Author: Jonathan Ford

Entrepreneurial Spirit

Last week, in David Cameron’s address to the CBI, the main thrust of his speech centred on the need for this to be the ‘age of the entrepreneur’. Whilst I am not wearing any political heart on my sleeve, I did want to respond to his call to action. I believe that we are already very much living in the age of the entrepreneur and that if big business looked to the brand design business they would see examples of how entrepreneurial brands are already changing the status quo to carve a more successful path for their—and ergo the economy’s—future.

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Time for Frank Exchange

We define ourselves as brand designers but, put quite simply, we make change. But do we ever question just how comfortable we—or our clients—are with change? We’ve been thinking—and talking—about this quite a bit recently as we decided that we maybe need to address how we manage the process of design change through a more honest and open dialogue with our clients. And this also got me thinking about change—and, maybe more importantly, exchange—in the wider world. Previous brand and retail barriers have broken down, the brand landscape has changed beyond all recognition and we all feel more a part of a global brand community.

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Pop! Goes The Brand…

Last weekend saw one of the most creative but bizarre ‘space’ initiatives with the opening of the Cake Britain—Mad Artist’s Tea Party exhibition—the world’s first entirely edible art exhibition (at the London Future Gallery) sponsored by Tate & Lyle Sugars to promote their switch to Fairtrade.  And, in Berlin, at the Bread & Butter Fair Diesel created one of its best spaces to date with a fun beach’n’cinema studio dome presenting apparel, jeans, footwear and vibrant accessories with a specifically created event motto of ‘BE STUPID!’…

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Creative Piracy

Every week the brand and design news seems to feature yet another online campaign, social networking competition or launch of a new hub as brands compete to capture the attention of an exponentially growing virtual audience. But, just as we (consumers) are continually warned of the dangers of identity theft and fraud—with another story this week detailing how successfully phone Apps and their data can now be compromised—are brand owners heeding the very real threat of creative piracy as we become ever more of an e-commerce culture?

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