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?

In what can only be described as “showing off”, the guys and gals at Google have once again brought another technical tour-de-force music video to our attention, this time in collaboration with the hottest band around (and in the studio right now); the Arcade Fire.

The Wilderness Downtown is an interactive interpretation of the Arcade Fire’s song ‘We Used To Wait’ built using cutting edge web technologies such as HTML5, choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing and (deep breath), 3D canvas rendering to create a bespoke and unusual music video.

Quite what the point is, is, not entirely clear, but it is pretty cool looking nonetheless. Give it a go yourselves and watch your street bloom into a forest-scape.

The Wilderness Downtown

I get less and less of the proverbial ‘junk mail’ through my letter box these days. I do tend to give most of what I receive a cursory glance before ‘filing’ in the recycling bin.

My household contents insurances is shortly due for renewal and so I’ve started to receive lots of lovely unsolicited requests for consideration from the general insurance fraternity bombarding me with facts, figures, discounts and comparisons.

Refreshingly, I received this the other day from Hiscox – an insurer I’ve come across in a business insurance capacity and whose advertising confronts me regularly at Waterloo Station.

The letter is simply composed of 2 short sentences:

“Mr Rowlatt,
If like us you believe home insurance is all about trust, we’d like to talk to you.
If not, we’ve got nothing more to say.”

I simply like the boldness and directness of this piece of communication, its integrity to what I’ve seen and understand the Hiscox brand to be about and by the fact that it connected with my own sense of fairness and responsibility where this particular world is concerned.  Full marks for effective targeting Hiscox.  I’ll be in touch shortly and keen to see if you are as good as your word!

Ever wondered what the cheapest way to live in London is?
If no, you’ve probably never done a design placement. If yes, then read on…

The Sandwich Man is a gem of an establishment just a short walk from our studio (in Farringdon) that, as of one o’clock every day, sells any sandwich or salad for a magical 75p!

Freelance sandwich delivery men on bicycles go round the offices of London, flogging people, who are too stressed or lazy, their lunch at about £2 a pop. Then when they can’t sell anymore, the sandwiches are brought back to the shop and re-sold for just 75p.

With a pretty decent range of things (although it does depend on the popularity of sandwiches that day), and for that amount of money, it’s no surprise there can be a bit of a queue come one o’clock.

So whether you’re on a placement or just feeling frugal, it’s well worth a try, lunch here for a week could save you £20, which might be enough for a few beers on the weekend…just.

Find them next to The Easton pub and at: www.thesandwichmanlondon.com

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.

We’ve seen epic movie-style videos, huge budgets spent on blowing things up, turning singers into cyborgs, or having endless well-endowed ladies shaking their thang, dripping in diamonds. So what could the future hold for music videos…Earlier today my attention was brought to the website of the New York duo ‘Broken Bells’ who appear to have parented the new generation of music video; a wholly interactive digital experience to accompany their latest track ‘The Ghost Inside’. Not only is the song particularly good, but I found myself falling madly in love with the notion of creating my own video to accompany it.

I think this is a great idea and hopefully there’ll be yet further exploration of how bands can use these channels to create their videos. In the meantime have a play around yourselves, it’s good fun, and also really rather addictive…

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?

If there’s one thing we’ll miss about Morton Street it’s the view – so I’ve attached some ‘greatest hits’ from one of the most distracting views around.

Zed ©The Partners 2001