10 post business creative & digital
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by EMILIA PLOTKA
Data can make cities smarter LIVERPOOL is fast-transforming into one of the UK’s leading business and cultural destinations. Last year, it went one step further and announced its intention to become the first UK “smart city” – a place that harnesses digital technology and big data to enable a better quality of life and greener economy. As other city authorities are joining in on the race to cut costs and carbon, how can Liverpool’s smart initiative stay ahead of other competitors like London? The answer is designing with data. So far, city authorities have focused on becoming smart through utilising big data and technology to improve operational management, for example, to improve the bus network. But as a place that heavily relies on ambitious regeneration programmes Liverpool needs to achieve more than just better services; it must find a way to translate the benefits of big data into its design and planning processes to create places capable of responding to people’s needs and aspirations. Imagine what could be achieved if an online SimCity-style platform was created based on Liverpool, which fed in real time data about how people use city spaces and what they think of them, in addition to environmental data. The public, businesses and government could suggest improvements, design or re-design areas, and comment on each other’s plans. This new possibility to experiment, share ideas and test changes before building, could help create exciting new real places while also strengthening social capital and engendering digital inclusion. This revolutionary approach would not only help Liverpool get ahead in the scramble for smart, but also transform planning and architecture forever. ■ EMILIA PLOTKA is a member of the policy team at RIBA
Cities are using data to improve bus links
Thursday, November 28, 2013 IN ASSOCIATION WITH
Designer’s inspiration from the ‘worst hotel in the world’ by Alistair Houghton POST BUSINESS STAFF
alistair.houghton@liverpool.com
IT MAY have been only a mini Designival – but with talks on subjects from tweeting 114-year-old dogs in boxes to the worst hotel in Amsterdam, it had something for everyone. The usual two-day Designival has been moved to next July to coincide with the International Festival for Business. So organisers from design agencies Uniform, Smiling Wolf and Black & Ginger decided to hold a mini event they hoped would be just as packed with inspiration for students and designers alike. The keynote speaker at the end of the day was Erik Kessels, of Dutch communications agency Kessels Kramer, who showed off his best-known work – the promotional campaign for the infamous Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, in the centre of Amsterdam. The hotel was Kessels’ first client – and he admitted that when he first saw it, it was the worst hotel he had ever seen. The owner’s brief was simple – to end complaints about the quality of the hotel. So Kessels and co opted for a policy of brutal honesty. “We found that honesty was their only luxury,” he said. And so the hotel was advertised with a series of slogans that became online hits, such as “Now a bed in every room” and “Now more rooms without a window”. Another poster showed a five-star luxury room. But if you looked closely, almost everything in there was marked with an asterisk and “not included”. The campaigns continued – another read: “We can’t get any worse, but we’ll do our best”. The agency’s work over 15 years was even compiled into a book, The Worst Hotel in the World”. Kessels smiled: “He (the owner) still has complaints sometimes, but people are now complaining that the hotel is a bit better than they thought.” Turning to city branding, he showed off the slogan he created to promote Amsterdam – I AmSterdam. “Amsterdam doesn’t really have a landmark like Big Ben,” he said. “The people of Amsterdam are the landmark.” Kessels told the crowd that he wanted to explore the blur between high budget and low budget. “The budget for a commercial might not be the most important thing,” he said, preparing to show off two TV ads. “The biggest budget was 1.3m euros. The lowest was 300 euros. I still don’t know which one I like the best.” Kessels also decided to show what a future photo exhibition might look like by printing off all 950,000 images uploaded on Flickr within 24-hour period and then “dumping” them in a gallery. “When you see it from a distance, it looks quite abstract,” he said, showing images of people rummaging through the pictures. “But up close it’s quite personal. It’s also a discussion about how private and public are quite blurred today.” And finally, Kessels showed off
Paul Davis, right, interviewed by Patrick Burgoyne onstage at Designival Mini at Camp & Furnace some of the book he has published using photography he has found in flea markets or online, covering subjects from eBay images to holiday snaps, a rabbit with objects balanced on its head and even pictures of cows. It takes, he said, a professional cow photographer half an hour to photograph each cow.
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HE event, backed by Liverpool Vision’s creative sector support agency ACME, began with a talk by Matt Wells, co-founder of London agency BERG. He discussed how his agency had moved from being a design consultancy to specialising in the “internet of things” – connecting real-world objects to the internet. He first realised the power of web-connected objects when on Platform 5 of Slough’s “horrible” station when he found himself standing in front of Station Jim, a stuffed dog in glass case. He took to Twitter to tell his followers about the dog, who was the station’s mascot in the 19th century. And he was soon surprised when a Twitter account in Jim’s name said: “It’s ok for you to laugh, You’re on the better side of the glass.” He had a conversation with Station Jim – and had an epiphany that one day it would be normal for people to interact with objects around them. He said: “I believe that networks are the new electricity – and that connecting products is the equivalent of electrification.” Berg became most famous for its Little Printer, a web-connected receipt printer that prints out miniature personalised newspapers. Webb said: “It’s like a little 21st century fax machine, with a face.” Now the company is promoting
Left, Erik Kessels. Right, part of his Amsterdam marketing campaign Berg Cloud, a do-it-yourself development kit that allows people to build their own web-connected products. And he is continuing to work on prototypes for web-connected white goods – even including the much-maligned idea of an “internet fridge”. The second speaker was illustrator Paul Davis, who described how he finds work – and his own complex relationship with the advertising industry in which he works. “It’s really chaotic,” he said. “I have no business plan. “When I try and borrow money off the bank, they don’t understand what I do. I never get a loan. It’s hand to mouth all the time. “Or I might have a first-class flight to a five-star hotel in Tokyo to put on an exhibition, because they like my pictures.” For Davis, successful illustration work is about sticking to a personal vision.He said: “I don’t believe in focus groups, because nobody behaves in them as they would if they were reading a magazine or sitting on the
sofa in their pants scoffing pizza from yesterday.” He added: “I’m obsessed with advertising and I despise it.” That individual approach paid off when Diesel commissioned him to “do what you want” at its flagship Stockholm store. The surreal images he produced – including one of a fish with the work “jubilant” below – didn’t go down well at first. “They hated me for it,” Davis smiled. “They said they were stupid”. But the images were a hit with shoppers – “and later Diesel said they were great”. On another occasion, however, Davis’s vision cost him work. He was in the late stage of pitching for work with a bank when one of its staff Googled him and found an earlier image showing two men wrestling with the slogan “I can arrange your mortgage for you”. The bank took him off the job. Pointing to it on the Designival big screen, Davis said: “That image, which I love, cost me £10,000.”