I set off before the Christmas break this year with high aspirations of gallery visits, an intellectual reading list and a general full-on immersion into everything cultural. The reality, as so often happens was a heady mixture of family reunions, social engagements and hunting Japanese bargains at Dover Street Market.

Fortunately the first week back in January I had booked a short trip to Venice, four days of nonchalant meandering around this beautiful Italian city built on water. The place was amazing (my first trip) incredible architecture, a million churches, fantastically overpriced Gondolas and an awe inspiring display of sunglasses.

The highlight of the trip however was a visit to the Punta Della Dogana, an incredible contemporary art gallery on the banks of the Grand canal. Part of the Francois Pinault foundation and something I had been particularly looking forward to seeing, the gallery housed a range of pieces from international contemporary artists including Subodh Gupta, Chen Zhen, Paul McCarthy and my favourite Maurizio Cattelan.

The building itself was pretty spectacular, reimagined by Tadao Ando – who has collaborated with Francois Pinaut in Venice before – the architect had managed to beautifully combine the old and new; maintaining the essence of the original building. His new vision created a modern, visually imposing interior that acted as the perfect canvas for such a collection. It reminded me of everything I love about the Tate Modern here in the UK.

In regards to the collection, I knew I was in for a treat the moment I entered the first room. The untitled work of Maurizio Cattelan featured a full size, taxidermy horse with it’s body jutting out of the brickwork. Creating a paradoxical trophy (normally its the head that sits on the wall of a dead animal), I loved the imagination and dark sense of humour I took from the piece. Others highlights included Edward Kienholz’s Roxys, an  “environment tableau” offering his twisted version of a 1940′s house of ill repute – it felt like staring straight into the set of a David Lynch nightmare. There were a series of Jeff Koons sculptures, inflatable toys mirrored to perfection out of Stainless steel and a selection of works from Paul McCarthy that reminded me very much of some of the Chapman brothers’ work from the mid 90′s.

I am a great lover of contemporary art and find it incredibly inspiring when thinking about my own work and the broader field of branding. It’s the sense of storytelling; quite often contextualising a thought or feeling which in essence has been explored before and representing it in a way that simply has not. It’s here I find the parallel with branding; communicating a companies values often not a million miles away from their competitors – variations on trust and openness immediately spring to mind, and telling that story in a way that delights, intrigues or dare I say shocks.

It’s so easy to find yourself looking through the usual design books and blogs for inspiration when starting new projects, but why not cast the net slightly further a field? By looking outside our immediate world the constraints for creativity can suddenly feel so much more imaginative and challenging.

Each month, we’ll be posting a short profile on our most recent placements. You can find out a bit about them, and see some of their work…

Hello, my name is…
Tristan Dunbar
In three words I would say I am…
75 Percent Squash
And in my spare time I like to…
Play a lot of Blues.
I have just finished studying at…
Norwich University College of the Arts
You can see a portfolio of my work by…
visiting www.behance.net/tristandunbar or you can email me at me@tristandaviddunbar.com
And my piece of work that best represents me is…
Foyles the bookshop 

Because…
You can run with the idea until you’re out of breath – then keep going.
You would never guess that I…
Really (really) like dragons.
After The Partners, I’m going to…
Someone.

Hello, my name is…
Lucy Hutchinson
In three words I would say I am…
Determined, inquisitive, unconventional
And in my spare time I like to…
Put itunes on loud and paint, watch great films and explore new places
I have just finished studying at…
University of Leeds
You can see a portfolio of my work by…
Visiting my website at http://lucyhutchinson.weebly.com/
Or send me an e-mail at lucyehutchinson@gmail.com
And my piece of work that best represents me is…
My Final University Project, Lost In Digital

Because…
It expressed an important social message in an unconventional way
You would never guess that I…
Am a fully qualified open water scuba diver
After The Partners, I’m going to…
Work with Jack Renwick (the partners old creative director) and get some experience of a small start up studio

Hello, my name is…
Laura Evans
In three words I would say I am…
confident, excitable, playful
And in my spare time I like to…
See friends. They’re really important to me.
I have just finished studying at…
Kingston University
You can see a portfolio of my work by…
Emailing me at evanslaura1989@gmail.com
And my piece of work that best represents me is…
Self portrait

Because…
It was an idea I had always wondered about – and when I finally did it – the results were amazing. It’s a playful idea that has been moulded into a piece of design without loosing its charm.
You would never guess that I…
Am an avid list writer. I write lists to keep on top of my lists.
After The Partners, I’m going to…
Magpie Studio

Linotype: The Film is a feature-length documentary centered around the Linotype type casting machine. Called the “Eighth Wonder of the World” by Thomas Edison, it revolutionized printing and society. The film tells the surprisingly emotional story of the people connected to the Linotype and how it impacted the world.

It premieres in New York next week, where you will also receive a lead slug with your name, straight from an original, working Linotype press.

Find out more about Linotype: The Film here

To some people Christmas is a warm and fuzzy time full of family, gifts and carol singers. To others it’s a cold and loathsome time full of family, gifts and carol singers. 

In The Partners London office, we’ve planted the Tree of Festive Love and the Tree of Festive Hate in reception and invited our staff and visitors to share what they both love, and hate, about Christmas. All they need to do is scribble their honest thoughts onto a ‘bauble’ and hang it on the appropriate tree.

Why not tell us what you love and hate about Christmas? Just post a comment below and we’ll add them to the trees.

Merry Christmas!

Firstly, the trees in Central Park have been changing since I arrived:

and 10 days later:

It’s taking longer fro me to get used to the way things are done in America.
How direct the advertising is for example:
But my faith in humanity was restored however when I visited the New York gem that it the ‘The Highline’:

A beautiful park above the streets of West Manhattan, created along an old freight railway track. It’s a peaceful break from the traffic below and has been expertly designed to include things like this window that simply looks out onto the street below. You can’t help but sit there and wait for rush of traffic below every time the lights turn green. http://www.thehighline.org

Now I know that Americans can sometimes come across a bit too patriotic for our stiff British attitude, but if it means my milk look as funky as this, then that’s fine by me.

On a last, more cultural note, do you recognize this?

This is a shot of the slide at Carsten Höller’s solo exhibition at the New Museum (www.newmuseum.org), a gallery in the downtown neighborhood of Bowery. The exhibit features a number of different works, including a full-size mirrored carousel and the ‘psycho tank’ (a pool of highly salinated, skin temperature water that is supposed to be void of any sensory experience), but the slide is undoubtedly the main attraction. It runs across three floors, the exit being in a strobe lit room with life size fluorescent crocodiles, hippos and some other creatures I couldn’t work out. Höller has definitely succeeded in creating an overall experience that makes you feel like a kid again, even if some of the pieces seemed to lack any real or worthy purpose…

I’m going to try and feature a range of things here from New York, but as an official ‘alien’, I may need some help. If there’s anything you know about and can recommend, then just post it below.

For example: I find the nature of BA’s on-board service (long-haul) is neatly summarised by the warning noise that sounds throughout the ‘plane just before the aircraft turns its engines on to full at the beginning of the runway for take-off. Here are my reasons for this:

1. It’s not designed to benefit passengers (we are already strapped in to our seats). It’s for the crew, to tell them to sit down. Much of BA’s service seems centred around what suits the crew rather than the passenger.

2. It sounds awful. It would be hard to find another two-note sequence that has such tonal dissonance. It manages to sound hostile at just the point that passengers need the opposite. Dissonance and hostility are wider themes in BA service too.

3. It is laughably out of date. The timbre of the sound is unlike anything I’ve heard since my ZX81 computer got thrown away in 1982. BA’s service hasn’t moved with the times either.

I could go on (I really hate this noise) but won’t. The point of this example was not to go deep into BA, but to explain the concept behind the word I am looking for. The noise is just one small thing but, for me, it represents the wider issue of which it is just a part, rather well.

So, what’s the word? I have spent some time searching for this of course, but haven’t quite found an answer that seems right yet. Some contenders have emerged though and I list a few here together with the reasons why I don’t think they are right:

Microcosm. Probably the closest, but implies that the thing is really a miniature version of the whole thing, which is not what I’m saying. I’m looking for something more conceptual than this. Back to the example, saying that the noise is a microcosm of BA’s service doesn’t seem right.

Epitome. In the sense that it means “the perfect example” then it is not wrong, but the thing here is not the perfect example, it is a perfect capture of its characteristics – and that’s not the same, I think.

Synecdoche. I read this piece in The Guardian at the weekend that suggested to me that this was the word I crave. But my OED suggests that this is more a linguistic term – a substitution of a word describing a part of the whole for the word describing the whole – than a way to describe a more abstract concept.

Now, I’m holding my hands high in the air at this point in admission of my ignorance. Perhaps one of these words is indeed the right one, and no doubt there is some word – obvious or not – that describes what I seek. Please, readers, make your suggestions in the comments section below.

But the reason I am searching for this word is not just out of intellectual curiosity (although I admit that’s part of it) but because the concept is an important one in the professional world of brand consultancy and design. In fact, it is the perfect way to describe what we do. We define and create things – words, identities, communications, objects, events, etc. – that are conceptually representative of the broad intent of the wider proposition to which they belong. When audiences experience these things, together or in isolation, their experience is therefore representative of the wider proposition, i.e. to have the experience of the thing is to have the experience of the organisation, company, or brand of which they are part. Because the human brain looks for patterns and consistency, positive experiences will build positive expectations for similarly branded experiences, driving willingness and enthusiasm to engage – ergo, business success. But by the same token, negative experiences will create wider negative expectations, and these may prevail over positives (that’s a human brain thing too) so consistency across all experiences is important too. In the ideal brand, every experience of every thing is, in itself, representative of the whole; experiences are interrelated and multi-dimensional, spider’s web on spider’s web of interconnected threads. There are tangible things, like products or buildings; intangible things, like customer service or social media; meta-things, like brand identity or how an organisation engages its own people in its brand; and, micro-things, like a small detail on a piece of packaging that just makes everybody smile. Each one of these is a representation of the brand and needs to be properly aligned.

There is a really important distinction to draw here between brand consultancy and management consultancy or, to put it better, those consultancies that have a design capability and those which do not. We both start out by setting out the master proposition at the organisation-wide level. That, in itself, is a complex and involved task. But where I am convinced that band consultancies, like The Partners, offer far greater advantage to clients, is that we then translate the proposition into the things that audiences actually experience: the things that take strategy beyond theory, and make it real. We create things that embody the characteristics of the wider proposition of which they are a part, thus making the proposition more compelling, more desirable, and better understood.

Now, if only there was a word for that…

Each month, we’ll be posting a short profile on our most recent placements. You can find out a bit about them, and see some of their work…

Hello, my name is…
Laura Evans
In three words I would say I am…
confident, excitable, playful
And in my spare time I like to…
See friends. They’re really important to me.
I have just finished studying at…
Kingston University
You can see a portfolio of my work by…
Emailing me at evanslaura1989@gmail.com
And my piece of work that best represents me is…
Self portrait

Because…
It was an idea I had always wondered about – and when I finally did it – the results were amazing. It’s a playful idea that has been moulded into a piece of design without loosing its charm.
You would never guess that I…
Am an avid list writer. I write lists to keep on top of my lists.
After The Partners, I’m going to…
Magpie Studio

Face Britain is an exciting idea that encourages children all over the UK to create a self-portrait which they then submit to become part of a world record attempt to create the world’s largest online self-portrait gallery. The Partners created the logo and identity for the initiative, and unable to resist the urge to get involved ourselves, we created our own self-portraits, which were then hung in our very own gallery (AKA: our reception area). We thought we’d share them with you too…

"Thanks Steve" by Jonathan Mak Long

So, as we all sit here, working on our Macs, checking our iPhones and listening to our music on iTunes, we’re reminded of the legacy that Steve Jobs has left us all in his untimely death.

As creatives, we owe him an awful lot. Mainly, we owe it to him to keep being creative and exploring the extraordinary.

Our heartfelt wishes are sent to his family and friends.

We loved this image, designed by 19yr old Jonathan Mak Long in Hong Kong. Entitled “Thanks Steve”, we think it says it all, beautifully.

From all of us at The Partners (past, present and future), thank you Steve. Rest in peace.

Managing to transcend style and fashion in art, Hamilton believed in engaging the mind of the viewer and never just the eye. His belief was in the idea and intellectual insight, combined with harmonious outcomes that utilized technology and media of the time. As he continually explored with technology and applied his intellectual eye to various cultural and political topics – from drug policing in the 60′s, to the Irish hunger strike, and the political stories of late, I don’t believe he ever failed in this career-long pursuit.

Reading the obituaries this morning, I realised it’s this dedication to a belief in art, that since the age of 15, has made him so inspirational – and seems to have strongly influenced my endeavor as a designer – whether I really realised or not. Whilst many of us hope we have many different sources of inspiration, it was Hamilton who, for me, sparked a love for highly creative images.

A thanks is definitely due.

Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? (1956)

Swingeing London (1968-9)

The Subject (1988-90)

Shock and Awe (2007-8)