more necessary than ever.
‘The landscape has become more complex for clients with many different agencies working for them - advertising, branding, sponsorship, interaction, social media, digital and so on,’ says Simon Bailey, UK chief executive at The Brand Union. ‘To have a partner who has helped create the brand itself working to manage all these groups can be very useful for clients.’
The Brand Union adopted this role for Barclaycard, where branding output spanned corporate identity, advertising, direct marketing, digital media, internal engagement, environments, literature, packaging, point of sale, exhibitions and sponsorship. The list of contributing agencies (Bartle Bogle Hegarty, EHS Brann, Balloon Dog, Dare and Vital Marketing) demonstrates how collaboration and oversight are essential in maintaining consistency in a complex, multichannel environment.
This article was written for Marketing’s Design Agency Leagues 2010 publication, 30 June 2010.
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June 29th, 2010
Big business is entering a new phase in its efforts to become more sustainable. Declamations from the likes of Nike, Puma and Marks & Spencer speak of sustainability being embedded in their cultures, operationally and philosophically.
In the words of a Nike announcement earlier this year, this phase ushers in ‘the next evolution of corporate responsibility strategy [moving] from a risk management, philanthropic and compliance model to a long-term strategy focused on innovation, collaboration, transparency and advocacy.’ In others words, it’s deeper and more serious.
At the same time, consumer-facing brands are flexing and moulding in order to wear the clothes of corporate social responsibility a little more naturally. Recent years have seen a clamour of eco-ethical communications thrown around and on top of familiar brands, decorating them in green, planet-friendly imagery. It felt, in many cases, a bit too convenient and reactive and admonishments of green-washing quickly followed.
‘I think a new theme is happening with corporate sustainability and brands,’ says Dorothy MacKenzie, director of branding consultancy Dragon Rouge. ‘We’re going from something set apart from the brand, or based around token activities, to something that’s embedded in it. The only way of embedding sustainability principles and actions and avoid green-washing is to take it right inside the company.’
Until recently, only pioneer ethical brands really adhered to root and branch sustainable business practice, but it is moving into the mainstream. As MacKenzie notes, once a business as large as Walmart begins to rethink its supply chain, it’s pretty hard to ignore. Partly this is a result of public expectation and the ideological pressure of the day, but mostly it’s about ensuring that a business can thrive, remain profitable and exist in the future.
‘There’s a triangulation of issues within a business for any potential initiative: Do consumers like it more? Is it greener? Is it cheaper? If the answer to all three is yes then you’ll get a green light,’ says Silas Amos, creative director at packaging consultancy Jones Knowles Ritchie. And as MacKenzie adds, it’s no good if you run out of raw materials or if they become too expensive, so care for the environment ultimately makes business sense as well as moral sense. Marks & Spencer, for example, claims its wide-ranging Plan A programme has become ‘cost-positive’, saving £50m in efficiencies during 2009/10.
Designers have an important role to play too. Shell’s work with packaging group Blue Marlin increased manufacturing efficiencies and reduced pack formats to cut plastic use by 9 per cent, equivalent to taking 45 million one-litre bottles out of the system annually. Coca-Cola’s colour management work with Anthem Worldwide rationalised colours globally to reduce printing materials and costs. And Puma’s two-year collaboration with designer Yves Béhar created a fully recycled and ‘boxless’ shoe packaging system that slashes paper consumption by 65 per cent and carbon emissions by 10,000 tons annually.
Seeking efficiencies is just everyday good business practice, but the value it now offers in terms of public relations gives renewed impetus to finding better ways of doing things. And consumer brands need to embody this ethos in a believable, genuine and natural way, not just repainted with an ethical overlay. ‘Whatever you’re saying on sustainability it has to be in the brand’s language, coming from the mouth of the brand,’ argues Jonathan Davies, director of packaging consultancy Butterfly Cannon.
MacKenzie believes that corporate shifts are being woven into brand activity ‘much more naturally and less self-consciously’ than previously, resulting in more creative, coherent branding. ‘An awful lot of communication around this area has been quite dull; one of the benefits of bringing sustainability right into the brand is that you can get better communication and design.’
Unilever, for example, is using sustainability as a driver for company-wide innovation and growth, but this filters down to products individually. So a tongue in cheek campaign for its US men’s toiletries range Axe promotes the ecological virtues of ‘shower pooling’ in a way that is part and parcel of the brand (depicting one man sharing a shower with lots of women, naturally).
So from a branding and business point of view sustainability can be viewed as an opportunity. But from an environmental point of view such changes are arguably just tweaks to the system of mass consumption, not a fundamental shift in the way we live. Global manufacturing businesses and markets will not change comprehensively overnight. ‘Many things are structured in a way that will change over time, but it will be a very long time,’ notes MacKenzie.
Puma’s chief marketing officer Antonio Bertone admits that the company’s global supply chain could not be radically altered for sustainability concerns. ‘The supply chain is the lifeblood of the company and you can’t disrupt that process or it would take years to get to implementation and the cost would go back to the consumer. So our new packaging still had to behave like a shoebox,’ he says.
And there’s the rub. Change is happening, but it will happen slowly. Even Shells acknowledges that by 2050 global CO2 emissions must fall by at least 50 per cent, yet energy demand is expected to double. For all the good intentions, could it be too little, too late?
This article was written for Design Week’s Sustainable Design Supplement, June 2010.
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May 29th, 2010
In a world where corporate bad behaviour crackles like wildfire around the web and big business is often deemed socially and environmentally careless, it has become vitally important for companies to demonstrate corporate responsibility. For design groups, particularly those in corporate communications, this is good news: businesses commission consultancies to help present their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts to various stakeholders, including the public, both in print and online. But how does the design industry itself square up on CSR – is it relevant to design businesses and, if so, what can and should they do?
Design consultancies are mostly small and their social and environmental impact is usually relatively low. As the middlemen in a supply chain with ‘producer’ clients on one side and end users on the other, the major impact of designers’ work seldom comes directly from the studio, but elsewhere in the chain. So designers tend to focus on advising clients on sustainable design processes to help minimise environmental impact and wastage across that chain. According to Design Council research, almost 60 per cent of designers feel either very well or quite well equipped to advise their clients on sustainable design.
But according to Sophie Thomas, founder of sustainable communications group Thomas Matthews, consultancies should have their own houses in order if they are to promote sustainable design to clients. ‘For me the issue about CSR is that a lot of designers are promoting it but there are very few who know what to do in terms of managing their own studios because there are so many inputs and outputs. You see places with four water coolers, using bad couriers and putting loads of paper through the photocopier, for example, and these are the things that are easy to fix. Our main outputs are paper and digital, so this is where our main impact is. We should be looking at our supply chains, where we procure our materials, what materials we use and so on. If you’re not doing this for your studio you can’t do it properly for your clients. Designers aren’t thinking holistically like they should be; they are being reactive to clients,’ claims Thomas.
Whilst Thomas Mattthews was founded twelve years ago on principles of ‘systemic sustainability’, few other groups are quite so squeaky green. ‘I don’t want to generalise too much, but I suspect the overall picture is that the industry isn’t doing a huge amount; SMEs in general often don’t see it as relevant,’ says Nigel Salter, director of communications consultancy Salterbaxter. ‘But then many consultancies have a lot of restraints: they are often in rented buildings and can’t control energy and water supplies, for example. A lot of groups will still just be doing the absolute basics – 10 year old schoolboy things like turning computers off. ’
With its push for greater diversity in the design industry (a major social issue for Salter), membership of the United Nations Global Compact ethical commitment (see links below), a community-based programme of employee development and a careful monitoring of its environmental footprint, Salterbaxter is pretty progressive on CSR. It also publishes the results of its various measures and targets online.
‘As a business, a number of our key performance indicators are CR-related,’ adds Salter. ‘It’s not actually that complicated to measure and monitor your impact in different areas, but I don’t think small, ten-person groups should be measuring how much water they use in cups of tea and reporting that sort of thing. If a design business’ impact is low it may be better to get involved in bigger campaigns such as [the energy reduction initiative] 10:10, whilst also trying to influence the supply chain.’
So what might motivate a design business to consider its ‘corporate citizenship’? Is the case for CSR based on conscience or hard-headed business sense? WPP has been reporting its group-wide CSR programme for eight years after clients started demanding more information about its practices. According to WPP head of corporate responsibility Vanessa Edwards, WPP is the only marketing services network to produce a dedicated CSR report, but this is ‘not about doing good, it’s about managing risk to the business,’ she says. Salter agrees: ‘You don’t often hear people say this, but CSR is about the business. If you talk to CEOs about their CSR initiatives they will say that it means improving effectiveness, profitability and long-term sustainability of the business – it’s self-interest.’
WPP businesses are able to draw on CSR policies and guidelines created by the holding company, while independent design groups may have to create their own. ‘I think a lot of people feel they should be doing something, but they are not quite sure what,’ says James Brock, client director at WPP-owned corporate communications specialist Addison. ‘You need to ask what might be a useful set of policies and initiatives that will not impede your business and will be appropriate to you and your clients. I think consultancies need to make a response that is proportionate and relevant to the size and type of business they are running. CSR is often a blend of lofty ideals and some slightly more base ones, but it is motivated by a genuine desire to improve.’
Looking ahead, for design groups which haven’t yet considered their CSR position some converging factors might make it unavoidable. Tighter regulations or taxes around energy and resource usage look likely, some obligating large corporations initially, but rippling down through the supply chain too; procurement teams are demanding certain standards from their design suppliers and clients and investors generally are asking more CSR-related questions. At the same time, guidelines on sustainable design may be in the offing following a consultation between the Design Council, the Department for Business Innovation & Skills and BSI.
For Thomas, such guidelines have the potential to expand into an accreditation of a design business’ environmental and social responsibility, as well as its sustainable design expertise. ‘If I were a client I would want some statistics and info to back up the advice being given to me by designers,’ she says. ‘Consumers go looking for external accreditation of brands, products and services because they need something from an external marking system. As a design group we should be able to offer the same to clients.’
This article was written for Design Week’s Top 100 Consultancy Survey, May 2010.
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April 26th, 2010
What does sustainability mean to you? In recent years the term’s currency has increased significantly, with a growing list of ideas, principles and initiatives being pulled together under its umbrella.
Sustainability is about carbon, energy, materials, resources, processes and ecology; but it is also to do with ethics, contracts, responsibility, fairness and localness.
Yet, alongside all these aspects, it is also about marketing and design, because businesses want to talk about sustainability and people want to see it in practice.
One of the most public battlegrounds over claims of unsustainable processes centres on waste and, specifically, on product packaging. UK households throw away almost 6m tonnes of packaging in their waste every year, according to WRAP, an organisation that campaigns for waste reduction and efficient use of sustainable resources.
Packaging provides direct communication between producer and consumer: it is through packaging initiatives and on-pack graphics that brands look to demonstrate their sustainability credentials. This has led to a profusion of messages: carbon-footprint data, recyclability, eco-friendly materials (or, at least, materials that appear so), size and weight reductions, refill pouches, green branding and then, for some, subsequent allegations of ‘greenwashing’.
Designers and marketers talk a good fight when it comes to saving the planet, but whether this noise means anything to consumers is another matter. The findings of a survey by the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment suggest consumers are ambivalent about packaging. ‘They are aware that some packaging is wasteful… [but] they are also aware that packaging plays an important role in advertising, informing, enhancing and protecting. While wanting to reduce waste, consumers are at the same time attracted by luxurious packaging and often choose packaged goods over loose items,’ states the report.
What people say they want and what they do may not always tally. With its Eco Refill pouch, coffee brand Kenco impressively states that its packaging weight is reduced by 97%, but do people want an eco-pouch? ‘Sustainability is a hot topic for consumers, but for most it’s not one on which they base their final choice,’ says Silas Amos, creative director of packaging design group Jones Knowles Ritchie (JKR). ‘I hope Kenco does very well, but I fear that consumers may be apathetic toward it.’
These contradictions may stem partly from a lack of certainty on questions of sustainability. ‘Like so many messages on sustainability and the environment - not just in packaging, but everywhere - clarity has not really come through yet,’ says Laura Haynes, chairman of branding agency Appetite, and founder of Zero: Low Carbon Communications. ‘But consumers come in all shapes and sizes, from those who are very aware and informed to those who are unaware, or even apathetic.’
Several brands have been tarnished by accusations of ‘greenwashing’ over the past couple of years. In fact, changes made to the Committee of Advertising Practice codes, with more set to come into force in September, aim to reduce exaggerated environmental claims. Although enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority, the effects of these rules are likely to filter down to packaging design, too. So are consumers sceptical of brands’ efforts?
‘Everybody’s thinking about how they can be nicer - it helps in terms of costs and production and gives you a marketing feelgood factor, but you have to do it in a way that’s honest,’ says Antonio Bertone, chief marketing officer for sportswear brand Puma, which has just announced a major sustainable packaging initiative.
A lot of what passes for environmentally conscious initiatives, and is presented as such on packs, is, in reality, simply good design and manufacturing practice. Clients and designers have always strived for efficiency, elegance and cost savings on materials and energy. JKR’s work with organic skincare business Spiezia, for example, saved the client 12% in packaging costs and the structural design reduced breakages to almost zero, according to the brand’s managing director, Amanda Barlow.
In a similar case, design group Identica suggested that adjusting the ’shoulder’ angle of the bottles used for Pernod Ricard’s digestif Ramazzotti could reduce the energy and materials used in production, without changing its distinctive shape. According to Identica chief executive Franco Bonadio, this saved the client 20% in raw materials costs. Working with JKR, Stella Artois and Young’s ale have also ‘lightweighted’ their bottles.
Yet according to WRAP, research from Container Lite - a major study into lightweight glass packaging - found that shoppers struggle to detect a 5%-10% difference in glass container weight, even when they are aware of it; in uncued tests, weight differences of up to 40% in empty containers and 20% in full containers went unnoticed. In any case, the research notes that consumers very rarely compare product weights in the supermarket.
So, if companies want to use sustainability as a form of brand differentiation in stores, their initiatives often have to be elucidated on pack, which can lead to a clamour of ‘me-too’ messages.
‘When do you put a green message on a pack and when don’t you?’ asks Bonadio. ‘First it can be a point of difference, but there comes a point when everybody is doing it and people expect it anyway. At the moment, we are going through a transition point.’
This transition has created a hubbub of activity. Brands are changing materials and graphic design language, using third-party certifications such as Fairtrade, Soil Association, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Carbon Trust, and generally grappling with a complex and multifarious set of issues, processes and messages.
Increasingly, consumers expect to see sustainability efforts from the brands they buy, but even then, the consumer position appears to be mixed and sometimes contradictory.
‘People are not going to applaud you for (your efforts in) sustainability because they are slightly aghast that you haven’t been doing it all along,’ says Amos. ‘The best packaging and brands are those that don’t decide that CSR is a ghetto and they communicate it all in a more stylish way. Stella Artois’s recent “Recyclage de Luxe” campaign, for example, was much more fun and stylish than worthy, while Ecover is the old days - it’s all CSR and no style, and it has been leapfrogged.’
Graphically speaking, there is an onus on designers and clients to formulate a clear and considered hierarchy of messages, says Mark Frost, creative director of packaging group BrandMe. ‘There doesn’t always have to be a big flash on the front. You’ve got to get a balance of what should be on pack, while remaining transparent with your messages. There are so many messages we are trying to communicate now that it’s a very difficult task,’ he adds.
Yet these are important messages that still need to be delivered, despite the challenges and possible confusion. ‘I think you should communicate what you’re doing,’ says Haynes. ‘First, it raises the conversation, which in essence is important. Second, it creates greater understanding of the right things to be done. Third, over time, companies may well be required to talk about what they do as a kind of checklist of initiatives.’
As Frost puts it: ‘Lots of things are not perfect, but it’s better than doing nothing.’
This article was written for Marketing, 21 April 2010.
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March 3rd, 2010
“I have a particular beef with the notion of authorship,” says Bob Baxter, one of the founding directors of London-based design consultancy At Large.
It is a preoccupation that seems to underpin the consultancy’s approach to exhibition design work, perhaps with good reason: for people who are wary of designers – those who fear a creative prima donna figure, intent on stamping a singular vision over a project – Baxter’s is an allaying reassurance.
“Authorship doesn’t come into it because you’re dealing with all sorts of creative inputs,” he says. “It’s not even art directing because we’re not necessarily focusing people on what we want; it’s a collaborative endeavour. If you’re working together as a group of people the excitement is when you find something, not when you create something, but when you find it – it just jumps out.”
Having already worked together in various configurations over the years, the group’s three founders – Baxter, plus architects Ned Phillips and Helen Abadie – came together on projects for the Millennium Dome in London in the 1990s. While few involved with the Dome recall the experience fondly, for Abadie, Baxter and Phillips it forged a unit and working method that seemed too fruitful to relinquish.
“We put together [the Dome’s Money Zone] with a very tight but incredibly talented team. For me, it was not wanting to let go of this really good working practice that had established itself, this natural combination of skills,” recalls Baxter.
This working practice has served them well so far, helping the consultancy build a portfolio that includes the Holocaust Gallery at the Imperial War Museum in London, giant educational plants and insects at the Climbers & Creepers play area in Kew Gardens in London, and the British Museum’s Lost Tomb-chapel of Nebamun gallery.
On the eve of the group’s 10th anniversary, At Large has just finished what is arguably its most high-profile project to date, the Natural History Museum’s (NHM) Darwin Centre exhibition, which opened in September last year. As with many major museum projects, the Darwin Centre is the outward manifestation of cultural and institutional change; in this case, it is NHM’s desire to illuminate its role as an important scientific hothouse, as well as every kid’s favourite dinosaur haunt. To this end, the contents of the Darwin Centre’s beguiling “cocoon” structure provide a publicly visible union of exhibitions and scientific study.
What stands out in the Darwin Centre exhibition is precisely what “jumped out” in At Large’s consultation with the museum’s staff – namely, that the best people to talk about the work of NHM’s scientists are the scientists themselves. As a result, visitors are guided through the linear, spiralling exhibition by four NHM scientists, liberated from their labs via a series of video presentations.
“When we started they spoke only of scientists and their expertise and their collections. But they also wanted it to be personal – they wanted people to get involved with the work of the museum as a scientific institution,” says Baxter. “So we said ‘let’s stop talking about them as scientists for a moment, let’s talk about us all being curious about the world’. And we built the exhibition around this notion of curiosity. It became clear that the scientists’ excitement about the research and their advocacy of the scientific method, which is what the Darwin Centre is really all about, could perhaps be communicated directly to the public. The design challenge then lay in making the link between the scientists and the public as direct as possible.”
A similar search for the voice of the exhibition informed a much smaller project, the Household Cavalry Museum in Whitehall, London. Better known as the Horse Guards, the Household Cavalry has guarded the main entrance to the royal residences and provided protection for queens and kings for more than 300 years. Along the way, it has collected an array of objects, treasures, achievements and stories. But unlike most museum collections, these objects were never the subject of academic inquiry. Rather than being studied and interpreted by curators, the cavalry’s collection was merely “kept” in Windsor by volunteer soldiers and ex-soldiers. Inevitably, this raised questions of how to exhibit and interpret the material for the public.
“This is the oldest British regiment and it has an extraordinary quality in the relationship between the officers and men that’s really so strong – they all feel it. Squaddies and officers are all talking about the same thing. They talk about ‘our’ regiment. So it was fascinating to try and tap in to that,” says Baxter.
To present this sense of belonging, the exhibition’s text – its narrative – is written in the first person as a series of stories and observations told, or retold, by the same soldiers who are working in the stables behind a wall of glass. This approach to the text, along with the fact that the building is the cavalry’s home, helps to personalise the otherwise rather disparate exhibits.
“If you took those objects and put them in a temporary show in the V&A [Victoria & Albert Museum, London] or somewhere else, it would be different again,” says Phillips. “That’s their home, and one of the ‘exhibits’ is looking through the window and in to the horses. It’s a real place, it’s happening there, just like the scientists in the Darwin Centre labs. The people who are telling you this story, you’ve just seen them outside.”
Unlocking the stories in museum collections – and finding a perspective for an exhibition – requires an open, collaborative approach, Baxter says. In this way, At Large is more facilitator or producer than creative auteur. “If we’re talking about what sits behind our work, the key driver is probably in working with people to find the purpose of what they’re trying to do, the vision for their project,” says Baxter. “And once you’ve got it, you have to test it in all kinds of ways. Then it’s really important that everyone hears the same thing together so you’re building something consistent, because as the project changes – and these things are three or four years [long], with huge changes – what is it you’re going to hang on to? What is your measure of success at the end of it? Our job is to reflect that back all the time, to say ‘remember three years ago when we were talking about this, this is what we came up with and this is what we’ve still got’.”
In developing an exhibition space, it’s important to plan to scale and “in physical proximity and association, see the real material scaled in relation to each other,” adds Baxter.
More broadly, the group approaches exhibition design and development by taking a view of the “entire visit”, starting before a potential visitor has even contemplated walking through the door and continuing after they have returned home. This demands a very clear idea of what the museum is all about. Partly, a “design” process helps clarify that role for individual institutions, but it’s also a question that all museums are repeatedly asking. Are museum exhibitions about entertainment, learning, stories, collecting, or, increasingly, social interaction?
“I sense that museums are more certain about their role and purpose these days. Going back 15 or 20 years museums lost their direction and started to look to other models like entertainment. Everyone used to go off to the States and look at other things from a visitor management point of view and experience point of view – Disney and all kinds of things were used as models,” says Baxter. “It’s a long time since I’ve heard the remark that people get up on a Saturday morning and decide whether to go to Thorpe Park [theme park] or the British Museum. That was said a lot 20 years ago and you never hear it anymore, which implies that museums are more confident in their offer and how they are perceived.”
This renewed confidence seems to have come largely from a conviction that museums are places for learning. “Everyone seems to be much more relaxed now about going to a museum because it’s a learning experience. And there’s been a broadening of what learning might mean,” says Baxter. “It’s something that we’re trying to work through, the expectation people bring with them to museums, the reason that you decide to go in the first place. You go to learn something. Even the notion of it being a fun learning experience has started to mature in a lot of museums. People are less anxious about it being seen as fun. There’s less emphasis on things like immersive environments; we’re not asked for those very often now.”
For the the permanent London, Sugar & Slavery gallery at the Museum of London Docklands, confidence in the museum as a place of serious learning and discussion was crucial in reaching out to new audiences and giving treatment to a sensitive and emotive subject. Working with At Large “way beyond the confines of a curatorial department”, the Museum of London Docklands used community advisers to talk to black and ethnic minority groups to create an “authoritative support for exploring really difficult things, way beyond entertainment”. The space itself is developed as part gallery, part workshop and part multimedia presentation, with a simple son et lumière show taking over the environment every 20 minutes.
Increasingly, At Large considers the adaptability of an exhibition space for ongoing activities and interactions. In all the projects mentioned here, there are some points in the galleries that are specifically designed to allow interpreters to move in quickly and easily, as well as areas for equipment to be added and removed. “We’re increasingly finding aspirations to allow semi-formal events to happen and chance encounters to take place,” says Phillips. “It’s interesting that real physical spaces, with real things in them, encounters with objects, are still immensely powerful in a world where you can now have all kinds of encounters with perhaps much larger groups of people with much wider ranges of opinion. But that real place with other people is still incredibly potent as an experience.”
This article was written for Museum Practice, Spring 2010 (Issue 49)
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December 18th, 2009
Shaping the future of design networks
– report from a Design Council event, 11 December 2009
Within the last ten years, regional design networks have emerged over much of the UK, adopting a wide range of shapes and sizes. Some are county-wide, such as Design Leicestershire, while others are more locally focused, like Creative Sheffield. Of these two examples, Design Leicestershire focuses on design specifically, whilst Creative Sheffield takes on a wider city development remit. Larger networks span multiple counties and act as umbrella bodies for smaller groupings: the South West Design Forum (SWDF) is a good example of this approach. There are also networks representing Wales (Design Wales) and Ireland (Design Business Ireland).
A quick review of the Design Council’s map and list of regions and their associated forums shows that some areas are well served by design networks and others have less activity. Add to this list the four main national design industry bodies – British Design Innovation, the Chartered Society of Designers, D&AD and the Design Business Association – as well as the Design Council itself, and it’s clear that there is a complex and sometimes confusing landscape of bodies, offering a range of services which sometimes overlap.
To review this landscape and to ask why we need networks, what we have already and how they can be made stronger, the Design Council last week hosted a day-long conference featuring an unprecedented gathering of people from the national bodies, regional networks, regional development agencies (RDAs), universities and county and district councils. Different perspectives and experiences were raised, along with questions about the future for collaboration, funding and the purpose of regional networks and national membership bodies.
What do design networks provide?
Representatives from both national bodies and regional networks outlined the activities and services that they provide, which include:
· Training
· Education
· Seminars and conferences
· Links and matchmaking between design, business, universities and the public sector
· Knowledge transfer partnerships
· Advice, support and good practice guides and documentation
· Professional networking opportunities
These are the typical services offered by both national and regional bodies, so why have both? Many regional networks have grown from a perceived need to unify and promote design in those regions in a way that the national organisations have not been able to. Fuelled in many cases by economic development funding from the RDAs, such networks offer a way of maintaining local contact and relevance whilst allowing their design members to punch with greater weight.
Despite their disparate nature, all the networks share a common belief in the economic value of design and its power to innovate, improve and solve business and social challenges. Promoting this value to industry and government is the focus of many of the activities of both the national and regional design networks.
Why do we need design networks?
As well as providing links and matchmaking to businesses, design-led economic forums can also hook up with manufacturers and university research departments to create mutually supporting innovation programmes.
Networks can help designers share experience and resources and promote their services more effectively to businesses both inside and outside the region. With more designers working independently (the number of freelancers has grown by nearly 40 per cent in the last five years, according to Design Council research), networks fit with changing work patterns too, acting as social and professional hubs. ‘We’re already seeing different ways of working and we may see a greater concentration of remote, regional workforces who are connected by forums,’ said Barry Jenkins, deputy chair of the South Coast Design Forum.
According to Stuart McFarlane, sector manager for digital and new media industries at RDA Yorkshire Forward, networks are a vital resource for creative businesses. ‘Designers are businesses whether they like it or not and must start being creative entrepreneurs. Networks are an absolutely key business support tool.’
Should the national and regional networks collaborate?
It was felt that a combination of national weight and local reach could be harnessed to better promote design across the country, with potential efficiencies and cost-savings along the way. While the national organisations have more clout and greater membership revenues, the regional networks offer local relevance to their members and could provide a ‘grassroots’ voice directly to a national body such as the Design Council, suggested Design Leicestershire project manager Kate Beresford.
DBA chief executive Deborah Dawton is keen on collaboration, saying: ‘I think there’s been a shift out there and there needs to be a generosity of spirit; we need to work together, to adapt things for the locality of where you’re working.’
Greater collaboration between regional and national bodies could give a more unified voice for lobbying government, on areas such as procurement policy, for example. ‘I think there needs to be some sewing up between the national and regional bodies so that you get a real lobbying membership and you might then be able to decide whose is the lobbying voice,’ suggested Emma Cheshire, head of industry development for Screen Yorkshire. SWDF chair Roger Proctor agreed: ‘We really have to work together. We have to make it really simple for government so we can lead them toward what we want to do.’
Neil Tinson, chair of the Cornwall Design Forum, asked if we even need four national bodies – should they merge to reduce duplication? They say not. There are too many different sectors in design and one huge organisation would be unwieldy, leading to further breakaways, according to BDI chief executive Maxine Horn. Frank Peters, chief executive of the CSD, agreed, saying: ‘We have 30,000 members, 39 areas of practice, in 34 different countries – every one with different ideas of what you should do. It would be an incredibly difficult thing to combine all the organisations. We have to gain professional recognition, it doesn’t really matter who you belong to – it’s about professional status.’ Peters also clarified that the CSD is not a membership body ‘seeking to compete with other groups based on services offered’, but a professional body to study, promote and support the practice of design.
What are the major issues facing design networks?
Uncertainty of funding streams is a cause of concern for many regional networks. Money typically comes in small amounts from different stakeholders and ‘pots’ and managing this can be time-consuming and inefficient, suggested Roger Proctor at SWDF. ‘We do this because we are passionate about the benefits of design, the economic benefits, the social benefits. But there are a hell of a lot of people between us and the source of the money we receive, so most of my time is not about value to the industry but spent [working with funding].’
With a change of government seeming likely and the future of the RDAs looking uncertain, must networks become self-financing and sustainable, as suggested by Vanessa Brady, president of the Society of British Interior Design, and Roger Proctor at SWDF? Events-based organisation Designer Breakfasts is already self-financing. Co-founder Amanda Tatham said that because Designer Breakfasts has no funding support, they must think entrepreneurially, developing revenue through partnerships and sponsorships.
Other issues facing design networks include a lack of shared vision, apathy toward engagement and, according to DBA chief executive Deborah Dawton, ‘not thinking big enough’ when it comes to ideas to promote the industry. There’s also the affect of policy on funding streams: ‘There’s a central government policy document which dictates how the RDAs can work. If you want to be heard you will have to work to that policy,’ noted Stuart McFarlane at Yorkshire Forward.
The future of design networks
The Design Council event was regarded as a positive and inclusive step in bringing together regional forums and national bodies. Further similar meetings were desired, particularly by regional representatives. But objectives need to be clear, said Gavin Cawood, operations director at Design Wales. ‘If this group wanted to carry on and get together again it would have to find reasons to do so, to go beyond the show and tell type thing of today.’
SDWF member Kathryn Hughes suggested that future events could include ‘facilitated working sessions’ where the national bodies discuss ‘what collaboration actually means and what it offers to working design practitioners’. Amanda Tatham of Designer Breakfasts proposed a centralised point of communication. ‘We’re doing all sorts of things in isolation, but I think it would be really good to bring all these things together in one place, where the people here could all contribute, and see what comes out of it.’
Design Council chief executive David Kester summed up with a series of questions pointing to the future. ‘There are all sorts of extraordinary networks across the UK doing a wide range of work – a whole ecosystem to promote design. But is there a missing piece? And if so, what can we do? What can the Design Council do? What can all of us here do? As Gavin Cawood said, if you bring people together once it is quite interesting; twice you get a bit more out of it and then the third time you ask why you’re doing it. Is there something more that we can do in the UK, not just for designers, but for Britain as a whole, that comes from us working together in a collaborative way. If there is, if it’s feasible, what shape should it take?’
What next? – Thoughts from the delegates
‘I think there should be a meeting between all of us, including the national organisations, to work out what we really mean by collaboration. It’s the role of the strategic body – the Design Council – to get us round a table and facilitate discussions about what collaboration could mean. In terms of funding, I don’t think there is going to be very much, so we are planning to build up revenue from our own assets, such as our high-profile directors, events, our newsletter and website and so on. I’m working on a model to do this and I am happy to share this with others. The national bodies can probably help as they are already self-supporting; the regions need the same financial stability, independence and sustainability.’ – Peter Spence, director, South Coast Design Forum
‘Regional design networks would benefit from opportunities to communicate with each other and share experiences. I believe that the Design Council is in an excellent position to facilitate such an exchange of information. The regional networks could also provide a route to grassroots opinion through their membership. This is not to suggest that the Design Council would become a representative voice of design practices – I know that is not its role – but it could enable the Design Council to develop strategies and initiatives that are better informed by the design sector.’ – Kate Beresford, project manager, Design Leicestershire
‘I thought that the biggest potential benefit that came out of the day – and also the biggest potential headache – was the idea of ‘open-sourcing’. We’re duplicating things all over the country. How much time and effort could we save collectively by sharing best practice and learning, by telling people what has worked well and what has failed? Can we adopt a more open source approach, not just to back-end technology, but also as a more general ethos? It would make us look better to our funders because we’re working with different parts of the country and it would be better value too.’ – Morag McClaren, chief executive, a:design association
‘Whilst the [regional] trade bodies can organise their members by networking and promotion, they do not have the resources or expertise to promote design to UK business. This is the remit of the government, in the guise of the Design Council. I understand that the Design Council was called upon to provide some funding for a hub of regional groups and it would be difficult to argue against this proposal. A contribution of £50,000 to each of the 9 UK regions, to be split or awarded on a tendering basis, would only cost the Design Council £450,000 and the rewards would be immense for the regions and the Design Council’s image. If the Design Council wished to see accountability, as they must, they could channel the funding, or part of it, through the key national bodies: DBA, BDI etc representing the trade and CSD, Institution of Engineering Designers etc. representing the profession.’ – Frank Peters, chief executive, Chartered Society of Designers
‘[As networks] we have to go way beyond just getting people together. We have to develop what people want first and then get them to pay for it. The South West Design Forum business plan is very focused around delivering strategic initiatives which can be taken up by the sub-local forums, ultimately encouraging paid membership. I also think we need a national organisation to present a coherent and single-minded message, otherwise government will get confused. I would like to see another meeting set up really soon and I think we should agree on a common strategy and business plan, then take it and partner with the Design Council, which is a good body to distribute resources throughout the country. We need to start doing things, not just keeping talking.’ – Roger Proctor, chair, South West Design Forum
‘Differentiation is very important. Why not carve membership bodies into specific sector remits such as graphics, digital, retail and so on, so there’s no competition? The regional groups should pay to join these to receive funding for local events, not use RDA funding to give services away for free without a sustainable business model. People were also concerned about duplication and reinventing the wheel across the country. BDI has already invested in a structure with a national centre and portals in every region. We are absolutely willing to find a way for people to use our structure and design directories technology in the most efficient way, so don’t reinvent the wheel – it’s already here. But all these things should be built around the needs of the external world – from the point of view of clients, students and business, not self-interest and self-promotion. We also need the voice of in-house designers. This group is now larger than consultancy-based designers and must be incorporated into the discussion.
Finally, we really should be supporting the CSD, not tearing it down, as it is the only professional body for design and should hold the remit for education and professional development. If we lose the CSD and its royal charter it will take years to get anything like that again. The CSD should be as strong for design as RIBA is for architecture.’ – Maxine Horn, chief executive, BDI
‘I wonder if the national bodies are necessarily offering regional businesses value for money in the way that the local bodies are or could, especially [if the local bodies] had access to bigger chunks of direct funding. The national networks however provide a critical broader function within the UK design ecosystem, and our local North East networks benefit from valued strategic support from DBA in particular. This relationship works both ways and enables the national organisations to get immersed in the detail of regional operations without duplicating activity. Fundamentally it comes down to co-ordinating appropriate roles, resposibilities and levels of collaboration across the networks to maximise wider benefit for the sector. But there is likely to be less and less public sector funding for design, so how are we going to collectively plan for this? There needs to be collective agreement when it comes to dissemination of best practice – the whole industry should promote generic guideline documents. There should also be a means for talking with one voice when the industry needs to. It was absolutely clear that this co-ordination of voices and lobbying is one of the functions the Design Council should be fulfilling. The Design Council needs to develop a framework for converging regional needs and voices towards common industry goals and objectives, government facing or otherwise.’ – Ben Strutt, design senior specialist, One North East
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September 11th, 2009
As the seams at Apple’s App Store threaten to burst, the volume of iPhone mobile phone applications continues to soar. Stacks of apps, from both independent developers and big commercial clients, from trivial little games to a major music platform, are lined up and waiting for the green light from Apple so they can enter the store. The apps micro-payment market is booming. For digital designers, this is a coming of age in mobile apps possibilities. The iPhone’s 480×320-pixel screen ‘real estate’ and button-less operation have opened up graphic possibilities and a new level of intuition in interaction design. And with brands starting to see the value of mobile apps to their marketing mix, the opportunities for professional designers are ripe.
The iPhone is certainly not the only touch-screen mobile around (handsets using Google’s Android platform are emerging, and others run on the Symbian platform) and it’s easy to forget just how small the iPhone market really is: O2 says it has sold ‘more than a million’ handsets, but that’s in a mobile market, says Ofcom, of more than 75 million connections. Yet the iPhone is clearly the designer’s favourite. ‘It is ahead of the competition and although at first sight it’s similar to a Google[-powered] phone, it’s quite different to use,’ says Alasdair Scott, director at mobile group The Bright Place, which has developed a series of i-Trump apps based on the original Top Trumps card game.
Of course, mobile apps did not appear with the advent of the iPhone; there are many available for older handsets, mostly using the Java language, but their visual and interaction capabilities are far more constrained. The arrival of larger screens and touchbased interaction means that visual elements are becoming as vital as coding, opening the door for developers to work in collaboration with graphic designers.
‘There’s a real talent to designing with very few pixels - originally we had 32×32-pixel, black-and-white icons. Now things are a little bit easier. The iPhone gives you proper screen real estate and 57×57-pixel icons, so the experience compared to a Java app is very different. And because of the mechanics of how an iPhone app is constructed, you’re looking at the space as one element, in which you can hang different bits. In the old days of the Internet, you had separate elements like pictures, text and headers and they all looked a certain way,’ adds Scott.
As graphic possibilities increase, so does the importance of visual impact. Advertising agency Fallon’s visual identity work for the BBC’s national radio stations was conceived in 2007 with mobile platforms in mind, and has come into its own in BBC Worldwide’s new Radio Times iPhone app, itself a great bit of information design by US group TV Compass.
But ensuring stand out from the crowd is harder than ever. The ‘open’ distribution platform of the App Store has attracted a swathe of independent developers - some hobbyist, and others seeking to making a living - but often without any real training in visual or interaction design. Independent developer Ed Lea acknowledges that without higher quality design, apps are now less likely to be seen. ‘I’ve noticed a huge shift in the Apple Store since it launched last year. Getting applications noticed is now very, very difficult. Working with a designer to create an application that’s both aesthetically pleasing and well thought out certainly wouldn’t harm [its chances of success].’
Having held number one spots in the App Store charts with his MMS and TV Plus apps, Lea brought in illustrator Emma Anderton to create a character for his latest offer, the ‘novelty app’ BoomBot, which reads out text entered into the phone.
But perhaps the biggest shift for professional designers will arrive when corporate clients start to explore the marketing possibilities of mobile apps. ‘They are very much part of the marketing language, converging around websites, widgets and phones,’ says Jon Carney, chief executive of digital and mobile consultancy Marvellous. ‘And there is a branding impact in using apps too - it’s part of a whole move from being a message holder to becoming an enabler. In this way, everyone has a chance to do something interesting.’
This article was written for Design Week’s Interaction Design Supplement, autumn 2009.
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September 9th, 2009
Online social media are where it’s at. Brands know this, corporations know this and of course, so do many museums.
Bundled under the rather opaque term “web 2.0″, a host of online sites and services - coupled with wider access to faster internet connections - has profoundly influenced the way that many people communicate.
Previously unrelated individuals can speak to one another, while larger numbers of people come together to form “web communities”.
At its best, this activity spawns new networks of knowledge - sharing, thinking and inspiration; at worst, it serves up a white noise of banalities. And like all organisations that deal with the public, museums have to navigate a way through this terrain, harnessing its strengths and watching for its pitfalls.
With each new social media phenomenon there is a bubble of hype: first it was Facebook and now it is Twitter. Among the hype it is not always easy to ascertain whether these things are genuinely useful; in the case of Twitter in particular, first appearances are generally discouraging, although further exploration yields riches.
The benefits of such services to museums, and how they might approach using them, are even less clear and a lot of head-scratching and question-posing is currently underway.
This Working Knowledge discusses some of the opportunities and challenges presented by online social media, looking at projects from leading institutions around the world. But before heading into the thick of it, it is worth trying to pin down what web 2.0 actually means.
Really, it is a catch-all term relating to a “generation” of online services that are built around interaction, social networking, sharing and interoperability.
Another, simpler way of looking at it is offered by consultants Lord Cultural Resources, which describes social media sites - such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter - as an extension of “the sharing of experiences once the sole purview of word-of-mouth communication”.
SPREAD THE WORD, VIRTUALLY
As a virtual word of mouth, it is the sharing of ideas, knowledge and experience that underpins web 2.0 services and user behaviour. This behaviour is typically predicated on relaxed openness, dialogue and a collegiate style of collaboration.
While many museum workers may share these attributes, very often the institutions themselves operate more like corporations, as Bridget McKenzie, director of cultural consultancy Flow Associates, explains.
“In the UK, we’ve followed the US model of shifting to museums as corporations and we’ve learned the rules of PR from the business world,” she says.
“I think this PR mode sits uncomfortably with the collegiate style of critical and independent thinking that characterises most cultural sector workers and increasingly grates against the conversational and open modes of social media.”
As a rule, the US is leading the way in working through these questions, with the Brooklyn Museum and Indianapolis Museum of Art both notably advanced. On the whole, museums and galleries that have really embraced web 2.0 are still few and far between, yet many say they want in.
“Over the last six months, one of the biggest things I’ve found is that people say they want to do web 2.0, but when it comes to matching the digital output that’s necessary with the shape of the museum institution inside, there is a mismatch,” says UK-based consultant Jon Pratty.
And we are right at the peak of the hype, says Mike Ellis, former head of web for the National Museum of Science and Industry and now a solutions architect at IT group Eduserv.
“Once upon a time the development of social tools had our fellow institutions looking on with horror. After a while it became entirely de rigueur. Round about now, it has become unfashionable to launch anything without some kind of social element. [This] is more about doing technology for the hell of it rather than looking at how users might really want to interact with our content.”
With this as a word of warning, the following articles discuss the practical, as well as strategic, challenges thrown down by museums’ use of social media. The apparent simplicity of many services and projects is appealing, but it masks a number of complex issues within.
The structure and culture of most museums, for example, is rarely prepared to handle a multiplicity of voices, both incoming and outgoing. Managing web 2.0 content throws up many implications for branding, content generation and authorship, tone of voice, timeliness, marketing, interpretation and more.
The Brooklyn Museum, considered by many to be exemplary in its online community work, is still something of an exception, says Pratty (see link below).
“Everyone wants to be like the Brooklyn Museum, but most UK museums aren’t like that. They don’t allow open voices or allow people to speak and author [content]. We have a hierarchical structure and the exemplars [in web 2.0] are not shaped like this, so museums have to change. This is a big thing to be tackled and it is less to do with technology and more to do with who and what the organisation is.”
MULTIPLE VOICES
One key aspect is the erosion of a centralised, single voice of authority, as traditionally presented and policed by a museum’s press and marketing department. Museums need to adjust to the idea of having multiple voices, says Mia Ridge, head of web development for the Science Museum, London.
“The monolithic museum voice is challenged by social media. It has always been the way that a museum has many voices: curators would do seminars, education teams would do something in school, and marketing people would be sending messages out to lots of different places,” Ridge says.
“But technology makes it much more obvious because you can just search through it all on the web. So if I’m semi-officially writing about work at the Science Museum on my own blog, what does that mean? My [technical] writing doesn’t really clash with the museum [voice], but what if explainers or curators are blogging? That might clash with the official lines. We’re exploring this at the moment.”
In fact, even the most progressive institutions are still exploring these issues, so hard-and-fast answers are scarce. But there are already some great examples of innovative projects out there, including the use of Flickr in competition events, both on- and off-site; blogs that offer staff the chance to share their experiences and knowledge; and exhibitions and online collections that are “co-curated” by the public.
As ever, different museums will need different responses to these challenges, based on their own particular objectives. “[Practical responses] have to be crafted for each situation, using the right channels and communities of interest,” says Bridget McKenzie.
“With social media, I think those generic rules you see everywhere are problematic. Organisations need to accept they need to invest in advice and training staff in these new PR skills.”
Jon Pratty echoes this: “Museums are seeking or searching for digital publishing skills, and they really need to. Publishing and content skills are absolutely needed.”
Or, as US-based museum and web 2.0 consultant Nina Simon puts it: “Do we have to be on Facebook and Twitter and every other damn social site? No - you have to determine what fits your goals and resources. And then just do that.”
This Working Knowledge is loosely organised around the types of activity that museums already do before the emergence of web 2.0 communications.
Some argue that the distinction between departmental functions is eroded by these new communications channels and that a full structural and cultural reappraisal is needed to embrace changes in visitor relationships, curatorship and interpretation.
This may be the case, but in the end much outward activity will fall into familiar categories: projecting what the museum does; building audiences; developing and marketing exhibitions and events; and researching and interpreting the history of objects.
The web can now play a role in all of these areas, even if it is just one channel among many. Web 2.0, for want of a better term, is more than a fad - and it is here to stay.
This article was written for the Working Knowledge section of Museum Practice, Autumn 2009.
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September 9th, 2009
Blogging and podcasting are two relatively easy ways to embrace web 2.0. But museums need to be prepared to allow for different views and voices
Web 2.0 technologies enable people to contribute all sorts of ideas and material to museums’ online activities, yet it is the museum’s own content and expertise that remain the main appeal and focus of an institution.
So before considering how actual visitors, and potential ones, might contribute their own material, it is worth asking how the museum’s activities might be usefully translated, or perhaps expanded, into the online world.
What content do you have that is already suited to the web? How might new content be developed that would bring in new audiences, both online and to the museum itself? And how might your processes have to change to manage these new channels?
Perhaps a more apposite question is why publish online at all. When asked whether blogs, podcasts, videos and so on are produced for marketing, interpretation, education or a form of exhibiting, most museums say it is a combination of the lot.
“It is for all of these in a sense,” says Mark Hook, a web content manager at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), in London. “They are communicating the creative work that goes on in the museum to inform and enlighten the site’s users.”
RAISE YOUR PROFILE
In the first instance, a blog or podcast may function primarily to raise the museum’s profile and allow it to communicate farther and wider to interested parties. It is also a way of forming a record of activities for people inside, as well as outside, the museum, and it can allow staff who may not otherwise write about their roles to do so - itself an empowering opportunity.
Once established, a blog might instigate a dialogue with readers, much as the Tate Modern’s Great Tate Mod Blog was used to garner ideas for the interior design of its proposed extension.
A blog may be written for the general visitor, or, as in the case of some of the V&A’s blogs, it might offer a more specialist and focused view than would be appropriate for the main website.
Glenn Adamson and Tristan Webber’s V&A blog, From Sketch to Product, for example, is a detailed examination of the processes of creation in craft and design. Ultimately, blogs will be more successful if they are more about interpretation than marketing.
If you are considering starting a blog, an internal “evangelist” will help convince other, possibly sceptical, members of staff of the benefits. Fiona Romeo, the head of digital media at the National Maritime Museum (NMM), London, says that blogging is still seen by some people as an exercise in the banal.
“It takes a while for some people to realise that [it] is not about what you had for breakfast, but something where you can talk about serious museum things. The blog of Jonathan Betts [the senior specialist in horology at NMM] offers a very personal account of fixing the Harrison H1 clock, for example,” she says.
MAKE IT PERSONAL
The “personal” is at the heart of the idea of blogging and sometimes this can clash with a museum’s traditional authoritative voice.
Museums embracing web 2.0 channels need to make a cultural change in how they approach communications. Distributive content with a more individually authored tone is to be encouraged, even if this does mean relinquishing some “control”.
Viewing content creation and publishing in this way also necessitates certain practical and operational changes. Staff who previously did not produce any written material may need to be briefed on the suitability of different kinds of content.
Guidelines may be useful, but remember that blogs are individually authored: even if the press office did have time to sign everything off, it would run counter to the ethos of blogging.
“We’re looking at more blogs for the [Science Museum’s] centenary celebrations, but how can we bring them into the institution without making them un-blog-like? Previously, some early blogs had ridiculous sign-off processes,” says Mia Ridge, the head of web development at the Science Museum in London.
On the other hand, there will be instances when press and marketing need control of communication over and above a staff member who is publishing a blog, as Fiona Romeo says: “Once, someone made a blog post before the press office had issued information on what was a fairly formal and slightly sensitive issue.
But to issue a press release or draft a formal letter can take days, so which is the better way? People have different views on this, but we have realised there’s a need to build better planning and coordination into our processes, especially with press and marketing.”
Such cultural and operational adjustments are probably more challenging than any practical obstacles when it comes to publishing blogs. According to Mark Hook, the V&A’s blogs seldom need editing and the web team receives them and uploads them in a short time - most of the onus is on the writers.
Mia Ridge at the Science Museum estimates that it takes about an hour to write a post, if the author has thought about the topic in advance.
Another way of disseminating museum content is through a podcast. This may seem technologically daunting, but can be simple and effective. The NMM’s On The Line podcast is an example of how to harness the participatory nature of the web, while creating a museum-authored production.
As well as featuring museum staff talking about their activities and telling various maritime and astronomical stories, the programme also answers the public’s questions.
“We were keen to have real voices asking these questions so that it was authentic,” says Natasha Waterson, the digital project manager at NMM. To achieve this, people call an On The Line answering machine, which records their questions as MP3 files. A presenter then scripts and records the answers on a handheld device and the two are edited together.
“The voicemail system costs about £2 a month, and we send the file for transcription to Castingwords.com, so the whole thing is really cheap. The transcription helps with search engine optimisation and provides better accessibility to the [online] content. All in, it takes about half a day to do,” says Waterson.
Blogs and podcasts extend museum content beyond a physical visit and in a manner that can be more detailed than is appropriate for an exhibition or conventional website. They can also can be instructive and entertaining while at the same time performing a marketing function, albeit not a conventional one.
Just be prepared to rethink the way the museum authors and publishes its “voice”.
This article was written for the Working Knowledge section of Museum Practice, Autumn 2009.
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