21 February 2012

Don’t forget the research on Jif Lemon Day.

jif lemon by Joel Penkman

Joël Penkman’s brilliant paintings exude childhood nostalgia. Jif Lemon – egg tempera on gesso board

In perhaps a rather limited research poll, it turns out that young children aren’t aware that today is Jif Lemon Day. And while I am a Catholic atheist, I was saddened and astounded when they didn’t appreciate that it is Shrove Tuesday. “But it is Pancake Day Daddy” replied my middle child. (There’s always one ready to pipe up in a research group isn’t there!) I swear she is more excited at the prospect of gorging herself on refined flour and sugar that she was on Christmas Day.

So given that my youngest is not even 10 months old and she couldn’t actively participate in my focus group, the responses from my 4 and 10 year old perhaps shouldn’t have come as a big surprise, given that our store cupboard ingredients don’t include that brilliantly designed Jif Lemon squeezy bottle.

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Posted in David, Jif Lemon Day, Observations, Packaging, Research, Straplines
27 January 2012

Enter the dragon.

In honour of Chinese New Year this week (the year of the dragon, if you’re struggling with the title of this post?) I took a Chinese-themed cultural jaunt to the Chinese Arts Centre, via China Town.

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Posted in Art, Colour, Culture, Design, Matt, Observations
26 January 2012

Tricolour.

Hectic start to the year, as always; only just had chance to download the shots from my camera, and thought I’d make a quick post using some.

During the Christmas break (which already seems a distant memory) I travelled to Paris for New Year’s Eve whilst squeezing as much culture into five days as possible. I saw and did plenty of interesting stuff, a brief snapshot of which is shown below with some colour dips — as previously discussed on this blog — for good measure. Interesting results as ever.

 

Paris dip_graffiti

 

Paris dip_La Defense

 

Paris dip_Oscar the Grouch

Happy (belated) 2012.

Posted in Colour, Culture, Design, Matt, Observations, Travel
22 December 2011

The ghosts of Christmas cards past.

Display until JAN 06_christmas card

One I designed in 1995, where the idea of display was the idea

I may have missed something, but surely a prerequisite of a Christmas card is to be able to display it?

We’re either: a) deeply unpopular, or b) the traditional Christmas card is dead. I’m certain that from the rise in ecards we’ve received that it’s the latter (let’s hope so). I’m sure that it won’t come as any surprise that the traditional card has pretty much had its day, or at the very least, the corporate card has. As a consultancy, we’re asked less and less every year to design them for our clients and this year we’ve not designed one for ourselves.

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Posted in Christmas cards, David, Design, Observations
9 December 2011

Take a dip.

Clients have often remarked on how engaging they find our use of colour. Now, not wanting to give too many trade secrets away, we’ve often created unique colourways by referring back to initial research and colour dipping various elements. We’re not suggesting this is anything new, or even particularly clever, and we’re not going to add a ProcessTM to the What we do page on our website. It’s still freewheeling intelligence and problem solving that interests us most, but this technique can generate some refreshing and unexpected results.

The barraclough team have used this technique to tailor client presentations and even personalise their email footers. What’s interesting, is that even when images are chosen for emotional rather than colour-theory based reasons, the resulting colour combinations are rarely something you’d place side by side.

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Posted in Colour, Matt, Observations
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