Chris Pearce states on “The Wall” blog: “There were few clowns at Digital Shoreditch’s Brands Day last week despite the large, black ‘Big Top’ tent lending a gritty, pop-up style feel to the event” I agree with him to a degree, there might have not been any clowns around, but there were no great enlightenings either, as the core of most of the morning presentations was “be innovative”, “focus your objectives”, “be consistent”, and other things that don’t sound quite specific. I don’t blame the presenters, that’s all they could possibly say in the 10 minute time slot that they were allocated, and that’s a pity, in my opinion.

Having said that, there were of course some good interventions and my top three are Ogilvy and Mather with ‘8 things we’ve learnt this year’, Digital Blinx talking about “Curator Generation” and Francesco d’Orazio on a proprietary tool called Social Graph.

The core of the Ogilvy and Mather intervention is summed up in the above cited article, so I will focus on the following two.

Hassan Mizra, from Digital Blinx, reminded us that it all started with Tumblr, and then came Pinterest and the absorption of Instagram by Facebook, and Facebook Camera. Weather it has happened because of Facebook fatigue, the lack of patience for written text or the need to quickly go thorough a great amount of information, it’s not a big spot to say that the last steps of social media platforms has been done through images. This new trend leads to the emerging of the so called “curator generation”: a younger generation of users who is eager to state their identity through selecting and sharing pre-existing online content as they select different garments to put together a style. But how can we effectively start an online dialogue with these people and drive engagement? One of the answers is the right use of hashtags and mentions, for categorising and making the content accessible (you can find all the details in their presentation) but the key question to ask yourself here is if you have the time and resource to curate non-branded content. Similar to when doing Social Media, it is important to recognise other people’s content as well as your own and finding a balance between the two elements. The suggested relation of creation / curation for brands is 30:70, which in my opinion is ideal and quite optimistic, thinking about what the majority of brands are doing at the moment.

Fancesco D’Orazio started talking about the bad habit of brands asking people to follow them but not really following back, and the fact that yes the brands listen, but only for conversations that mention them. This would be equal to trying to engage in conversation with people in a room and only listening to what the people are saying if they are talking about you, which in the real world is obviously mental, as it should be consider in the digital space. This approach don’t really give us any opportunity to discover anything about the people who are connected to our brand.
We have been asking the wrong question, we have been focusing on the vertical space between brand and consumer and not enough on the horizontal space between consumers. To avoid talking to a faceless audience, social data presents an amazing opportunity to understand who these people are and what the space between them is. This opportunity would be on two levels: on a micro-level, replying to one-to-one mentions and conversation, and on a macroscopic level, analysing their profile and the connections between them, who is influential in which field etc. creating a Brand Graph; a conjunction between a social graph and an interest graph (mapping interest, topics, and activity that people connected to the brand share). The weakness of Francesco presentation from my point of view was that he didn’t really enter into the technicalities of what’s the best way to collect all that “ultraviolet data”, which is usually much more fragmented and uncompleted – probably the most debated point in social media analysis at the moment. You can find all the details in their presentation.

On the whole I could say that these three interventions on Brand Day shared a common point of view: the necessity of really listening and following the consumer to offer him a positive and relevant interaction, as ultimately brands are built by a series of interactions not purely by association.

Seeking the truth is the key to Sir John Hegarty’s, who started his career at Saatchi & Saatchi, incredibly successful and long career. “Ruskin says that there is no beauty without truth, but there is also no profit without truth,” Hegarty says. He takes great pride in being honest and says how telling the truth has got him far. “If you’re wearing boxers it’s because of our Levi’s ad,” he says sharing a story about how in the early days of BBH they won the Levi’s pitch. “We decided to not show any creative work and instead only talk about the brand.” “We didn’t even have an office, but we told them the truth,” he says. Hegarty is a champion for being true to who you are – that honesty can change your life.

Whilst everyone talks about changing times and the decreasing attention spans of people, Hegarty says the challenges in the industry have long been the same; “We’ve always lived in the era of the sound byte.” It is easy to shock when actually it is relevance that you should be after. “We are losing an element of craft in the digital era,” Hegarty says. It is something you feel, not something you can articulate. He also says that there is a real danger with people thinking they can do everything – we are losing the appreciation and respect for specialists. “It’s nonsense to want someone who can do everything, you should hire people who are good at one thing,” Hegarty says. Like many other key industry people, Hegarty agrees that today is the best time to work in advertising; “It’s the most exciting time in the industry because it’s no longer a rich mans game. Creativity is now the media.”

“All brands should seek fame,” Hegarty continues. He says fame is fundamentally important to all brands. And when clients try to divert from taking about brands, sometimes it’s easier to talk about reputations instead; “What reputation would you like to have? What do you want to be known for?” Hegarty asks. Everyone wants a reputation. He sparks some debate in the audience after he states that all clients get the advertising they deserve, to which his old Haagen Dazs client, sitting in the audience, responds by asking what the clients role in all this is. Always the charmer and clearly a very good mediator, Hegarty talks about the importance of the likes of the Medicis to the development of art, and how creativity needs to live through, not just the creative agencies, but the clients who commission the work.

Quick to joke and burst out into laughter, Hegarty values the power of a good laugh; “Humour is a powerful tool,” he says. “What we do is really the icing on the cake – we are here to make people feel better about things.” Humour works both internally and in the external work. “Make people laugh,” he says is the route to good and successful work.

A question from the audience results in a hilarious finish to the talk and encourages Hegarty to share his infamous best brand example. “The Catholic church is the best brand in the world,” he says. “The logo has the founder’s son on it (try and put that through research today..), location is everything for them – they are on every street corner, it’s a global brand, they are open 7 days a week, and they were the first brand with a true manifesto – the 10 commandments,” Hegarty elaborates. “They cater for everything – births, marriages, deaths – and have expanded through the years,” he says. “At the height of their power and popularity they used the best musicians and painters in the world.” Hegarty talks about the Catholic church’s USP; “It couldn’t be better – if you don’t buy it you’ll go to hell.” Who could say no? Increasingly we are selling and monetising things that you cannot see and in that sense the church, selling belief and selling faith, was lightyears ahead of it’s time. Perhaps Hegarty is as well.

Keeping up with last week’s dog theme.. More on “Dog Photographer of the Year” (unfortunately not dogs dressed us as photographers or cameras, shame!)

In Friday’s Fresh Meat this week..

Building crowd-funded bridges in the Netherlands. The Luchtsingel, a 350m span wooden pedestrian bridge, will connect Rotterdam Central District to the Hofbogen. We believe that this area is currently in great need of street level quality. The Luchtsingel is a first step in transforming this area, creating livelihood and providing new slow-traffic connections. The Luchtsingel is crowd funded: help us fund this bridge! Your contribution will be rewarded with your name printed on one of the 17.000 planks. Or just buy more… In combination with other urban initiatives and developments at street level, the area will shortly gain quality.

To all us multitaskers – if you’re thinking about a pasta maker.. Researchers from MIT, Indiana University and Tufts University have developed a system that lets the user offload tasks to a computer when they have lots to do. Brainput uses a portable brain monitoring technology called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which scans the users brain and can detect when they are multitasking. An adaptive interface then adjusts the user’s workload and helps them out. This technology could be used to boost people’s performance and reduce their stress levels. Solovey now wants to investigate other cognitive states that can be reliably measured using fNIRS.

The interactive sculpture “Anyone who has a heart” by Andrew Small and Steven Almond was commissioned for the new Royal Manchester Childrens’ Hospital. The work breathes (blue) in default, the average breath rate of a human being. When interacted with the sculpture takes and then projects the heart rate (red). Infrared sensors around the sculpture when broken, create different colour and sequence patterns. The piece becomes a clock for five minutes on the hour. Textblue technology sends an information text to phones within a 30m radius.

MTV turns expired credit cards into guitar picks and taps into the ucycling trend.. “All credit and debit cards have an expiration date. Recognizing this, MTV created a poster that provides a branded experience where they created a machine that punches guitar picks out of the plastic cards. Although people don’t generally walk around with expired credit cards in their wallets, it’s a great example of how upcycling can be turned into a branding opportunity.”

Work out for the environment! The Green Energy Gym is a free outdoor gym that uses power from the people to create electricity. When someone uses one of the gym’s cardio machines, their energy expenditure is converted into electricity–the more people that use the machines, the more electricity generated. Each piece of equipment can generate between 50-400 watts of electricity, with the average user generating between 50-100 watts of electricity. The human-generated electricity is currently being used to light up the gym at night- bright neon LED lights glow around the gym’s perimeter to help extend the gym’s usage hours. Eventually, The Great Outdoor Gym Company hopes the electricity generated from the gyms can be used to power local buildings or be fed into the National Grid. It reminds me of the French Contrex water ad from last September in which women cycled on exercise bikes to power a billboard of a guy stripping.

In case of an emergency EAT this book. Landrover has created an edible manual for their adventurous and more extreme drivers. The “Survival Guide” is provided as a manual supplement in Dubai in case drivers get stranded in the Arabian Desert. An all-in-one emergency kit, the cover of the manual is made of the same reflective material used in the army so yu can signal for help. The metal binding of the manual can be made into skewers so you can cook any animals you’ve hunted after you’ve read page 28 in the manual which tells you what sources of food to look for. The manual also has information on how to make a shelter (if you’re not keen to stay in the car itself!?), build a fire and includes a map if you want to try to find your own way out.

The shocking truth about school lunches – one little girl can make a difference! Nine-year-old Martha Payne from Argyll in Scotland began writing a blog providing a first-hand view of school lunches. NeverSeconds started as a writing project with her Dad and the blog, featuring photos, reviews and ratings, has received a large amount of online and press attention from around the world. NeverSeconds has had almost 400,000 visitors and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver even tweeted: “Shocking but inspirational blog. Keep going, big love from Jamie x.” The blog includes photographs of Martha’s daily £2 lunch, along with a review for each meal, a rating of how good it tastes on the “Food-o-meter”, the number of mouthfuls, a health rating, and even if there were any pieces of hair in her food. Martha has already made a difference as yesterday she blogged “My Dad met the council today and its official that we are allowed unlimited salads, fruit and bread! I’m really happy that all of my friends can help themselves to good stuff.”

Anyone can be the head chef on Restaurant Day.. On Restaurant Day anyone can set up a restaurant, café or a bar for a day. It can be anywhere: at your home, at the office, on a street corner, in your garden or inner courtyard, at a park, or on the beach – only your imagination is the limit. Originated in Finland in 2011 the first Restaurant day saw 40 pop up restaurants around Helsinki – now in 12 countries over 600 restaurants have already registered for the 19th of May.

V&A Friday Late: Dinner is Served
Friday 25th May 6.30-10pm
“From the grace and simplicity of the Queensberry Hunt display to the ritual and performance of mealtimes and their material culture, indulge in the many pleasures of dining – in form, function and feasting.”

I went to listen to Sir Paul Smith at the V&A on Tuesday and I have to say I was impressed – it was one of the best talks I’ve ever been too. Surprisingly he was genuine and real, honest and humorous – sadly nothing you would initially expect from a fashion genius. I was blown away! For what he spoke about, and more, read the post “Savile Row meets Mr. Bean”
The V&A is selling really cool vintage posters in conjunction with their British Design exhibition.. More selection in store, some are also available online.

Sir Paul Smith had a chat, as he himself called it, at the V&A Museum this past Tuesday. It was one of the best “chats” I have ever listened to. Sir Paul was genuine and real, humorous and inspirational. The audience loved him – not least because he gave little presents to everyone who asked a question at the end! With my hand eagerly raised, I failed to get a turn in the sea of keen fashionistas, but it didn’t take away from the man and his thoughts and ideas.
Known for his unique flare for detail and the colourfully striped Mini Cooper’s, Paul Smith describes his designs as “Savile Row meets Mr Bean.” He loves heritage and he loves tradition, and whilst there is a very strong sense of Britishness in his work, he bases his success on individualism. His brand is based on individualism; from small details in his designs; a colourful buttonhole here or a different type of button there, to his concept stores around the world. This individualism has made him one the biggest and most successful brands in Japan with 265 stores around the country.

The Paul Smith individualism is carefully applied to shape the in store experience as well as the design of his stores. “People have too much choice,” Paul says. “You need to understand how you can make something feel more special. You need to ask yourself the question – how do you stand out?” He says he often looks around the different colourful fruit stalls around Soho and while one of them is really organized with fruit stacked in neat piles, another stall is really messy – even that is a differentiating factor. “Window displays shouldn’t be underestimated.” The Paul Smith brand now employs 11 full time staff to work on store design. “I think it’s really sad when so many designers make all their shops the same,” Paul says. It’s disappointing that so many give up the amazing opportunities that come with owning spaces around the world. You need to do the “fuck you” to the corporate world and all the places that look the same, he says. “You’ve got to build the Eiffel Tower, something that sticks out.” Nowhere is this ethos applied better than in his LA store – a huge pink box that most definitely sticks out.

“Everything we do is done with effort. Effort is free of charge,” Paul says. His label doesn’t just make clothes – they make accessories, home ware and even more recently bikes. “We need to make and do things that can enhance the business,” he says. “I started selling objects to break the ice in my first shop,” he says. By having something to show and talk about, something people could fiddle with, made customers feel more comfortable and relaxed in a small space. He is still constantly finding new ways to enhance the brand – he even works as a freelance journalist writing articles and taking photos, most recently shooting the June Jubilee cover for Tatler magazine. “I write a weekly blog on the website but it’s not always about fashion. I write about things I find interesting – a real cocktail of things,” he explains.

The importance of doing “many things” is key not only to Paul’s personality, but his business. “Design of course, communication, individualism, personality and quality,” he lists the crucial elements of life and work. You should never assume anything, Paul says, but instead always check things out. This personal mantra – “Never assume” – is even written on his coat of arms.

Inspiration is all around according to Paul; “You can find inspiration in everything, if you can’t then you’re not looking properly.” He says you simply need to be aware of it; “Look around, but don’t follow.” It’s evident that where most of us might se ordinary things, Paul seems something more magical. Sometimes his inspiration from the surrounding environment can become very literal; Paul has made unique fabrics from photos he has taken at the Chelsea Flower Show, he has created a Union Jack design made with old postage stamps, and after looking at colourful bath houses in Suffolk he transformed the colours into stripy jumpers.

A Nottingham lad, Paul started out as a racing cyclist, but after a bad accident he started hanging out at the local Bell Inn and got to know young designers and art students. This made him more interested in a creative career. Humorously he talks about his introductory days into the creative world; “I started going home and telling my dad that I was really interested in Bauhaus. He asked me what it was and I just said how interested I was in Bauhaus. I didn’t even know what it was, the whole world just fascinated me.” He then went on to work for one of the student designers and together they opened a shop; “My first job was being a shop assistant. I didn’t know anything about shops – I said I did, but really I didn’t.”

Paul kept in touch with the art school friends he had made and started dating one of the teachers, Pauline. Pauline is now his wife; “She was my teacher. She taught me everything I know about designing and making clothes,” Paul says. Through Pauline’s expertise in the world of couture Paul says he learnt to make everything properly – the importance of making things by hand still lives strongly in his work. Pauline encouraged Paul to start his own shop – his first shop was a 12 square foot room with no windows. “I only opened the shop on Fridays and Saturdays, and Monday-Thursday I worked doing any job that was available to provide for my family,” Paul says. This gave him clarity in what he was doing; “Life and work is definitely about balance,” he says, “between things that are your aspiration and the things that pay the bills.” A lecture by Edward de Bono he once heard really hit it home for Paul; “The job always changes you, you never change the job.”

Lateral thinking is the foundation of Paul’s life; “I always talk about making room to break the rules,” he says. “I always turn things around and ask – what if we do it this way?” He says it’s important to always ask “why” and “what if” – “I am curious – childlike, but not childish.” To think in this way he says he has to remain free in his head and not let it get too cluttered. He never looks at magazines; “It’s important to know what’s out there but I don’t want my brain to get too cluttered with information.” Keeping his mind free and open is very important. “I don’t have a computer and I don’t have an email address. I understand the modern world but personally I don’t clutter my head with information,” he says. To this the audience applauds. Who hadn’t wished they could switch off like that! There is a lot to learn from Sir Paul Smith and the balance he strikes in life. “Make room to break the rules” may be his motto, but Paul Smith creates his own rules.

Inspired by the media map Forbes created for the US, the UK map is not based on total number of clicks; if it was the map would only show the sites with the most traffic. The data is normalised, showing the sites and stories which are most increased compared to their average readership across the UK.

I’m absolutely obsessed by getting a dog at the moment.. I really want a Beagle, but this skateboarding Bulldog is quite funny too.. Max’s owner actually taught him how to jump on the board and push it with one leg!

A marketer’s guide to Pintrest is a cool visual guide to Pintrest, check it out!

Imagine living on £1 a day! Live Below the Line is a challenge to live below the poverty line for 5 days to increase awareness of the 1.4 billion people who live on £1 a day. Are you game to try? Alain Sylvain recently spoke about the challenge at the PSFK Conference in NYC.

Finnish supermarket introduces slow isles! A counter move against super effective super fast shopping experiences. K-citymarket in Finland has introduced slow check out isles aimed mainly for the elderly or disabled customers, but anyone who enjoys a more relaxing shopping experience is welcome. The new isle was introduced following a survey conducted amongst young disabled customers who described their experience of the check out isles and stressful and anxious. Now the slow isles even have armchairs for the people waiting in line.

Puma: The world’s fastest purchase, Mexico. To offer a counter example to the Finnish slow isles, there’s a campaign from Puma Mexico incentivising people to buy as fast as possible – the faster you bought the bigger the discount you received at the till.

Lynx Anarchy: The world’s first invisible ad, Australia. People passing by a street in Sydney were handed polarised glasses which unlocked the content of invisible LCD screens, upon which the visuals couldn’t be seen by the naked eye. And in typical Lynx fashion, the content was out there, with couples making out and random dogs swimming in a room of water!

Cannes Film Festival kicks off next week! Before the advertising crowd heads over to the Mediterranean, it’s time to celebrate film! Marilyn Monroe is the face of the Film Festival this year to commemorate the 65 year anniversary of the festival, and the 65 year anniversary of her passing.

London Museums are opening their doors in the dark for Museums at Night next weekend 18-20th May. Expect fun and quirky activities, no Ben Stiller chasing after objects that come to life. Or who knows..

I went to hear famous industrial designer Kenneth Grange speak at the V&A on Tuesday evening as part of their British Design series. He kicked off his career by working at the Festival of Britain in 1951 and has since then famously designed iconic products for Kodak, British Railways, Kenwood including the London black cabs and the Intercity 125 train. What he spoke of (including a story about putting a fake in the Design Museum) and my thoughts around it can be found in the post. Next for me in the British Design series is Paul Smith next week!

Last Friday I travelled up to my old college in Oxford to hear my hero former Finnish President and Nobel Peace Prize winner (2008) Martti Ahtisaari speak of his amazing career as a peace negotiator (he has negotiated peace in Kosova, Namibia, Indonesia amongst others). He started work in the Finnish Foreign Office, moving into the UN and after his presidency (1994-2000) set up the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), an independent non-profit organisation based in Finland. Incredibly inspirational – he made all us Scandinavians present at the talk consider a career in the Foreign Office! What he spoke of and my thoughts around it can be found in the post “An eternally misplaced person“.

The Rooftop Film Club at the Queen of Hoxton is now taking bookings for June.. Check out their exciting program and act fast – tickets sells out quickly!

There are very interesting plays on at the Royal Court Theatre. “Love, Love, Love” has received excellent reviews and all of London is quickly booking tickets. The revival of “Posh” has received a lot of attention in the press and seems to be a funny summer night out. I’m definitely going!

The nation was shocked on Thursday when Prince Charles presented the weather forecast on BBC Scotland during a visit around the offices. Will he become a regular? You gotta love his surprising sense of humour! Camilla also took a turn and took her new job as weather girl slightly more seriously..

Have a great weekend!

“Ahtisaari is the only man I know who has made peace on three continents.” Kofi Annan

Martti Ahtisaari is a hero of mine. As the President of Finland (1994-2000) he entered us into the EU and helped our country fight severe economic depression, but the majority of his career has been spent working for the foreign office and the UN making him a highly respected peace negotiator and a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Choosing not to put himself forward for a second term in office, after his presidency Ahtisaari set up Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), an independent non-profit organisation based in Finland that “works to resolve conflict and to build sustainable peace.” During his astonishing career Ahtisaari has negotiated peace from Namibia and Kosovo to most recently Indonesia. Part of the group ‘The Elders’ with Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, and a champion of women’s involvement in peace talks, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 “for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts.”

On Friday the 4th of May as a guest of the Scandinavian Society, he spoke at my old college at the University of Oxford. I was lucky enough to get to talk to him and shake his hand.

“I have never been neutral in my tasks, but tried to be an honest broker,” Ahtisaari says. Talk about peace negotiations is always stirred towards neutrality – how attainable or unattainable it is – but according to Ahtisaari neutrality gets you nowhere; “If you’re neutral you’re not doing anything, you’re just waiting for them to come to a conclusion,” he says. Instead of being neutral you have to be on the side of both parties at the same time, you have to understand the element that is important to both parties. “You have to be trusted by both and hated by both at the same time, that’s when you know you’re doing a good job.”

He compares entering into a peace negotiation with making a financial investment, saying how research is the key in both scenarios. “You have to study before you enter a conflict. It’s like making an investment – I’m putting my time and money into this.” It doesn’t always work out and sometimes his team advises him that the job in question is not right for them. “It’s also important to test out if the parties are serious. Otherwise you could end up wasting a lot of time.”

After decades of both positive and negative outcomes, Ahtisaari is still optimistic. “I believe all conflicts can be solved. I’m not in the business of creating more frozen conflicts.” However he says that there is a real impotence in the international community to deal with conflicts. “I can’t believe we haven’t solved the Palestine conflict yet.” Ahtisaari talks about his work towards peace in Namibia in 1977-1990 and explains that being so deeply invested and involved for such a long period of time and during the entire peace process is now rare. He says the process and involvement in conflicts has changed; “You don’t see that kind of process from start to finish anymore.”

In the changing scenery of international mediations collective power is stronger than ever. Ahtisaari says that Kosovo has been the biggest challenge he has faced yet. Entering the negotiations, he says it was crucial for him to have the backing of the international contact group that had been formed to solve the conflict. “I wouldn’t take any assignment if I didn’t have the actors behind me and we didn’t have an understanding of how the conflict was going to be solved.” He says he wanted to make sure that the outcome of the negotiations would come directly from the collective of contact group countries and not from himself. To establish this he asked all countries in the group to deliver the same pre-written and signed document to the involved parties on the other side. “I think they all, except for Russia who had an issue with one of the paragraphs in the document, delivered it.” He says this demonstrated their full trust and support as well as the perimeters to what Ahtisaari was about to do. The collective should always be stronger than the individual, Ahtisaari is very clear about this; “Alone you can’t do it.”

NGOs are incredibly important in the continuing work towards peace and as independent organisations they are often able to get in where governments with their strict foreign policies and alliances simply cannot. “We can take the risk and protect the government,” Ahtisaari says. If the organisations weren’t able to do that, governments couldn’t get involved in the first place. However the support and financial backing of governments is crucial, and in turn the independent nature of the NGOs protects the mutual goal of peace. “I always say that if we win we share the glory, if we fail we take the blame.” Ahtisaari says how important it is to give credit to all the parties involved, even if they don’t deserve it. You have to have a healthy confidence about these things, he adds, but says that you have to be careful when going public with diplomacy. As an individual you have to stay in the background and you can’t rally up the media. “When I was negotiating peace I couldn’t at the same time be an activist. I’m lucky because I could always use my colleagues who were at the barricades, I couldn’t have done what I have without them.”

Ahtisaari’s relationship with the press is interesting – at times a useful tool, the media can prove to be a hindrance in his negotiations. “In Indonesia we decided that nothing was actually agreed until it was formally agreed, and no one would speak to the press,” he says. “The press hated it, but it was vital for the negotiations and ensured me that the parties were serious about solving the conflict.” He talks about getting the priorities right. “It’s more important that I solve the problem than I’m nice to you.” And Ahtisaari is good at focusing on the things that matter – he gets the job done and does everything in his power to make that happen. “I don’t think I’m particularly loved by the press in my own country, but so what,” he says.

Born in Viipuri, part of Finnish Karelia that was lost in the war against the Soviet Union in 1944 and a place where my own grandmother is from, Ahtisaari was evacuated from his home as a young boy making him an “eternally misplaced person”, as he himself calls it. He says this experience of losing his roots so early on made him much more sensitive and has enabled him to help others that share his experiences. This kind of emotional intelligence is important; how could you even keep emotions out of it, Ahtisaari asks. “It all depends on how you treat people – in every day life, not just peace negotiations,” he says. “Everyone has the right to dignity.” He speaks respectfully of his close friend and fellow Elder Kofi Annan and shows admiration towards the fact that Annan showed no hostility towards his captors when he was released from imprisonment. “I don’t think I could have done that,” Ahtisaari says. But it’s important because everything comes down to respecting every human being. “We all have to agree that we will change our behaviour,” Ahtisaari says. “I have made my career in talking to people condemned as terrorists,” he continues and says how we are too quick to label them as terrorists. “It doesn’t get you anywhere.” You have to understand people and all the different sides to them, he says, but it doesn’t mean you have to agree with them.

Women are particularly good at this kind of emotional intelligence Ahtisaari says. “Women are more keen to protect their families and they know how the family suffers if we don’t get peace.” He says he always makes effort to meet with local women’s organisations wherever he is and says it helps him understand the realities of the conflict for both parties. Ahtisaari shares a story from Kosovo telling about his meeting with women’s organisations from both sides. When meeting with the Kosovo Serbs and the Kosovo Albanians they had to meet the men separately at different times in different locations, he says, but when it came to meeting with the women’s organisations from both sides we could all meet together.

It seems there is hope. But after decades of working towards peace on three different continents Ahtisaari is still baffled: “I ask myself why is it so hard for people to start cooperating?”

Kenneth Grange spoke at the V&A on Tuesday the 8th of May as a part of the British Design Series – as a Scandinavian into design, and a planner worried about the lack of importance that brands that are not Apple place on design today, I was there to hear him out.

Kenneth Grange started his career by working at the Festival of Britain in 1951 doing display design for the homes and gardens and the sports pavillions. Since then he has worked on iconic designs from London black taxis and parking meters to lighters and trains for big brands like Kodak, Kenwood and British Rail. “I got through a lot of junk”, he says. Design Studio Pentagram that Kenneth set up in London was known as a one stop shop – from graphics and architecture to product design. Although Kenneth says only one client ever bought all three.”London is not Copenhagen in terms of design,” but to my pleasure he says we have a lot to learn from the Scandinavians. “I love Wallander. That show was the first ever to show all modern interiors on TV.”

At the V&A Kenneth starts off by discussing the 2012 Olympics branding calling the logo confusing and vulgar. Comparing the branding and the design of the 1948 Games with that of 2012, it makes you wonder what happened to the five rings? Now there is branding for everything you do – we have created brands for brands, he says. Aren’t the Olympics enough of a brand?

In the 1970s Kenneth designed the Intercity 125 trains for British Rail. Those were the “Golden years” of design when everyone still shared a simplified attitude to graphics. State owned institutes were still spending money on design. “I was asked to make a decoration for a model for a new train, but I started to make other models in secret to make a case for a new design for the train. When I then showed them to the board they thought “that smartass there has got a better idea” – and I got the job.” Kenneth still loves his trains;
“My chest pumps up when I see that train.” He says he has been lucky as budget cuts have kept his trains in service for longer than expected.

Kodak, Kenwood and loudspeakers clients were real patrons of design, Kenneth says. Now there are less patrons. Actually, I can only think of one example today – Apple, I could not quote others, he continues. Kenneth shares his thoughts about how companies used to believe in design and they made a living out of it. They used design to meet commercial consortiums, design was a part of their strenght as a business. Modern designers are much more commerially minded and move towards marketing, Kenneth says. He has always been like that as well: “I’m a commercial animal, I like the idea of things being successful.” “I like to actually make something and make money and give employment.”

There was a time when less was more. Today more is less – we make so many versions of the same thing, he says. Designs and new models are churned out much faster these days. Every tech brand has a new model and a new style coming out at least every 6 months – it is difficult to be consistent or really establish any competitive standpoint in terms of design on such a short timespan. Kenneth shares a story about how he designed a new iron in the late 60s that hadn’t been redesigned since the 30s – his 60s iron went on to live for the next 15 years. That wouldn’t be possible today, he says.

I was lucky to get to work with Kodak for a long time and I took on the obligations of the firm. Kenneth says he now feels extremely bad for Kodak. There was a real story of affluence available to these large companies – they could sell anything they made, Kenneth says. And he says Kodak founded it all extremely well. “We were all generous towards each other and I bet Apple now is the same. We behaved uncommonly well.” “My role in branding was to make the products more attractive and desirable. I had no option but to make them better, make the work better, make the usage a bigger pleasure.”

The importance of design is a big topic at the moment, Forbes recently published an article on the subject calling present day the “Era of Design” and arguing that as design has been democratized, people have grown to expect great design and become more in tune to it. The article is a call to action for companies to understand the importance of design. Here here I say!

“You see, expecting great design is no longer the preserve of a picky design-obsessed urban elite—that aesthetically sensitive clique who‘d never dare leave the house without their Philippe Starck eyewear and turtleneck sweaters and buy only the right kind of Scandinavian furniture. Instead, there’s a new, mass expectation of good design: that products and services will be better thought through, simplified, made more intuitive, elegant and more enjoyable to use.” Whether it is due to Apple, or Ikea, or the internet and the likes on Pintrest, design is becoming a bog standard, not a luxury. But as Kenneth Grange says, is design really something that lives in the heart of companies today? “What is certain is that the design bar has been raised and design-oriented businesses are winning,” Forbes writes. When will the others catch on?

Even the UK Government Digital Service has released its 7 principles on design on a website attempting to break the usual design standards of messy and difficult to navigate Government websites. Now if only the Government followed these principles all around.

1. Start with needs
2. Do less
3. Design with data
4. Do the hard work to make it simple
5. Iterate. Then iterate again.
6. Build for inclusion
7. Understand context
8. Build digital services, not websites
9. Be consistent, not uniform
10. Make things open: it makes things better

Kenneth Grange, cheeky man who tells a story about putting a fake version of his famous parking meter (“There are only 3 of the meters left in the whole world and the only one we were allowed to borrow was in such bad condition”) into the Design Museum exhibition on his work last year; “I only told the curator the day the exhibition closed,” says he still feels obligated towards every damn thing he’s ever made. “We live in the culture of bettering, the culture of not having a choice. Everything you do has to be better than it was yesterday,” he finishes off by urging people to redesign the handle of the Arga cooker. “You can’t even hold the damn thing.”

Helen Thompson’s photographs, and other images from the Sony World Photography Awards, are at the Embankment Galleries, Somerset House, London WC2 until 20 May.

Some interesting things from the past few weeks..

A few weeks back Richard Huntington spoke at the APG’s first “Noisy Thinking” event – more upcoming events have now been announced for the series on the 10th and 26th of May.

IPA’s 4th TouchPoints study, on how we spend our time and money, how we communicate, how we feel, our media usage, using new technology and being connected, has been released and the highlights were reported in Campaign yesterday. Interestingly we are spending an increased amount of time per day doing nothing in particular; currently almost 1.5h per day (up 13min/day from 2010 and 26min/day from 2008).

Contagious is writing about the embrace of hack culture, something we spoke about in Spirit of the Nation.. “Your brand is now a software company, so it’s time to embrace hack culture. Software is eating the world, with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and disruptive startups challenging established business models in every sector. But rather than fighting change, some brands are beginning to embrace its underlying culture – by opening up APIs, hosting hack days and even accelerating and funding the disruptors.” Interesting case studies from Telefonica, EMI, Honda and Ford.

Hackers in action.. MIT hackers recently transformed the MIT Green building into a live Tetris game with colourful lights..

We often forget that computer illiteracy is a genuine problem – if you’re a clueless internet user, you’re a prime target for fraud, for example.  8.2m Brits ‘remain offline’ and ’81% of computer literate older people feel more part of modern society’ says Age Concern. Go On UK is a partnership that aims to bring internet savvy-ness to everyone in the UK.

trendwatching.com’s May briefing “(R)etail (R)evolution” on e-commerce – includes interesting growth predictions on the growth of e-commerce around the world; predicted to grow fastest in Europe “European e-commerce sales will grow by 78% by 2016, to USD 230 billion (Source: Forrester, February 2012).”

The Sunday Times’ Rich List 2012 is released this Sunday. In the lead-up they have been running a funny ad campaign resizing celebrities according to their wealth.

Competing for the crown of best social media fashion house.. Trying to overtake Burberry? Oscar de la Renta recently became the first fashion house to share live on Pintrest.. They “live-pinned” the Bridal Show from NYC as photos were taken of models backstage getting ready and before they walked on the runway.. “Pinterest has got a lot of momentum right now, and we want to be involved with people [and platforms] who have momentum. As with all of the experiments we try here, we want people to spend time paying attention to us, not our competitors,” said the company CEO.

Needless to say I have travel fever.. Fotopedia is a new amazing that gives you visual guides (high quality photos taken by talented photographers) to destinations around the world to inspire your travels! 9 different guides so far, they even have a visual “Women of the World” guide “a poignant tribute to the beauty, diversity and strength of women of the world.”

An attempt to stop people from snoozing.. Anywake is a free alarm clock app from Lufthansa which wakes you up with the sounds of a randomly selected city. If you, in your sleep-addled state, can guess which city it’s trying to convince you that you’re in, you’ll be rewarded with discounted fares to that destination. So it’s annoying, but then you would have been annoyed anyway. Then you can go on holiday to make it all better. Nobody makes you get up early on holiday.

The 2012 London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) programme “Shining a light on the stories of the world” is now out with some exciting partnerships with “the world’s most edgy, provocative and political theatre makers” from 12 different countries including Brazil, Iran, Belarus and Tunisia. 12th June-15th July the festival fills London with exciting international theatre. My favourite so far is “GATZ” – a word-for-word staging (not a play!) of The Great Gatsby – experimental theatre as its best. It took NYC by storm in 2010 and now LIFT is bringing it to the West End for the first time.. I am sold! Although it does last for the whole day with 3 breaks..

To finish off an interactive infographic on the success of One Direction.. Enjoy!

Helsinki Design Capital 2012 app Notebook encourages people to observe and upload photos of functional and disfunctional design they come across in their daily lives. The idea is to share opinions and feedback and to give recommendations on how to improve surroundings through design. “When you see something functional and beautiful, or something you think needs a better design, take a photo and add it to Notebook. If you agree or disagree with what others have posted, leave a comment.”

Our Finnish favourite and most successful fashion designer Paola Suhonen, behind the label IvanaHelsinki, is studying film making in LA. She makes interesting short films as well as beautiful mood films for her fashion label, having recently finished her first feature lenght film “7Heaven Love Ways” with a great soundtrack by Chip Taylor.. “Velvet Lake” for A/W 2011 is set in gorgeous wintery Finnish scenery to traditional melancholic Finnish dance music.. Something to cool you down on a hot spring day like this! Summery moodfilm “Where the fuck is my sailor?” for IvanaHelsinki S/S 2011 collection is also worth a look!

A new photo gallery “Laboratory” in Helsinki, located in the basement of a design shop, is attempting to find new kinds of friendships between art and corporate sponsorship. “Corporate cooperation is important for Laboratory and one of its aims is to find and test new partnership models. The gallery owners are hoping to introduce new ways for companies to support the arts and make it easier for the corporate world and arts to cooperate. In addition to that Nokia is the main cooperation partner of Laboratory, the gallery owners will look for a suitable sponsor for each artist. With the help of a sponsor, it will be possible to support the artists financially also when the exhibitions are being prepared. An artist can get a sponsor that shares the same values with him or her. The partnership may even lead to more long-term cooperation between the artist and the company. There is no standard model for cooperation; it will vary depending on the partners’ wants and needs. Martin Parr’s exhibition will show a making of video that was filmed using Nokia mobile phones, for example. “The uncertain economic situation has made companies quite cautious about new kinds of sponsorship. Photographic artists and other people in the field of arts, on the other hand, have expressed a surprisingly positive attitude,” Mäenpää says.”

Everyone in Finland is talking about the upcoming controversial retro scifi film “Iron Sky“. The film, made by independent Finnish filmmakers, is based on the premise that “In 1945 the Nazis went to the Moon. In 2018 they are coming back!” – That the Nazis have been hiding on the dark side of the moon for the past 70 years and are now coming back for revenge. Interestingly the filmmakers crowd funded almost 700,000€ of the budget through pre-orders, merchandise sales and actual investment opportunities. It opened at the Berlin film festival to mixed reviews, but people seem excited to see it and BBC’s Mark Kermode gave it a thumbs up! Check out the trailer!