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Archive for May 2008
May 15th, 2008
Talk to designers about retail and you’ll soon come across terms such as ‘theatre’, ‘experience’ and ‘customer journey’. These elements are part of the allure of a trip to the shops, for many a leisure pastime rather than practical chore. And with high street retailing such a competitive, cut-throat business, store designers are repeatedly called on to create more absorbing environments, anything to lure the customer away from a competitor’s store.
Yet it is just these 3D design elements – things like materials, finishes, lighting and space, as well as tactile products – that are lacking in the world of online retail. Despite this apparent handicap, the value of e-tailing is growing apace while sales on the high street are somewhat in the doldrums. According to a report from Verdict Research, online retail spend is forecast to grow by 32 per cent this year to £19.5bn, while offline sales bump up a mere 1.2 per cent. The report says that an online presence will become ‘a much more important differentiator between retail success and failure’.
‘Having an internet presence is now more important than ever,’ says Neil Saunders, a consulting director at Verdict Research. ‘The future for successful retailers isn’t about choosing between bricks or clicks, it’s about [both].’ Asda recently reached the same conclusion, partly because the likes of Primark and Tesco have stolen a march on the supermarket’s budget clothing line George. In response, George products are to move online for the first time.
According to Elmwood London managing director Nicolas Mamier, there are two main approaches to the web taken by retail companies. ‘They can either go for the full-on e-commerce portal, as FCUK has, or they can use the web as a branding tool, like Paul Smith,’ he says. ‘Some do a bit of both, like Top Shop, but for companies with a high rent, high footfall street presence there’s always the danger of cannibalising your sales with an online shop. This is the big decision they have to make.’
Either way, the high street will not die, claims Saunders. ‘Shopping is a tactile process and for many people it is a leisure activity - online retail does not really deliver on those two things,’ he says. Perhaps not, but retailers and digital designers are getting savvy about what the web lacks over its high-street counterparts, especially when it comes to fashion and clothing brands. On a website you can’t try clothes on, put together an outfit or shop with your friends and ask their opinions, for example.
To address exactly these sorts of issues, Otto – owner of the Freemans and Grattan catalogues in the UK – last year launched a dedicated online brand called Oli. Digital consultancy Conchango designed a ‘rich’ internet experience that would replace some of these missing elements. ‘Previously, the catalogues had been supported by a small web presence. With Oli it’s the other way around: it is primarily an internet brand supported by a smaller catalogue and they wanted to offer a dressing room-like experience,’ says Conchango digital media consultant Derek Dunlop.
The result is a site that allows shoppers to gather items ‘over the arm’ and place them on a blank canvas, re-sizing and arranging products to check out an overall outfit. This collection can be mailed to a friend for an opinion and the whole lot sent to checkout with one click. Dunlop says there’s now scope to add live elements, allowing multiple users to discuss and manipulate collections at the same time.
H&M’s response to online’s lack of dressing rooms is a series of ‘models’ created by Montreal-based My Virtual Model, whose bodies, hair and skin colour can be adjusted to match your own. Another approach to the lack of physical space online is the virtual shopping mall, a model given new momentum thanks to the rise of Second Life. Currently in beta test stage and scheduled to launch later this summer is UK-based Myfaveshop.com. Designed in-house, the site will combine a 3D ‘bespoke’ shop comprised of the buyer’s wish-list of products, with community elements, such as product reviews from friends, also built in. ‘You can manage your products in 2D, but when you look around they are all there in a 360-degree environment,’ explains Myfaveshop marketing director Ashley Harris.
Whether used as lush branding vehicle, e-commerce-enabled database or full-scale virtual world, a well-considered presence on the web is essential for retail brands. The design challenge is to make the online experience not only as enjoyable as shopping in stores, but also captivating enough to lure consumers to one site amongst a wild west of cheaper alternatives.
This article was written for Design Week, 15 May 2008.
Posted in Design, Digital, Interaction, Retail | No Comments »
May 15th, 2008
It’s well documented that we’re in a period of financial gloom and diminishing credit, which is bad news for retailers. Or is it? While consumers naturally tighten their belts in a recessional period, it’s often the big ticket items – such as cars, kitchens and holidays – that get the chop, while lower-cost items are bought with a more mix and match approach, some value products, some premium. And in this environment, it’s packaging design that guides shoppers through the sea of choices, tugging gently at the subconscious one minute and shouting loudly in the face the next.
Most supermarkets – and, increasingly, other large site retailers – use a tiered system of good, better, best product ranges, ostensibly to offer something for everybody. ‘Good’ represents value or economy and the standard approach to communicating a value offer is with a bold, simple and often brash palette - high-impact typography and low levels of information. This type of visual communication is quickly and easily understood and doesn’t make excessive ‘decoding’ demands on the consumer. Its simplicity also suggests an economy of manufacture which, in the customer’s mind, translates to higher value.
‘It’s about saying what it does on the tin as fast as you possibly can. Any extra tricks or finesse and people think that they’re paying for it,’ explains Doug James, director of Honey, which is designing packaging for a range of Tesco products.
But it’s not just in economy lines where simplicity and value are intertwined. Jones Knowles Ritchie creates the packaging for McVitie’s Digestives, still sold in a traditional plastic roll-wrap design. Attempts to move away from this with, say, foil materials or card packaging, are met with consumer resistance because the fancy – and therefore ‘expensive’ – design is seen as too complex for the product. ‘We’ve looked at ways of protecting the biscuits for transport and ways of improving freshness, but in terms of the perception of value in people’s minds, it’s very hard to improve on the roll-wrap,’ says JKR director Andrew Knowles.
Different brands and ranges are usually presented in a manner which side-steps their weaknesses and highlights their strengths, adds Knowles. So, Tesco Value and Sainsbury’s Basics ranges compete on price directly with discount retailers such as Aldi and Lidl with designs that scream value – basic two-tone packaging often set on a plain white background, occasionally with product photography. They can adopt this ultra-value style because, to consumers, the big supermarkets carry an inherent quality level. At Aldi the super-low prices are well known, but it has to fight against an associated perception of low quality. So its packaging uses higher-end cues including full-colour photography and more complex colour palettes. Meanwhile, branded manufacturers such as McVitie’s or Heinz cannot (and do want to) compete on price, so their packaging deliberately avoids any low price cues, instead promoting higher quality and consistency.
The good, better, best strategy is a complex dance around not only the competition, but also other products in a retailer’s own portfolio. B&Q is on the verge of revealing a new strategy behind its packaging and brand ‘personality’, but already operates a three-tiered approach to products. According to packaging, design and guidelines manager Jonathan Couper, ‘better’ must complement and support ‘good’ in such a way that consumers want to trade up rather than down. ‘Good and better packaging is based around the same identity, a speech bubble device [originally devised by Elmwood]. There’s more colour and information on the better range, but the speech bubble is used in both tiers to tie them together and help encourage trade-ups,’ says Couper.
The idea that value or economy packaging may be especially designed to ‘guilt’ some shoppers into trading up to the next level perhaps has some currency. ‘It has to be as cheap as they can get away with, as they don’t want to migrate regular customers down to the economy level,’ notes Knowles. But Richard Murray, director at Williams Murray Hamm, the consultancy behind the Sainsbury’s Basics packaging, says purchasing patterns may not be that clear. ‘The interesting thing about value packaging is that it’s not just poor people who are drawn to it. Some people choose it because they don’t like slick marketing or to feel that they’re being played with,’ he says.
In this way, the basic simplicity of the packs plays a new role – not just cheap, but honest. Sainsbury’s Basics on-pack copy and illustrations explain honestly, and often humorously, how the supermarket has managed to make the products cheaper. ‘I just bought the cornflakes in the range at 26p. The copy line claims “No fancy packaging, still a great breakfast”, saying it like it is, with wit, engagement and pride,’ says Martin Grimer, creative director of Blue Marlin Brand Design.
Finally, in a climate of achieving value through sustainability, branded packaging itself perhaps walks something of a tightrope. Ikea, the self-styled ‘democratiser’ of low-cost domestic design, uses virtually no packaging apart from what’s needed for transit. A company spokeswoman says this is precisely because it ‘saves costs and minimises waste’. This, hopes Ikea, translates to better value, more honest retailing.
This article was written for Design Week, 15 May 2008.
Posted in Design, Packaging, Retail | No Comments »
May 15th, 2008
Public signs which react to their users – providing just the information they need, exactly when they need it – are an appealing idea, especially to interaction designers. And with embedded communication technologies such as radio frequency tagging and wireless, mobile internet connections, the emergence of fully interactive signage becomes eminently possible.
At least, it does in theory. In reality, the cost of building interaction into signs is often thought to outweigh the benefits for organisations or their users. ‘Interactive signage can be very expensive,’ says Ico Design Consultancy creative director Benjamin Tomlinson. ‘The technology is there to create them, but the cost and complexity of rollout quite often directs [a project]. It’s not a case of what’s possible, but a question of initial investment. Will the extra interaction be worth the investment?’
In many commercial situations the answer would be no. But experimental research underway at the Design Museum in London aims to put interactivity and dynamic content into what the museum’s strategic consultant Daniel Charny is calling ‘explorative signage’ – part sign, part interactive wall. ‘It’s part of a process of making the museum’s collections more accessible through signage. Although it works like an interactive kiosk, it will be in the foyer so people will see it as they come in or sit in the café, so it’s signage,’ says Charny.
This explorative signage is pioneering something of a technical first too, marrying traditional screen-printed graphics with special conductive ink technology to create active ‘buttons’ on the surface of the foyer wall. Graphic designer Lea Jagendorf’s visual scheme will be brought to electrical, interactive life under a system designed by interaction consultancy Osmotronic. When users touch the buttons they will trigger media content that will be projected onto the wall.
‘It works on two levels: it’s passive for people looking on, but it’s being controlled by people touching the wall. And while it’s interactive, it doesn’t look digital because it’s a projection rather than screen,’ explains Charny.
The system will first be used to offer visitors access to objects from the Design Museum’s collections that aren’t currently on display in the building. These digital assets include video and photographic material, as well as detailed written information. But the system could function as an information point too.
‘As it’s in the foyer they need it to be flexible, so it can be unobtrusive if other events are taking place. So we’ve designed a minimal grid of buttons, each around 5cm across, “soft-labelled” at any given moment by the projector to show what they do,’ explains Osmotronic director Matthew Falla. ‘When you’re looking at an object, pressing a button might bring up more info about the design, its client, processes or materials and so on.’
At around 4m2, it’s perhaps the scale of the projection that allows it to be considered signage, but what’s especially valuable about this approach to wall space is that the content is dynamic, rather than static. Media can come to the fore or recede, as required by the user or the venue. Along with collections content, the Design Museum wall could also provide visitor information, introductory material for groups about to view an exhibition, or even media for private functions or events.
In a project for Manchester Art Gallery, signage design consultancy Holmes Wood also employed technology to create large-scale, dynamically changing signs suspended in the building’s main atrium. ‘They can be used for daily events and promotion and then used in the evenings for corporate events, with the addition of sound. We designed the software as a bespoke solution, with templates and grids that allow it to be updated and completely managed in-house by the gallery,’ says consultancy director Alexandra Wood.
A similar system was built for auction house Christie’s by Land Design Studio and digital consultancy Clay Interactive. Using high-quality projectors and screens, wall sections at Christie’s King Street showroom in London become embedded, ‘invisible’ media spaces, playing out content on items up for auction, or information about what’s taking place in the venue and so on. According to Land Design Studio creative director Peter Higgins, using media in this way allows it to become part of the physical space, just as static informational signage does. ‘It’s about how to nurture spaces, how it becomes media as architecture,’ he says.
Although not interactive from a user’s point of view, the Christie’s and Manchester Art Gallery projects show how, as at the Design Museum, dynamic media, architecture and signage can start to become one and the same. ‘The architecture, hardware and software development are all happening together with the client’s content. It’s incredibly important that these are in parallel,’ adds Higgins.
The Design Museum’s interactive signage will trial throughout the summer, after which it may be extended further into the museum and its interactivity thrown open to include content generated by users of the museum’s website. ‘It’s really a first experiment at this stage, but it could be used throughout the museum as a new type of signage exhibit,’ says Charny.
This article was written for Design Week, 8 May 2008.
Posted in Architecture, Design, Exhibition, Interaction, Interiors | No Comments »
May 15th, 2008
There’s a tussle in the head of Osmotronic founder Matthew Falla between the endless, captivating possibilities of digital technologies and the lure of good old fashioned paper, card and ink. Supplied with an array of electronic gadgetry while studying interaction design at the Royal College of Art, Falla yearned for the craft of traditional printing techniques. But given access to a wealth of screen printing and letterpress facilities on the graphic design course at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, he was drawn instead to the technologies of interaction design, a discipline focusing on dynamic human interactions with materials and environments rather than the static layout of graphics on paper. ‘It was typical of me to be attracted to the opposite of what I was doing,’ notes Falla, wryly.
As it transpires, the solution to this dichotomy was simply to marry the two approaches. So, a sheet of printed paper comes alive with interactive qualities, responsive to touch and the movement of a finger. Or a poster bursts into projected animations when its surface is pressed, rendered interactive thanks to the electrical conductive qualities of special screen printed inks. Titled Interaphics, these posters stem from an Osmotronic collaboration with graphic design studio Build and illustrator Danny Sangra and debuted at last year’s London Design Festival. Now, Falla is even in talks with publishers about creating the world’s first fully animated magazine cover, using digital ink technologies.
It was to explore exactly these kinds of possibilities - commercially for clients, as well as through self-generated projects – that Falla approached the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta), looking for a grant to set up a business. His bid was successful and about 18 months ago Falla launched Osmotronic as part design consultancy, part vehicle for exploring how interactivity and digital media can be seamlessly embedded into non-digital, physical objects.
An early project called Connect Draw Remix used the conductive qualities of graphite to create a CD case ‘toy’ for mixing music, connected to a computer via USB. By drawing pencil lines on the case’s electronic ink, circuits are opened and closed, telling the software how to play the music. Anything you don’t like can be rubbed out with an eraser and ‘redrawn’. ‘The reaction to this showed me that maybe there was something in interaction with physical formats,’ says Falla. ‘It gave me the confidence to think that maybe I could build a design consultancy around these ideas. So I did some research into the printed electronics industry and approached Nesta. A lot of printed electronics technology is sitting around in R&D departments, but there are not many people looking at potential applications from a design point of view.’
Falla’s first desire was to draw people away from electronic screens and their virtual, digital content and back to the experiences of using physical, tangible objects. But in developing Osmotronic he has begun to take a more balanced approach. ‘I used to see interactivity as a hook to get people away from digital stuff by giving them some fun. But now I can see that people demand connectivity, search-ability and trace-ability all the time and it would be an inconvenience if these digital things were not there,’ he says.
Osmotronic’s current commercial projects, all based around interactivity, include the development of toy concepts for Hasbro and Android 8, signage for a London museum and marketing materials for a large property developer, the details of which Falla is keeping under wraps. He is also in discussions with mobile phone companies to develop Osmotronic’s Mobipak design, a system which again combines electronic printing with cardboard packaging, allowing users to set up their phones simply by touching printed ‘buttons’ on the pack’s surface.
Although a number of Osmotronic projects are concept developments or prototypes, it is not the one-off wow-factor projects that excite Falla, but the idea of ubiquity. And his investigation of reactive surfaces and materials leads inevitably to visions of a future where all manner of surfaces blink, flash and play out video messages, where media is ubiquitous.
‘Ever since Bladerunner I thought the idea of screens everywhere would be great, but when it comes – and it will – it could be a nightmare: shelves in Tesco winking at you constantly. But I’d love to work with flexible printed displays. It would be nice to lead by example, to perhaps influence how things are developed in a mass way. There’s an opportunity to create things that are beautiful or a joy to watch.’
This article was written for Design Week, 3 April 2008.
Posted in Design, Interaction, Packaging | No Comments »