Toluu

Breadline Design

Making a living on the design frontline

Branding ChristmasJanuary 3

Two years back asking a ten year old when the Christmas season started they’d likely have said when the red trucks adorned with a soft drink supping santa hit the TV screens. These adverts have been replaced now, which i think was a big mistake. What Coke were close to achieveing with their annual Christmas TV campaign is nothing short of the brand Holy Grail: They were gradually attaching their brown sugary liquid to the birth of christ, and to the second happiest day of every child’s year. No mean feat by any means.    

So how on earth were they managing this? In two ways. First they masterfully crafted a visually rich advert with a catchy tune, and secondly, but much more importantly they left it virtually unchanged and repeated it year after year after year. Combine this with the urban myth that they created the red Sana Claus and you have a very powerful campaign that was beginning to span a generation.

Coca Cola aren’t alone in their efforts to brand Christmas. Perfume behemoths Chanel now have their eyes firmly fixed on a similar Christmas tie in. Chanel’s advert, featuring a runaway Australian actress and an absurd star-gone-missing-meets-beautiful-no one plot is high budget, blunt with i

Woolworths on the RocksDecember 11 2008

Today while weaving my way through a packed town shopping centre I caught sight of an over sized 50% off sign adorning a belegured Woolworth’s store. Being the credit-crunched designer that I am I wasn’t about to pass up on the chance of some cheap xmas pressies, and having seen the articles about the chains imminent demise I crossed the threshold and immersed my self in all things Woollies.

It’s been years since I’d visited Woolworths but It didn’t take long to see where the store was going wrong. Basic things were missing, like cleans floors and clear divides between product lines. To many of the shelves had vast empty gaps, and with no staff on the floor there was no one to ask for help in locating products. But the devils in the details, and here too they failed. The DVD’s didn’t have cellophane wrappers, giving the place a blockbuster feel, and the grubby HI-FI playing the in-store music was all to obvious behind the counter. Even the tired in-store branding felt wrong, with the red and greys harping back to a yester-year of beige PC’s and inflatable furniture.        

The store should be the ultimate brand experience, the place where the consumer is literally “inside” the brand, and when details slide it’s not long before the experience suffers.

That said It’s easy to be negative, to

Playing Card DesignDecember 1 2008

I love classic card design, so a while back I designed an ace of spades, and more recently an ace of hearts. I’ve included both below. I hope to eventually design a full deck over the coming months, and I’ll post up my efforts as I go.   

Brand BuildingsNovember 18 2008

With the world economy going down the pan faster than a fat man that down to fast, banks have been closing and reporting loses left right and centre. Bank brands that once seemed so strong now appear frail and weak, with the biggest falling hardest.

I was on the  Royal Bank of Scotland’s website the other day checking the money I didn’t have was still there, when I came across an article on their Daisy Wheel logo. I was struck by a comment they made about bank identity back in the 1940’s, before big logos and bigger brands:

“For the banks, it was more important to convey a message of solidity and stability (for example, through a handsome, stone-built branch in a prestigious location) than to create a unique identity” 

Back then an impressive, solid building clearly reflected directly onto the business and brand that owned (or was perceived) to own it. Now every bank brand manager would sell his grandma if he could inject some “solidity and stability” into his banks image. Simply slapping a logo onto the front door isn’t gonna cut it.   

Curiously many of the aforementioned handsome stone buildings can be seen in and around town and city centres across Britain, but in most cases a

Recent Logo DesignOctober 19 2008

A logo I designed recently for a friends business, ayomedia in Newcastle. I’ve tried to make the design futuristic as well as give it a sense of speed.