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Interesting article in the London Times about Barclays and its approach to branch re-design. It picks out Apple stores, The Science Museum and obviously, Tesco, as being inspirations for the project.

"At the beginning of last year, Ms Oppenheimer poached Helen Dodd, a retail design expert, from Tesco.

Ms Dodd, who has spent 20 years working out how to attract customers to shops and keep them there, trooped 250 Barclays customers and staff through the Northampton warehouse to test the new layout and technology.

Nothing was sacred, not even the good old British queue with the black tape barriers. The new Manchester branch is experimenting with a ying-yang-shaped queue, broken up by waist-height pillars housing computer games. The branch's space-age information desk is pure Apple store, while, according to Ms Dodd: “We're trialling a lot of different queueing methodologies - people do PhDs on this stuff.”

The childrens' play area is inspired by the Science Museum. There is no glass separating tellers from customers, to stop people from raising their voices, something that Ms Dodd believes makes banking more stressful.

Curves are used to make customers feel “warmer”, while the glass frontage will make women more inclined to enter. “At the moment, they don't feel welcomed into branches,” Ms Dodd said. Concierges, dressed in uniforms by the designer Jeff Banks, will issue customers with tickets telling them how long they must wait and even if they would be served more quickly if they went to another branch.

Getting the right doormat was key - customers like dry feet, so Ms Dodd found a mat that dried wet soles within four steps. The Manchester branch operates to the same timetable as other retailers, with late night and weekend opening."

Posted by Ed Cotton Great profile piece on Threadless, a 2.0 brand, in this month's Inc magazine.

"Nickell started talking about his company. Threadless, he explained, ran design competitions on an online social network. Members of the network submitted their ideas for T-shirts -- hundreds each week -- and then voted on which ones they liked best. Hundreds of thousands of people were using the site as a kind of community center, where they blogged, chatted about designs, socialized with their fellow enthusiasts -- and bought a ton of shirts at $15 each. Revenue was growing 500 percent a year, despite the fact that the company had never advertised, employed no professional designers, used no modeling agency or fashion photographers, had no sales force, and enjoyed no retail distribution. As result, costs were low, margins were above 30 percent, and -- because community members told them precisely which shirts to make -- every product eventually sold out. Nickell's company had never produced a flop."

Posted by Ed Cotton Stiven Kerestegian is a sustainable designer who lives in the South of Chile where he is involved in several projects most of them related to sustainable design. He's also a partner in a full service production and design studio in Santiago and a sustainable product company Essustainable.

1. Briefly describe your background?

My background is in industrial design but I have worked in almost every related field from hardware design for Microsoft to conceptual or "innovation" design for Kodak to brand, packaging and web UI design for startups. Today, the projects I take on are as diverse as the market but more and more, clients reach out to me because they have an interest  in sustainable or "green" design.

2. Sustainable Design is a current buzzword, how do you interpret it?

The concept has been around for a while. Victor Papanek and Bucky Fuller were among the first to start pushing for more responsible solutions to our everyday needs not because they were hard core environmentalist but because they realized that sustainable design, or design that uses nature as the developmental model is far superior especially as you look at long term solutions. Today I consider sustainable design that which incorporates social and environmental aspects holistically into the design process. The inclusion of these variables triggers unforeseeable innovations and cost savings.

Two key things are happening today that have triggered the green or sustainability movement, corporations are seeing value in more sustainable approaches and informed consumers are demanding more responsible products

3. How difficult is it for designers to think about sustainability? How do they know their actions are going to produce positive results?

The difficult part is getting informed you know, not only being on top of all the latest materials and processes etc., but  considering a products complete life cycle into your design process is an essential aspect of sustainable design so this means more research in related areas beyond just form, function and experience. The great part is that it brings much more meaning to what we do as designers because we can measure results beyond just financial success, we can see social and environmental contributions.

4. Shouldn't we be producing better products that last longer or even encourage people to get more use out of old things, rather than producing new stuff all the time?

Yes, having fewer but better things would help but the problem we have today is not just that we are making and using too many unnecessary products, it's that we are making and using them in ways that are destructive to us and our environment. I don't think we have to stop being consumers, we just need to implement more sustainable models like the service model. The fun part is that we as designers get to redesign everything, we get to re-think the way we do most things and this needs to happen now, in our generation.

5. Consumers are addicted to the shiny and new, it's part of the thrill of consumption. How could we encourage consumers to think about this and should we?

I think that slowly but surely we are all starting to realize that good design is inherently "sustainable" and corporations and consumers will evolve their understanding of what is good design and what is desirable. The only reason why we need to consume less is because most of our consumption is unhealthy but if we can design and manufacture healthy products that are beneficial to us and our environment, then there would be a reason to encourage consumption.



Posted by Ed Cotton nike-entering a new era? (40.01078714046552 , 116.54296875) Nike is a brand that was built on the back of raw emotion of sports, but is it about to change?

Are product performance and technological innovation going to be the drivers from now on?

Take a look at the amazing exhibition the brand is putting on in Beijing that celebrates the 100 most important innovations in the company's history.

In the past, the company has been reluctant to let technology dominate the story, but in this show, it's the star.

Perhaps, the brand feels it needs to demonstrate the substance that lies at the heart of the company and put fear into anyone, especially the smaller Chinese upstarts, that Nike's success isn't something that can be easily copied.


Posted by Ed Cotton It seems we are now at a  very interesting moment in the environmental movement meets green marketing, trend.

The cynics and skeptics are coming out of the woodwork and are ready to bash anyone who isn't thinking this thing through properly and merely trying to "Greenwash".

This isn't just coming from the expected sources.

This is from Core 77, yesterday.

"At first glance, Feel More Human seems to have everything for the conscious consumer with a modern design sense. The online store has an eco-friendly home and lifestyle section, with tables from Scrapile, sofas from Dutch designer Björn Mulder, and even a Buddha cat perch made from renewable bamboo plywood. There is a content section featuring interviews with inspiring eco-entrepreneurs, a classifieds area where visitors can buy or sell their pre-owned modern design goods, and the whole operation is powered by 100% wind energy.

Yet scratch beneath the surface and you'll find that even those with the greenest of intentions have a hard time making the most environmentally sound choices. Mixed in with all of the bamboo, reclaimed wood, and toxin free fabrics are not-so eco foams, lacquers, plywoods, and plastics, like the NotNeutral Melamine Snack Set for kids. How did a kid's dinnerware with melamine, a resin manufactured by mixing urea with formaldehyde, get onto a site devoted to sustainable lifestyles? Or chrome, a material known for emitting toxic elements into the air, land, and sea, which can be found in several items in the store, such as the Tokyo Shelving Unit or the Valis Chair. Jill Stalowicz, the company's founder, says, "smart design goes beyond aesthetics now, people are questioning how products are constructed."

The lesson here is that the practice of green is harder than the promise, and that Feel More Human might want to take a look at how all of its products are actually made."


Posted by Ed Cotton Core 77 has a great podcast on the new MOMA exhibition "Design and the Elastic Mind".

It features a few interviews from the opening night and a longer sit down discussion with famed curator Paola Antonelli.

The interview is Paola is especially good, as she talks about the idea behind the exhibit, the process of curating and highlights some of MOMA's future plans for bringing a Boeing 747 into the collection.

My big take-away from the broadcast is the emergence of two interesting forces that are now shaping contemporary design thinking.

1. The shift from the decorative to the serious- designers are no longer content creating beautiful objects- they want to have an impact. Design and the Elastic Mind is all about the intersection between science/technology and design.

2. The idea of "beta" is now present in the design world- work in progress is good and objects no longer need to be finished to be presented.


Posted by Ed Cotton