Archive for April 2007

So the Kate Moss range for Topshop went on sale this evening and of course hundreds of eager shoppers queued for hours on Oxford Street to be the first to get their hands on the merchandise. However the frenzy seems a bit pointless when each shopper was only allowed to try on 8 items and buy just 5 in an attempt to curb mass ebaying.

Fashion blog Catwalk Queen was blogging the whole experience from inside the queue (purely for journalistic reasons i’m sure), and made some interesting observations- in particular the fact that most of the ‘die-hard’ shoppers at the front of the queue were infact reporters and bloggers, and the meticulously clever event organisation from the store including generous sustainance that the Topshop staff who were handing out drinks, popcorn and sweets all afternoon.

Read all the Catwalk Queen posts here, especially Ten things we discovered at the Kate Moss for Topshop Launch
BBC News- Frenzy as Kate Moss range debuts
Reuters- Moss mania breaks out with model’s new range

Here’s a feature in yesterday’s New York Times on the fixed-gear/track bike phenomenon we’ve also noticed around NYC. These bikes have fixed rear cogs so that coasting is impossible. Instead of using hand brakes to stop, riders simply control their speeds by pedalling, or skidding.

It’s a good overview of the history and current culture of the fixed-gear lifestyle. And the author compares it to skateboarding and surfing, sport counter cultures that  eventually suffered from being over-popularized.

If you’re interesting in digging deeper, let us also direct you to the MashSF blog.

Read the full article here

We wrote recently about the power of ‘live’ sports and suggested that this will be the one of the few types of content that people would still buy. The power of live is also supported by recent statistics of DVR usage. Current content such as news, sports and American Idol is not as recorded as dramas and comedies. The NYT says:

Shows with content that can be quickly eclipsed by the news, broadly speaking, do not do well in DVR playback. Sports and news, for example, have almost no deferred viewing. That goes for contest shows, too.

“People know the next day that Sanjaya’s been voted out,” said Brad Adgate, senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, an ad-buying agency. “So there’s an immediacy to watching it live, or as close to live as you can.”

On April 4th 1.4 million homes recorded American Idol on their DVRs in the US but 2.5 million recorded that night’s episode of Lost.

Usual DVR Fare Is Not News and Sports - New York Times

The swift evolution of the Meatpacking district in New York is complete. From smelly yet edgy armpit with an array of tranny hookers, the small area on the west side of Manhattan will now complete its metamorphosis to swank retail mall with a new Apple store.

Apple have taken the space that on the corner of 14th and 9th which had previously been earmarked for an LVMH store. The 32,000-square-foot will have 125 feet of storefront visibility along 14th Street and stand beside luxury boutiques like Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney.

More info: Apple Insider

Read the rest of this entry »

PSFK was kindly invited the latest FUSE Conference to have a peak into what the design leaders of Brand Identity and Package Design had to say.  The event was hosted by the charismatic Debbie Millman of Sterling brands and Design Matters fame and Cheryl Swanson of Toniq.

I attended the Tuesday session and noticed one subtle theme that appeared during the main topic sessions and again later during the small group sessions, the importance of being a Design Bodyguard.  The success of a new idea or brand is very much dependant on a designer or strategists ability to subtly convinced others around them that their idea is the right one while still protecting the integrity of the design.

During the bad boys of brand design the panel, a who’s who in the design world spoke of their frustration and time tested tactics in convincing corporations entrenched in safe design that risks bring rewards.

Rembrandt’s new packaging was conceived with the help of Mother and only took a relatively short time to create.  The remaining time Chris Hacker the Vice President of Global design and Strategy of Johnston and Johnson spent protecting the product from being changed or “tweaked” by upper management.

Stanley Hainsworth the Vice President of Global Creative for Starbucks spoke of his tactics to convince product managers to just step away from the muffin, thus enabling the photographer the ability to do his job in capturing a real food product instead of a plastic muffin.

Keynote speaker Claudia Kotchka of Procter and Gamble spoke of her recruitment of the finance department when showing the cost effective nature of eliminating expensive cubicles from her divisions work area to Upper Management.

All these leaders spoke of the decorum used in presenting new ideas, it turns out the bad boys and girls are not that bad.

Why this is so vital became all the more apparent later on when I sat in a group session about Unilever Bestfoods newest marinade offering.  On stage was a group so enthralled with their latest redesign of Lawry’s.  it was apparent that the group had been swimming in marinade for far too long, as the redesign left the audience lets just say, less than breathless.

Marty Neumeier an earlier speaker and author of the Brand Gap and Zag put it best,

"when everybody zigs, zag"

His book and speech talk about the vital importance of being not only different but good, does your product test poorly and go to market difficulty?  These are just some of the subtle traits that run through the success of great revolutionary brands.

It’s in the journey of trying to push a new idea forward that great brands are made.  We need brand bodyguards, champions of design and diplomacy more then we need another bottle of marinade.

We were recently out at the Tom & Jerry with Roberto Espinosa who happens to be a new reader to the site and he was being rather complimentary about PSFK. In fact what he said was:

“Oh my god you trumped porn! Every morning I used to read my email, then read the Times and then take a quick look at some porn. Now I check what’s on PSFK before I even look at the porn. PSFK trumped porn!”

We’re not too sure what type of filth Roberto was referring to (each day) but we’re pretty sure we haven’t trumped our favorite secret obsession, the Suicide Girls. Especially now they have a magazine out called Papercuts. The 72 page mag is full of the self-empowered, proud and magnificent ladies you’ve hidden on your external hard drive at home under the ‘misc - ignore - do not delete though’ folder. It’s a little pricey ($20) but in defense Suicide Girls says:

YOU WANT HOW MUCH FOR A MAGAZINE? Would it help if we called it a periodical art book? What about a pin-up anthology? Fancy names aside, we’re getting all dead tree about things with the first ever issue of the first ever SG magazine and we printed it on real nice paper in Canada. Also did we mention it’s ad free?

Canadian paper trumps web trumps PSFK. Nice.

Suicide Girls Shop

Does a sign we spotted in a Pret A Manger signal a new front on the war on bad food? Pret says that if a sandwich has a best before date on it then it wasn’t made today. (Pret’s sandwiches obviously don’t).

There are many guidelines we as individuals can follow to live green. And sure, we should all do our part. But when we’re called upon to limit TP consumption to one square at a time, while companies are flushing away resources in massive quantities, we must examine the cost to our quality of life.

No wonder a recent British study found that consumers want big business to pick up some of the slack. Results of ‘What Assures Consumers?’ show that people in the UK and the US are very concerned with the role corporations play in climate change and distrust corporate environmental claims. Further findings:

• Over half of us would like governments to force environmentally unfriendly products out of shops

• Two thirds of people questioned want companies to take global warming more seriously.

• 60% of consumers want companies to provide more information at the point of sale about the effects of their products on climate change.

• Over 50% think governments should be forcing businesses to phase out products that contribute to global warming.

Most recently, Apple has been under a lot of pressure from groups like GreenMyApple and the Computer TakeBack Campaign to cut back on their use of hazardous substances and enact recycling efforts.

On the retail front, Intelligence Group reports that Find Outlet in Nolita will be changing its name to GreenFinds and only stocking socially conscious, sustainable goods. GreenFinds.com is the store’s online home–a report on green products, services, and events.

Recycling iBooks and selling hemp dresses would benefit everyone in the long run, and green companies will hopefully garner support for their socially conscious measures. We as consumers face some messy alternatives.

via New Consumer

Starbucks vision behind the Third Place was to create a space between the home and the office which offered the sort of environment that had always been cherished in the best coffee houses through the years - a place to meet, to read, to debate and discuss, to be on your own. As Starbucks built their chain, independent cafes popped up to offer alternative takes on basically the same principles. (Watch this video from the PSFK Conference where George Murphy discusses the development of the Third Place concept).

Around the world we all started hanging more in cafes. But maybe that’s not going to last. Have you tried to sit in a cafe recently? You can’t there are hardly any seats and, certainly, no table space left!

The rise of the Bedouin Worker fueled by easy WiFi could be changing our view on the Third Place. In fact, they could be killing what we see as the Third Place and turning the cafe back to the Second Place. Go to a Starbucks or another cafe and its full of the creative class tapping away on their laptops. The only discussion being made seems to be on the phone with people in other cafes.

When we first held Likemind at sNice, we had so many people turn up I apologized to the owner, Mike, about taking over the place. Mike replied by saying that he was glad people had come in for a couple of hours to use the place as a cafe - not as their office. If the regular laptop users were miffed, he didn’t care.

The Bedouin Worker has so taken over his cafe that Mike now vigilantly restricts laptop use to two long tables at the weekend. Pull out a laptop at a 2-top on a Saturday and you’re out!

Maybe it’s time that Starbucks saves its Third Place. Instead of developing different brands offering basically the same thing (which will be inundated by the laptopers), maybe they should offer a modern version of the Second Place to keep the Bedouin Workers and the cafe dwellers happy and apart.