By Alex Sanders, Head of design and brand strategy at Kyp, London
Just got back from the German Direct Marketing Congress in Wiesbaden, where Germany’s leading media heads and brands discussed trends and forecasts and presented best practice case studies. Centre of stage was social media and its effect on brands and consumers. I put together a brief summary and some selected case studies from the 2-day congress.
By Cheryl Swanson, Principal at Toniq LLC
With a new decade upon us, we thought this would be a great time to consider what socio-cultural shifts and resulting trends resonating today will gain strength moving forward. For CPG, HBA, any industry really, it is important to know what ideas will gain traction and what trends will fade away. Here, we have listed our favorite trends that we believe will continue to foster, from consumers to design.
By Gustavo Piqueira, the Founder and Creative Director of Casa Rex
I was deeply surprised at the end of last year when I heard the news that one of the blandest packages I have ever designed, had been chosen to go on exhibition at a Design Biennial here in Brazil. After all, if the creator didn’t consider it very beautiful, you can imagine what others would think. Had the exhibition’s curators created the “worst designs of 2010” category and I was about to get ready for public humiliation?
By Andrew Davison, a digital media and social marketing specialist at Ziggurat Brands, London
Augmented reality for those unaware is enhancing a real life view of something with additional, digitally generated input. Augmented reality in a passive form has been around for some time, with one of its first uses being to project the ‘first down’ lines on television broadcasts of American football. Recent advances in mobile internet technology have turned people’s smartphones into the gateway to this new reality and allowed users to have control over the enhancements. It is this development that has spawned a new wave of software and services.
