St James Quarter, Edinburgh - Brand & Web Launch

We are delighted to have recently launched the new St James Quarter brand, website and corporate identity, on behalf of Henderson Global Investors and their PR agency Halogen UK.  The content managed website, built on Drupal, forms part of a set of communications collateral we have developed since developing the new brand in June 2008.

Outline plans for the St James Quarter - an £850 million investment - have just been submitted to The City of Edinburgh planning department. See the website for more information.

Posted in Things We Do, Work Archive by Luke Hammersley

Kingsgate Website Launched

To mark the opening of the new Kingsgate Shopping Centre extension in Dunfermline we were commissioned by the centre’s PR agency, Halogen, to design and build a new website. The content managed site, built on dotnetnuke features interactive floor plans (flash fed by xml updates from the cms), rotating ad spots and a news & events section. The site has now been launched and is in use promoting the Launch celebrations on 15th August and the range of new stores.  see www.shopkingsgate.co.uk.

Posted in Things We Do by Luke Hammersley

Zebra Crossing at the Barcelona Film Festival

We’re all smiles this week; it could be down to the summer weather or to the fact that the promo we shot for The Standards, “Needless to Say”, is being screened this Friday at DiBa, the Digital Barcelona Film Festival. In their words: “A selection of the best video clips of the year: samples of talent that break with the established rules. The most innovative and surprising music videos compete to win the DiBa Club award”. Giddyup.

Posted in Things We Do by Carl Winberg

Dyslexia Teaching Centre Website Launch

We are pleased to announce that the new Dyslexia Teaching Centre website is now live. The site is built on a WordPress Content Management System which allows the staff to update the site with latest news, events and publications relevant to the dyslexia community in London. The iste offers a new communication hub for people connected with the centre and we are delighted to have worked with the wonderful team at the DTC. We wish them success with the site and all the work they do. Thanks also go to our good friends and partners at Foxland with whom we developed the site.

Posted in Things We Do by Luke Hammersley

Edward Tufte tells us why more is more

“To clarify, add detail. Imagine that, to clarify, add detail. Clutter and overload are not attributes of information, they are failures of design. If the information is in chaos, don’t start throwing out information, instead fix the design.”

Edward Tufte tells why more is more in his discussions of ‘Interface design and the iPhone’.  The video he has posted is particularly interesting as he demonstrates how adding detail increases the clarity of a message, or in this case the ability of a mobile phone handset to perform better when delivering all messages to the user by minimizing computer admin debris and maximizing the amount of relevant data that is displayed.

If the iPhone has already transformed what people consider to be a ‘good user experience’ on a mobile phone then Tufte has wasted little time showing us how it could be better still. But does that mean that Apple’s efforts to use increased screen resolution to improve the clarity of type and images rather than to add more information are misplaced? I think it depends on what your preferences are, and the answer is to provide a choice - zoom in to see more detail,  simply extending Tufte’s point that screen information becomes the interface.

The point he makes so well is not specific to the mobile phone and, as ever, he makes us think about the application of this across all the design work we deliver regardless of the media. It’s not about detail, it’s about good design.

Posted in Things We See by Luke Hammersley

What’s your favourite thing?

The recent Independent on sunday design suppliment article it’s got to be perfect sees Clare Dwyer Hogg ask several important product/interior designers to pick a ‘perfect design’ (that isn’t one of theirs). It’s a fun question and got me thinking (not that I’d have to exclude my own work with any difficulty just yet).

Trouble is I’m not sure I can pin it down to one particular, er… thing, and then say ‘that’s my favourite’, it seems a bit broader than the usual . 

Tonight though, I suddenly realised that I know exactly what it is and so I say with conviction it is the Ferrari 250 GT California. I love old cars and italian design so this does it for me, it has to be the ultimate combination of the two . Carrozzeria Scaglietti’s  interpretation of the Pinin Farina design is about as pure as it gets.  The point here for me, is that if you go after beauty, quality and performance in your work (as Scagletti & Farina did) then you won’t go far wrong.  Compromise can be a horrible thing.

Perhaps it’s a bloke thing, but it never gets tiring the ‘what’s your top 10 / top 5 / favourite things game does it!

Posted in Things We See by Luke Hammersley

Phones 4u Advertising Award Win

For the second year running Phones 4u have won the Mobile News Awards with a set of entries designed by Zebra Crossing. Relating to the TV advertising we help them deliver we took the TV ad characters and used them in a Banksy, stencil style positioned around London, as if interacting with people as they walk by. We are delighted for Phones 4u and pleased that the work we do with them to deliver the TV ads (brilliant creative by WCRS) has been recognised.

With these entries also shortlisted for other awards we hope more success follows.

Posted in Things We Do by Luke Hammersley

How do you like them apples?

Apple classics and their 1960s ancestors - The (fairly)recent article in The Guardian compares the design influences of 2 great product designers, Dieter Rams responsible for the minimalist Braun products from the 1950’s and Jonathon Ive, Apple’s acclaimed designer responsible most recently for iPhone.

As the article points out, no one is accusing Ive of copying Rams, rather it further reinforces the point that simple, clean, unfussy design is timeless. We couldn’t agree more.

Posted in Things We See by Luke Hammersley

Banksy Inspired

Carrying on the theme of using classic artist styles to generate a set of award entries for one of our biggest clients - phones 4u, this year we decided to pay homage to Banksy, arguably the most active and thought provoking artist in the last 12 months, certainly in Britain. Taking the characters out of the TV ads and creating a set of stencil style images imposed onto typical street art backgrounds we hope that we have again created a set of creative material to match the wonderfully whacky advertsing campaigns Phones 4u are entering. A fun job to execute we wish them luck in the awards.

Posted in Things We Do by Luke Hammersley

Swiss Style

If you Wikipedia Swiss Design, you get the following description:
“Swiss Design refers to a graphic design style developed in Switzerland in the 1950s that emphasizes cleanliness, readability and objectivity. Hallmarks of the style are asymmetric layouts, use of a grid, sans-serif typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk, and flush left, ragged right text…”
This fits well with popular understanding of the typical swiss design style, which is why my recent experience of Swiss design work was so surprising.

Visiting Basel in north-west Switzerland the Fasnacht carnival takes place each year on the Monday after ash Wednesday marking the start of Lent. It is a chance for the city to indulge in some very atypical revelry where the people of the town exercise the traditional carnival right to speak out on any issue they like.  This is done though amazing processions (starting at 3am on Monday morning and lasting solidly for 3 days) where intricate design work satirizes domestic and international issues - religion, immigration policy, drug use, smoking… through to the (sometime deceased) British queen mother?!

An amazing visual spectacle which dispels any myth that the Swiss are all boring types.

Some of my favourite visuals:

Posted in Things We See by Luke Hammersley