Just seen the new Heinz Baked Bean 100 year anniversary can to be rolled out this October, which, as an avid fan, I think looks pretty smart. However, I can’t help but wonder why they thought that taking all their inspiration from the past was the way to go forward? Along with the Anchor Butter adverts, that mimic the ‘ghost signs’ from the late 19^th century, and the 1966 inspired England football kit, it feels like were going back in time.

I know there’s lots of nostalgia, pride and reassurance in using old designs (which now seems to be a rite of passage for successful food brands), but personally I’d have much rather seen what the can might look like in another 100 years. Made from space foil that can be put in the microwave straight onto my jacket potato, something at least a bit more entertaining! Are food brands always going to look to the past? And if they don’t, what might the future hold for even the humble baked bean can?

The mystery of phantom traffic jams explained

If you’ve ever wondered why you can spend an aeon in a traffic jam on a motorway with no apparent cause, why we’re so intolerant of each other when we’re driving and why we think it’s ok to speed but never to go through a red light, then I’d recommend the book Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt…

As well as being a compelling account of the crazy paradoxes of the psychology of driving (for example SUV drivers are more likely to be talking on the phone and not be wearing a seatbelt because they feel safer, which means they’re actually much less safe than those in smaller vehicles), I’d also recommend the book to any fans of behavioural economics. In place of conventional economists, the too-rational target in this book are traffic engineers, who continue to plan road systems in the blithe belief that humans are completely rational beings. The book, sometimes hilarious sometimes tragic, shows us that we’re not, and that this has a huge impact on the way people live their lives alongside, and too often under, motor traffic the world over.

The book does have one hero however, in the shape of Hans Monderman who pioneered the ‘shared space’ approach to street design in the Netherlands. This concept of street design compels us as drivers to take more care by manipulating our sub-conscious to respond to a lack of rational information. A powerful example of ‘nudge’ psychology in action, Monderman’s approach is the reason why we now have more raised junctions for example, and that there’s a trend away from the compulsion of signs and markings to more effective ways of shaping driver behaviour. While this type of progressive design is seen mostly in built up environments, it’s the two-way, high-speed country road that’s the world’s biggest killer. This is becoming a massive issue for humanity as tens of millions get into cars for the first time in countries like China and India.

Ultimately, this is a fascinating book about how our pre-historic brains are incredibly bad at calculating risk within the sort of timeframes demanded of them while at the wheel of a car.

The poster made its debut at the fantastic Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco last spring, but you can still buy it here.

Wayne & Garth Spotted

Alongside the part of my phone that actually makes calls (the old fashioned bit), my Google Maps app is probably one of my most used. It’s become indispensable in the same way that being able to text once was. What would we do without it!

Modern spoils aside, the success of Google’s mapping technology may partly be down to its adaptiveness. As with all good web services, the Google Maps API has spawned a mass of location based mash-ups. Google, for example, recently partnered with We Are What We Do to create the wonderfully rich Historypin. It’s all too easy to forget about the history that surrounds us here at The Partners HQ, but a quick post code look up perfectly placed archived and geo-tagged photos from over 100 years ago. To refer to images like this in isolation is one thing, to see them in context and contrast with our modern surroundings (places we inhabit everyday without considering the past) can completely transform our sense of place. Today, Berg London announced Dimensions. Born out of a series of workshops with the BBC, this set of mash-ups forces us to reconsider our surroundings by overlaying historical, political, and environmental data on to our own neighbourhoods. With these filters and layers applied, mapping becomes less about wayfinding, and more about changing perceptions of our sense of place; both of our own locality, and of others’.

With Google’s Street View, the mental images and memories of our surroundings are at once put to test, and the sheer volume of imagery captured by Google’s roaming cars across the world must represent one of the most significant image archives in existence. It provides us with an almost complete panoramic view of the urban environment, albeit one recorded in 1/100th of a second. For the virtual tourist, or the freeze frame voyeur, street view offers a world of exploration like never before. Last year, Art Fag City bought together snapshots of some of the more weird and wonderful findings. Our treasured Daily Mail more recently got in on the act with the story of a seemingly dead girl laying in the street.

Thank god last year’s AR craze has seemed to have died down, when every brand seemed desperate to get a piece of the emperor’s new clothes. This highly ironic video summed it up perfectly. Why do something that could be much better achieved without the added layer of a webcam? Context, of course, is key. ART + COM showed that there were practical and meaningful applications for the technology when they bought dinosaurs out of their skeletons and bursting into life at Berlin’s Museum of Natural History. And with dedicated hardware in gaming consoles, the opportunities still seem genuinely engaging. Oh to be a kid today!

Of course mobile and augmented technologies are a match made in heaven. Amsterdam’s Layar first launched on Android some years ago now, but the potential still seems to be slowly unfolding, and marketers are quicker now to spot an opportunity. While The Rolling Stone’s take on the Layar app for their Exile On Main Street album may have been overly literal, it’s interesting to think how we can begin to engage an audience not just online, but in the real world too. Over in Japan, where adoption of new technologies is often quicker than anywhere else, the Sekai Camera app spawned an ‘Air tagging‘ phenomenon. Surely it’s just a matter of time before this spreads. Let’s just hope users can learn to leave data behind that actually enriches our surroundings, and resist the kind of comments you’re likely to find in a shoreditch pub toilet.

Yesterday I received a notification from Google informing me I was now being tracked by Latitude. I’d opted in for this some time ago, only to be disappointed to find very few of my friends had shared my enthusiasm. Sharing your location with Google (search now factors in your location) is one thing, sharing it with your friends, it seems, is another.

The social aspect of location awareness is, however growing fast. And while Foursquare’s success may be in part down to its reward schemes and gaming aspects (ultimately, its competitive nature), the check-in concept now seems to be spreading beyond the merely physical, with more & more start ups like Gomiso allowing us to ‘check-in’ to movies and tv shows. It’s yet another way of allowing us digital natives to define ourselves not just by where we hang out, but also by what we consume. In 2010, privacy, and personal space appear outdated concepts, while the commodification of the personal reigns supreme.

If anyone can popularise the concept of location in the social space, it’s Facebook. Sure enough, Mark Zuckerberg recently confirmed rumours that Facebook will soon be adding location to its services. Facebook might just show Google how it should be done here. Friends & followers, are you with me?

James gets his tan on

It always really excites us when we welcome new blood into The Partners. Having recently added 3 lovely new designers to our London teams, we were stunned and delighted when one of our ‘new bloods’ leapt out at us from the pages of Metro, earlier this week…James was plastered across page 31 of Thursday’s Metro in nothing but his underpants, and a beautiful design branded onto his skin as part of his ingenious ‘Tan The Man’ project.

Contrary to what the article says, James explains that “The idea came about as an entry for an exhibition at The Arden & Anstruther gallery in Petworth, Sussex. The gallery was owned by the late Paul Arden and is now run by his wife. The idea was floated that a photographic exhibition should be held in his memory, to preserve his radical way of thinking. As his ideals were best captured in one of his books, entitled ‘Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite’, the book became the brief for entries for the exhibition”.

He continues, “There’s a page in the book, which explains that ‘your body can be what you want it to be’. This got me thinking about tan lines etc, and how skin is like photographic paper in that sense. All I needed was some content to ‘develop’ onto myself. I launched a live competition brief online, open to all designers, illustrators and creatives, and gathered about 60 design entries from across the world. Janine’s (Rewell) entry was the clear winner, so I set about getting it tanned onto myself”.

You can read about, and see pictures of, the process in more detail at the project blog.

The vinyls in development

Vinyls on, it's into the booth

A work of art

Bjarke Ingels: 3 warp-speed architecture tales

Tim Brown: Creativity and play

Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man

Jamie Oliver: Teach every child about food

Willard Wigan: Hold your breath for micro-sculpture

New Yorkers and Law and Order fans alike know the “We Are Happy To Serve You” paper coffee cup is an iconic piece of old New York. We’ve loved it because it’s the perfect size for a quick pick-me-up, the kitschiness of it, and perhaps because it’s the cup dispensed by the family-run diner on the corner. We learned a lot more about the man behind the cup (officially called the Anthora), Leslie Buck, who passed away last week. The New York Times obituary tells the story of the refugee from Nazi Europe that eventually became the director of marketing for the Sherri Cup Company in Connecticut. Mr. Buck had no formal training in art, yet the design–with it’s Grecian color scheme and folkloric tone–was an “instant success.” It’s proof that enduring designs don’t always come with rhyme, reason, or a carefully thought-out typeface.

This week Creative Review have launched their 2010 annual.

Showcasing the “finest creative work produced worldwide during 2009″ the annual is jam-packed full of the best examples of visual communication.

If you should happen to stumble upon page 86 of this fine publication then you’ll be sure to find a example of The Partners work there.

Our Five-A-Side poster to promote the football fundraising event for the children’s hospice Richard House Hospice has made it into this year’s annual.

Congratulations to the team!

The Winning Idea from l-r: Alex (no, really), Jack, Sam H & Sam G

As you may have seen from a blog post on here last week, we entered a competition run by Metro newspaper and D&AD to design a cover wrap for the Metro newspaper. The winner was announced last Wednesday evening at a lovely event hosted by Metro and D&AD. We were absolutely delighted when our ‘Flowers’ idea chosen as the overall winner and couldn’t wait to see it come out in print.

Well, today’s the day. We have spent all Bank Holiday weekend getting more excited about coming back in to work today than the plentiful bounty of chocolate at our fingertips over Easter. Personally, this morning I ended up in work an hour and a half early as I couldn’t wait to get down to the tube station to pick up my copy of the Metro and see how people were responding to the cover. (yes, I really AM that sad…and I’m proud!)

We’ve all been Tweeting all weekend also to encourage our followers to send us photos from today of their #metrowrap, and the photos/comments have been coming in thick and fast all morning. Thank you all for taking part and do please continue to send us your pics as you get them, we really love to receive them. Please see below for some examples of pics sent in already…

Our friend @Ben_Millar pops the question to a lift full of commuters

Grabbing an early morning edition at Arsenal tube

Oyster roses at Bank - not quite...

The lovely @LewieEvans presents his sister with a bunch

Sarah Kwan sends us her bunch all the way from Edinburgh

@Moobs takes advantage of rare empty seats to brighten his day

Someone 'passing it on' in style

Recycling at the Royal Exchange

I sincerely hope they were intending for a pic of the paper in this one...

Kings Cross picks up a bunch

This one has really made me smile...

The Partners reception/flower stall this morning

Andy Gardner was so keen he grabbed a couple of copies...

...before using one to decorate his office. Thanks Andy.

From our friend Tracey in Glasgow

Somebody's bagged a bunch on the way home

The gorgeous Amanda arranges a bouquet especially for her friends at The Partners.

The lovely Leah mixes the real with the print

And the morning after….

The morning after feedback. Thank you too Jenni.

With examples from around the world, and going beyond graffiti and street art, this book celebrates the next generation of urban artist. Some of them are beautiful, some of them are funny, some of them are poignant, but all of them are brilliant. Of course, we have some work in it also:

We’d highly recommend this book as it’s one you definitely need to have in your collection. Personally, I love it and have it, selfishly, guarded on my desk as I keep liking to flick through it and ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’ at all the very clever and wonderful work. And no, on that note, you can’t borrow it. <clings tightly to book>