By Alex Sanders, Head of Design at Kyp Plc for Popsop

I went to a seminar this week that was analysing how digital activities and traditional direct mail relate to each other in the real world. There were two exciting case studies I was intrigued by. One was a piece by GGRP created by Grey Vancouver and the other by Razorfish for Audi. Intelligent creative that demonstrated clearly that there is absolutely no doubt that digital has revolutionised the way we engage with consumers offline. Cool stuff.

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!’…

Social networking is king in 2010. I realized the level of saturation online networking sites are achieving after I received a Facebook friend request from my 71-year-old mother earlier this year. In fact, Facebook has more than 500 million active visitors, and Twitter has exceeded 100 million. And while most of us use these sites for chatting with friends and sharing our latest ‘cute kid’ photos, the gap between screen and shelf is getting smaller by the minute.

We recently attended a technical packaging seminar where a diverse group of industry representatives gave a 20 minute presentation on the virtues of packaging specific to their individual areas of expertise. The focus for the night was the role of Packaging Design. It was a broad topic, which I had anticipated speakers across areas such as structural form, material innovation, print technology and brand identity. I was disappointed.

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?