JKR

A while ago I stumbled across a rant against pink. It was written by a mother who felt she was losing the battle against the tides of rosy cuteness bombarding her daughter. Turns out it was not always so. In the good old days, pink was for boys and blue was for girls. A quick glance at popular culture of the time evidences that blue was indeed once the visual shorthand for female innocence, beauty or virtue.

I was reminded of this in a recent workshop, when the subject of colour psychology came up. I’m referring of course to the ‘science’ (I use the term loosely) of decoding the associations and emotions that we instinctively attach to particular colours. So, yellow is warm, happy and cheery; red suggests excitement, ambition and youth and blue denotes dependability, quality and trust.

Colour psychology has been used by brands and corporations for decades to communicate something about the service or product on offer in an implicit and subconscious way. But there’s a real danger with taking colour theory at face value. For a start, the way we all make decisions about brands is much more complex than one based entirely on colour (context and culture play big roles for instance). More crucially, the more a brand adopts the rules of a category, by definition the less distinctive it becomes. So in theory, blue says all the right things about you if you’re a technology brand, but it says all the right things about every other technology brand too. Which is why situations like this are played out in every category from technology to antiperspirant:

Braver brands acknowledge the colour codes of their category and reject them – what they lose in implicit associations they gain in brand distinctiveness. What, for instance, does a synthetic, bright ‘value’ yellow, used without any depth or finesse, have to do with luxury? Absolutely nothing, which is why it’s so brilliant.

So one way of building a unique brand identity is to recognise broad cultural associations, but reject them in favour of building brand associations that only you can own. Or, if you’re a certain toy with implausible curves and a penchant for pink, change those cultural associations wholesale (blue is so 1940s) and own them entirely.

By Katie Ewer, strategic planner, jkr Singapore

This is a map of the internet, as created by Barrett Lyon and hung in MOMA. It’s really about ‘making visual representations of metaphysical spaces’. The accompanying sign gave me pause for thought: ‘(this) is one step in being able to generate movies of the internet’s activity.’

Which sparked a possibly obvious but mad thought: is the internet the first human invention that has developed beyond our ability to map, to see, to put in a box? It exists but we cannot yet ‘capture it on film’. That’s pretty heavy – a bit like how we’ve created Gods in ancient cultures yet nobody knows for sure what they actually look like.

Anyway, projects such as this are part of a wider trend to make the invisible visible. It ties to information graphics having such a huge resurgence and the strengthening relationship between science, art and design. It is also pertinent to humble branding; a way to make vague promises of corporate responsibility for example, into graspable and beautiful images (or visual equities).

It’s just a matter of finding a kindred corporate spirit who wants to visualise their soul and infrastructure – which might be more of a challenge than mapping the internet.

Have you come across Herself magazine yet? It’s an all illustrated high-end affair: a pretty impressive labour of love, generally saying something about the design times we live in, though I’m not sure what exactly. Perhaps it’s something to do with us appreciating the hand-made and the joy of print in an increasingly synthetic and online world? Or maybe it’s something about us appreciating a single creative vision taken to extreme lengths rather than a hotchpotch magpie approach?

While it has an editor, Lula, she might be an invention (as Dazed & Confused attempted to find out). Perhaps she is invented because there isn’t one illustrator but a team working to a house style? So it’s not really a single vision, but a collective one? How post modern! Anyway, it’s well worth a look.

But what really caught my eye was the advertising – all reworked in the illustrative style. As this puts a uniform style over the various brands’ art direction, it’s interesting to see which are distinctive enough to still ‘break out’ and which look interchangeable.

For me, the current monochrome styling from Louis Vuitton is going to pop whatever the style. A few of the others look hilariously interchangeable. Gucci however, is still very distinctive, even if you remove the logo. Testament to a pretty recognisable style of frock, pose and general vibe perhaps?

The strongest branding doesn’t need a logo and can survive being reworked in a uniform style. It’s an interesting test of equities…

After years of closures and mega-mergers, the wheel has finally turned in the beer industry and new breweries are bursting forth like daffodils in spring. Encouraged by tax breaks for small producers and growing consumer interest in all things foodie,  literally thousands of new craft beers now compete alongside the famous names in local bars and restaurants.

But with so many brews competing for attention, quality of branding is already separating the winners from the losers in the race for space.

After a relatively conventional start, the folks at Camden Town Brewery clearly woke up to the potential for design to be a game-changer in their business. Farewell to conservative colours and traditional branding. Welcome to eye-catching flat colours and an eclectic mix of typography to craft an achingly trendy look.

Although this bold, retro-progressive style is fairly familiar territory in the American craft beer scene, it remains pretty revolutionary in Britain, providing an alluring charisma to the brand.

And unlike most of the established beers on the market – which generally operate with a hero product – Camden neatly accommodate their brewer’s desire to offer a range of flavour-first beers by helpfully making the descriptor the dominant feature. Cleverly abbreviated and emphasised so that the bar call remains ‘Camden Pale’, ‘Camden Wheat’ etc.

The net effect is to make Camden’s smart new labels not only live up to the delicious beers they represent, but be more helpful to the drinker at the same time.

Great brewing skills are clearly fundamental in this frothy category, but as our Champions of Design demonstrate time and again, it takes clever branding to produce sustainable growth.

By Andrew Knowles, chairman, jkr

We bought a new cover for our deckchair last week (rock ‘n’ roll). It turned up with these on-brand striped pieces of rock (the company was called Deckchair Stripes). What a nice little surprise. Witty and appropriate.

We’ve been doing some training recently where one of the key thoughts is: ‘Don’t go into a room or conversation asking what you are going to get. You will actually be in a far better place if you ask yourself what you can give.’ I think in its own small way, this is a neat design example of that.

Why is it often the case that such nice touches come from smaller brands? Even with tight margins, is it really beyond the pale to expect a bit of ‘surprise and delight’ from all kinds of sized brands? It’s the small things that can make a big difference. I was told last year about a lady who bought a new VW Beetle and was dismayed to learn it had not come with the little vase and false flower. It spoilt the whole feel good moment of taking delivery of a new car for her. All those thousands of pounds spent undermined by forgetting something that costs pence.

I guess the point is with a little thought, design can deliver a priceless engagement very cheaply. But conversely, for a ha’peth of tar the ship can be spoilt.