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Archive for March 2008
March 13th, 2008
Any takers for an afternoon out at the local archives? It seems unlikely, doesn’t it? But replace “archives” with “museum” and it is a different prospect altogether.
For many, the idea of archives is likely to evoke images of dusty books, manuscripts and tomes written in archaic English. Museums, on the other hand, boast comparatively dramatic collections of vehicles, guns, beautiful garments and shrunken heads, to pluck a few at random.
But despite the perception, there is undoubtedly increasing enthusiasm for using archive material and perhaps even piquing the public’s interest in self-generated research.
The British Library has recently acquired the archive of playwright Harold Pinter for £1.1m, including manuscripts, letters, photographs and sound recordings. A temporary exhibition of a small selection of this material opened in January and the complete archive is being catalogued for general access by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, the National Trust for Scotland is putting together plans and funding for a £17m Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, which will feature an archive of the poet’s manuscripts and artefacts.
Although such celebrity collections may have an innate allure, the general picture of archives as reams of recondite annals is essentially correct; that, of course, is the purpose and nature of record keeping.
Yet letters, scrolls, manuscripts and other documents can be the very point of origin for some of the great stories of history. In a way that no object could ever quite convey, a letter from Charles Darwin to publisher John Murray, written in 1859, represents the seeds of the science of evolution, as Darwin set out in On the Origin of the Species, published by Murray the same year.
And the letter itself provides a wonderful detail - a glimpse of Darwin’s uncertainty about the work. “I have done my best, but whether it will succeed, I cannot say,” he writes.
Such material is a vital part of the story, perfect for building narrative in a Darwin exhibition and supporting the display of relevant museum objects. But at the John Murray Archive in Edinburgh, the National Library of Scotland has gone a step further and made the letters themselves the centrepiece of the exhibition.
Designed by Event Communications, the permanent display taps in to the 150,000-strong archive of material spanning literature, science, politics, travel and exploration.
“The archive is usually not the star of the show [in an exhibition],” says Eithne Owens, interpreter at Event Communications. “It is often just a little illustrative document in a case. But you can turn it around so that the 3-D objects tell the story of the manuscript - so that they support it, rather than the other way around. The manuscript is the thing that changed the world. The original will always hold its own excitement and magic.”
The John Murray Archive was developed with an £18m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), but few other archives are likely to receive such generous investment.
Local authority archive services are non-statutory and “many are underfunded and at risk”, says Justin Cavernelis-Frost, the head of archive policy at the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). In any case, a vast quantity of archive material lies outside the public realm, beyond the reach of local authority services.
When Renaissance in the Regions brought central government cash in to revitalise regional museums, there was talk of a similar scheme for archives. An Archives Task Force was established in 2002 and undertook a major analysis of the sector, culminating in a range of recommendations published in 2004 as Listening to the Past, Speaking to the Future.
“The taskforce recommendations are still current, but very little is happening, and I want to breathe some new life back into it,” says René Kinzett, who was recently appointed the head of public affairs at the National Council on Archives, a body that works with the National Archives in Kew (home to government records), the MLA and other relevant organisations to provide a voice for the archives community. “The ultimate aim is to create a central, digital UK gateway for archives, but at the moment, we are nowhere near that.”
One problem is that there has been very little cash, and funding has declined in real terms over the past decade. Between 2001 and 2006, when the central government’s financial support for museums rose, funding for archives via the MLA was about £300,000 a year. In 2007-08, the MLA will invest £250,000 on Action for Archives, a regional and national programme of support and development.
“The MLA has been hampered in the past by a lack of clarity from government about its remit for archives and the need for explicit recognition that archives are an equal, but under-resourced, part of our national heritage,” admits Cavernelis-Frost.
Better engagement with the public about the wealth of archives is high on the wish list. “We have got to look more at the customer experience,” says Kinzett. “Materials should all be online in one place, with source information, so that you can go and see the original. People don’t care where information comes from - museums or archives.”
Much of museums’ own archives are often neglected or laying in storage. Digitisation and the internet are obvious routes to easier and wider access, although scanning documents is time consuming.
There are also more low-tech options to promote content - Owens at Event says the John Murray Archive’s theatrical exhibition is more 19th century than 21st: “More museums and libraries are saying, ‘We have an archive, but what can we do?’ Access is increasingly something you hear people talk about, but two-dimensional material is among the most difficult to display.”
Heather Romaine is archives project manager at the National Motor Museum in Brockenhurst, and also leads the Sharing Skills Archive Project, a programme set up in the south-east to give training to museums professionals on better care and use of their archive material.
Funded by the MLA South East, the project developed last year into the Archives in Museums Subject Specialist Network to deliver the scheme nationally. It demonstrates ways to tap into general audiences with popular subjects such as family or local history, or how to link material to the national curriculum for teachers.
“The major issue for archives is time,” says Romaine. “They get put away and forgotten, even though they can tell you a lot about the objects in your collection, often acquired with the archived information. There needs to be more awareness in museums that their archives can supplement their displays a lot.”
At the British Postal Museum and Archive, the focus is on merging the museum’s object collection with archival material. As an integrated service since the closure of the National Postal Museum 10 years ago, it is one of the only museum and archive collections that is successfully integrated and co-managed, claims Adrian Steel, its acting head of archives.
“The public do not see the divide between the two,” he says. “They don’t care whether something has been curated or archived. But there is usually a big difference in the presentation. An archive has a catalogue which people can search and the item is retrieved, but without any context. In museums, material is selected and given context and interpretation.”
Steel believes that it is beneficial for staff to regard the two collections as part of a single resource internally, even though they are managed using separate professional standards.
“It is very important that each side remembers the other is there,” he adds. “The typical culture is to start with objects, but the archive can bring a lot too. This approach has helped our interpretation across all our media, as well.”
Woodhorn Northumberland Museum and Archives is another example where the two resources are more explicitly brought together. Under a masterplan by Haley Sharpe Design, the site’s £10m HLF-funded project integrated the county archives, local studies collection, colliery museum and historic building complex into a visitor attraction.
The venue picked up a 2007 Design Business Association Design Effectiveness award after more than doubling its visitor targets following the redevelopment. The number of visits to the archives jumped from 207 to 862 a month, with about 4,000 people now registered to use the facility.
“There is probably huge unrealised potential in properly merging the local museum, local archive and local-studies library,” says Maurice Davies, deputy director of the Museums Association.
“Even when they are in the same building, they seem to operate separately in the experience they offer visitors. But I think there is a renewed interest in bringing them together.”
This article was written for Museums Journal, March 2008.
Posted in Design, Exhibition, Museums | No Comments »
March 13th, 2008
A retail experience - its design and integration - has been embedded in the long gestation of London Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 from the very early stages. A retail designer was always present when architectural concepts were being tested, as was Nick Ziebland, retail strategy director for T5 at BAA, the airport’s owner. The project, claims Ziebland, has not only created a more coherent environment at T5 itself, but will also act as a process blueprint for the further development of Heathrow and BAA’s other airports in the UK.
The importance of retail for BAA is manifest. In the last nine months of 2006, retail income across its UK airports was almost £500m. In the vast, Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners-designed T5 building, 22 000m2 of floor space is dedicated to shops, food and drink for its exclusively British Airways passengers.
But, refuting claims that T5 is essentially a giant shopping mall, Ziebland insists that the percentage of retail space is ‘quite small’. An exact figure is hard to pin down, because it depends on which zones of the building you include as the ‘whole’. Nonetheless, Ziebland defends the scheme. ‘Retail has not extended walking distances, there is no bottleneck. There are matrices of flow, but you don’t have to walk past any particular shops,’ he says.
Size matters aside, the retail offer is specifically designed to give passengers something a little special. ‘All the retailers had to make proposals to us with innovations in their concept designs or service. We made this quite explicit. In order to make T5 different, we’re looking for everyone to do something that’s not quite the same as what you’ve seen before,’ explains Ziebland.
As well as encouraging innovation in its tenant brands, BAA has influenced the overall design with strict material quality and environmental standards, says Paul Elms, retail account director at Sheridan & Co, the consultancy which designed Sisley’s retail unit. BAA also maintains control over the public spaces outside the retail units. ‘A lot of work went into framing the bulkhead above the stores, which is up-lit. There are no extending or bus-stop signs because the space curves, with a clear delineation between retail and public space. The shops are on your way, not in your way,’ says Ziebland.
The collaboration between the T5 design team, the architects and BAA Retail marks out T5 as a benchmark for future developments, says BAA design director David Bartlett. ‘There is a common understanding of the passenger journey across arrivals and departures, where people have different practical and emotional needs at different stages. And it’s about integrating the retail at these different stages, as well as with the architecture. We’ve very carefully balanced what’s land-side and air-side,’ he says.
Moving air-side, the space divides into two main internationaldeparture lounge squares, each with its own character. The north square is informed by such adjectives as ‘high energy, upbeat and young’, taking Times Square as a design metaphor. The south square adopts the cues of a hotel lobby, with wood and leather. Each square sits under a ‘theatrical’ lighting scheme that complements its character, says Bartlett. The key retail and food brands are located accordingly, and the two squares are connected by a ‘high street’ of stores.
Bartlett likens the management of the T5 building to the staging of a production at London’s National Theatre, with terminal as theatre, floor plates as stages and the various environments acting as dynamic sets within. ‘T5 is an enabler to start, and sets a benchmark. We’ve reviewed all the retail design guidelines and we’ve done everything we can to integrate retail with the passenger journey, from the beginning to the end,’ he says.
This article was written for Design Week, 27 February 2008.
Posted in Design, Retail | No Comments »
March 2nd, 2008
When it comes to choosing products and services, there is no denying that, at present, small is good. The days of a special and exclusive consumer trust in megabrands are all but gone, especially in the food and drink sector. We no longer look to the likes of Heinz, Kellogg and Wall’s for aspirational purchases, but to the homespun delights of Mrs Massey’s (for sauces) and Debbie & Andrew’s (for sausages). To avoid shovelling more cash into the coffers of Tesco and Sainsbury’s, shoppers with the time and money may well visit the local farmers’ market for some straight-from-the-field goodness that cuts out the middle corporation.
This trend has been developing for some time, and is part of a host of gradually shifting attitudes toward health, the environment, ethical trading, community and consumerism. We may not be quite ready for ‘no logo’, but perhaps ‘little logo’ will do nicely. It is these small, entrepreneurial brands that have adopted a style and tone of presentation in their marketing that is often both colloquial and premium, friendly and luxurious, and in which packaging design plays a crucial role.
The visual and written languages of brands such as Darling Spuds, Dorset Cereals and Munchy Seeds have been developed by designers who realise that it is the very smallness (or apparent smallness) of the business that is its selling point. ‘When you read our packs, you are talking directly to us’ is effectively what the Elmwood-designed Debbie & Andrew’s packaging says. Compare this with the website of global food business Kerry Group, owner of Wall’s sausages, which on its homepage displays the company’s latest share price.
‘One obvious difference of smaller enterprises is that they are often owner-managed - one person with a single vision - and are not subject to the endless processes and approval systems of bigger companies’, says Martin Grimer, creative director at Blue Marlin Brand Design. ‘As a result, many of them are more creative in their marketing strategies and approach to choosing their media channels and developing executions within them.’
Moreover, smaller companies are able to embed the brand values of their products in their corporate tone of voice, according to Magnus Willis, founding partner of branding consultancy Sparkler. ‘It is a branding process that works inside out. Starting with an analysis and appreciation of a corporate culture and the vision of the owners, rather than an analysis of what the competition is up to, is increasingly the way to go,’ he says.
Nick Gray, managing director of retail marketing agency Live & Breathe, believes that this kind of cultural difference can be particularly beneficial to the design process. ‘The approach of smaller enterprises is different from corporations, and that affects the creative output,’ he says. ‘There is normally a clear vision that is easier to filter through to the end product. It is not design by committee, not the lowest common denominator, so they are more able to take risks.’
Such small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are abundant, and not just in the food and drink sectors. Of the UK’s 4.5m business enterprises, 99% fall into this category, accounting for more than half of the UK’s business turnover of about £2,600bn. Of these, 95% are micro businesses with 20 or fewer employees.
For examples, one need look no further than the husband and wife team behind Munchy Seeds and Salty Dog crisps. Opportunities for design agencies to tap into these small-scale, entrepreneurial businesses are rife. Although the budgets are often small, some agencies are even setting up ‘creative contracts’, which give them a stake in these businesses and, consequently, a vested interest in their success.
In fact, it seems that smaller budgets often lead to more creative packaging solutions. ‘Start-ups and SMEs see how powerful design is, and they are not afraid to use it,’ says Richard Hill, creative director at Lloyd Northover. ‘These business owners have grown up with the ability to do it themselves and see the possibility of self-authorship.’ Jon Davies, managing director of branding and design agency Holmes & Marchant, agrees. ‘SMEs have less to spend on traditional advertising, so they need to invest their limited budget wisely and ensure that all the communication is consistent, impactful, memorable, recognisable and outstanding,’ he says. ‘Packaging is the centrepoint of this, and every aspect of it should play a part in telling the brand’s story of difference.’
The shift of focus toward packaging design is partly due to broader changes in marketing media, claims Jeremy Haines, director of Salty Dog’s design agency Haines McGregor.
‘In the grocery sector, there was a time when brands saw marketing as a measure of how much money they could spend on advertising,’ he says. Now, the packaging is being asked to work harder. Brands, especially smaller ones, have created a greater number of touchpoints around customers’ encounters with the brand.
It is not merely smaller companies using packaging as a primary communications medium, but this shift away from above-the-line advertising puts SMEs on a more level playing field. This is where the flexibility and innovation of a small business can come to the fore.
Start-up enterprise The Filthy Food Company appointed design agency Elmwood to help it develop a range of indulgent desserts. ‘Our original brief to Elmwood was very woolly in terms of what we wanted to achieve, but I wanted to work through the brand creation together, and we looked at a gap in the market to define the brand,’ explains Simon Smith, founder of Filthy Food. ‘As we became more confident about where we were going, it became easier to invest a bit more.’ Packaging for the range, which is now stocked in Sainsbury’s, plays on the idea of illicit indulgence, with phrases such as ‘disgracefully smooth’ and ‘dressed to kill’.
Perhaps more common in the SME food and drink sector are branding and copywriting that emphasise wholesomeness, provenance and personable proprietors. Here, corporate copy style is eschewed in favour of a more personal approach.
‘We take delicious things and add some more delicious things’ chirrups Dorset Cereals’ unbleached cardboard pack, for example. ‘This looks like it comes from the farm gate, not the factory. It alludes to a product that is hand-generated rather than manufactured,’ says Hill. Salty Dog packs, meanwhile, aim to offer reassurance on the products’ provenance. ‘We make sure all our potatoes are of the highest pedigree,’ they read. ‘They are handcooked in sunflower oil for extra bite, and then seasoned with deliciously feisty flavours.’
This type of friendly tone and design pays dividends for many brands. ‘SME brands have a voice, an openness and an honesty,’ says Davies. The questions remains, however, as to whether it is becoming harder for them to stand out from the crowd in a post-Innocent Drinks world?
‘There can be a scepticism about peeling back the [corporate] layers and all the stuff about history and provenance, but there is still a lot of demand for it,’ adds Haines. ‘Many people are not yet that cynical, although it may be coming.’
Peggy Connor, head of design at the AAR, is less optimistic. ‘In many cases, there is not much content, just a chatty voice. Someone led and a lot of people followed, and now there is so much of this imagery used that consumers simply cannot trust the language any more.’
Whether shoppers will come to distrust this approach remains to be seen. Designers’ use of such short stories on packaging to engage consumers has certainly brightened up the grocery shelves, but the real test will be whether agencies can continue to produce stories that consumers want to see, read and, ultimately, put into their trolleys.
This article was written for Marketing, 26 February 2008.
Posted in Branding, Design, Packaging | No Comments »