Not a meaningless cup of cofee

Strangely, the most feautureless objects condense marketing symbols. For example, this is a simple snapshoot I took yeasterday randomly in a McDonald's in Milan where a friend of mine was waiting for me. As you see, it is only a cofee paper-cup with tre common symbol: a cofee seed, an heart and a cup. If you look twice, your brain immediatly connects these three normally meaningless elements to the pleasure of drinking an hot cofee while outside is raining or snowing or with a cheerful company.

Once upon a time, Saint Exupery said that essential is invisible to the eyes. This time, I have to disagree with the Little Prince.

photo by Giulia Agostini: I love this photo I took in a vain afternoon in Milan because I consider it to be a part of the visual culture which we live in. Unfortunately, the pic could appear a little over-exposed, but I had to enlighten it a bit digitally the original one, otherwise it was impossible to catch some details because of the uploading on a blog- the snap looked too dark. First of all, I worked out an evolution in my tecnique with my simple (but not less good) Sony dsc-t200, Zeiss lens, 8mpx.For example, the focus is on the three symbols that were my subjects. Then, I found the perfect light that pays attention to the cup and gives the right shadows. It seems as if the shadow of the cup says to you that there's something behind the object and, actually, that's what I meant to do. Furthermore, the symbols and the cup suggest that you should be in a meeting moment, full of people, like a cofee bar is, while the object stands alone in its material and inhuman solitude. If the cofee cup is functional to the social human life, its existence depends on that one without having its own. Strangely, without human feelings and social needs, it has no meaning, no reason to exist, no function, no life. Even more strangely, the cup of cofee stands there on the table in front of us to remind us of our social life and its function as means to assolve it. Do we really need that a dumb paper-cup reminds us of it? Does it mean that we are forgetting the meaning of having a rest and taking a cofee with a good friend? Are we moving towards the cup? Is our life becoming the life of a half-drinked, steaming cofeecup in a multinational company bar?

Shelf Appeal

Eight coffee makers— one decision. On a daily basis, the average person faces thousands of choices in the marketplace, and this reality shows no signs of relenting. Product design can make or break the bottom line.

The store shelf is a product’s last chance to trigger a purchase. It is the moment of truth. Years of experience have taught us that consumer’s purchase decisions are motivated by things more complex than what they can verbalize. It’s their subconscious evaluation of the sensory stimulus they receive there— the look, feel, sound and the associations surrounding the product and brand.

Conducting custom tailored research that delves into consumers’ underlying values and aspirations uncovers insights that lead to superior products. Constant consideration of these factors is what allows designers to create and deliver products that sell over their competition.

We design products that are not only easy to use or priced right but emit an emotional appeal in the context of the retail environment to stand out from the competitive set on the shelf. We never pass up the chance to make the best first impression possible at that moment of truth.

"80% of what people see is behind their eyes." — Dan Buchner, Vice President Innovation and Design

The Adidas van

What is the new concept store for Adidas? The new Volkswagen van. In other words, the new concept consists on a shop on movement suitable for a street target. Basically, the little truck crossed the streets of Sao Paulo among skaters, young folks who are charmed by the Adidas van along the streets.

What catch their attention is the graphic. The matter of the fact is that the van is painted by the skate legend Marck Gonzales that evokes the Brazilian murals. Those ones are characterized by plain colours in blue with the strips of Adidas.

The interiors are contrasting. While the exteriors are colourful, those are minimal, decorated with a limited and street collection and with some LCD screens that pass on videos of incredibile skate performances.

Who knows if this new trend which is launched by Adidas will be followed by other brands, if the Adidas will continue to be on the road.

The charitable, fashionable matrioskas

Matrioskas as models for Cavali, Versace, Prada are now shown in Moscow. This is the last fashion of charity.

The 10th anniversary of Vogue Russia has been the occasion for that social commitment. Particularly, it consists on an auction of tens matrioskas created and dressep up with dyed dresses and accessores, like glasses, by the top luxury maisons. Also Naomi Campbell took part at the event with her new lover, Vladislav Doronin, co-owner of 'Capital Group that gifted her a dool of 23 thousend euros by YSL to celebrate her first pubblic presence in Moscow with him. Surprisinly, the one which has recorded the highest bid was the one of Valentin Iudashkin for 100.000 dollars. The total takings amounts to 1 milior euros.

Fast fashion doesn't feel the crisis

Fast-fashion keeps up to fashion in Italy despite the financial crisis. While the luxury world seems to colapse, 120 firms, 5500 workers, 2,5 miliard euros sales guarantee optimism in the fast fashion sector. This is the revolt of fast fashion, or, to be more precise, the brands that draw on the seasonal fashion trends, re-editing items and accessories with an high production and distribution speed.

Now, a research conducted by Diomedea in BolognaFiere teels the truth about this sector. This one consists on firms that covers the 20% of the everyday national consumption for 5 miliard. Moreover, Italy is in the first place in Europe with Spain with a 70% distribution on italian soil.

Particularly, they have gained and enstablished a good reputation. Although at the beginning they were considered like cribbers, nowadays they're the ones that claim what is fashion or not. In addition, their streght is the flessibility of the production and the provision that makes them more resistent to the crisis and the markets' fluctuation.

The Xmas pack of LV

Xmas gives a chance to Louis Vuitton to show its brand new in the Big Apple. This is a big pack and consists on the flaship-shop on the Fifth Avenue wrapped with the Monogram Multicolor by Takashi Murakami. Indeed, Daniel Lalonde, president of the american brench of the brand, explains: " The purpose is to realise something unique and highly representative during Xmas time. Decorating our building with the classic Monogram in 33 different colours has seemed to us a perfect combination of tradition and enterteiment".

Panpepato

The love for arts, the passion for the new, details and handcrafts born Panpepato three years ago. Particularly, two girls, Giulia and Martina, two ex-PR and fundraiser, opened this cute shop in via Solari 2/A, Milan, with a laboratory inside. Although some object are imported, the vast majority of the products sold come from 18 italian craftswomen. Those guarantee the best in terms of quality also of the material.

Only natural and historical materials are used. For example, glass, silk, wool, pottery, linen and cachemire create wonderful old-fashion bags, modern garment for children and women, accessories and elements of furniture. Like this, clothes from Asia turn into western items and are displayed with Italian products.

Panpepato
Via solari 2/A
Milano
http://www.panpepato.com/
Monday from 3 pm to 7.30 pm, Tuersday-Saturday from 10am to 2pm and from 3pm to 19.30 pm.

'08ML: indipendent publishing festival in Milan

Today and tomorrow, indipendent publishing festival 08ML is held in Triennale Bovisa from 4pm to 2 am.

It is a good occasion for your reading curiosity. Not only can you buy book on sale by 42 medium and little firm, but also you can chat and get to know the authors. Among the latest fashions, there is the Verdenero series that will introduce the new book of Lucarelli, Navi a perdere.

The festival wants to double the success of the previous and first edition. Like that one, it will be free and the spaces are three times bigger. Deliciously, the Triennale Bistrot will provide the attedants with a opulent buffet. Moreover, dj sets will be joined by live music, while the children will be delighted by animations inspired by the books'theme. In the exteriors, a videoinstallation will be projected and show quotations from the paperbacks displayed.

Thanks to the association "Spazio aperto servizio", there will be place also for the solidarity.

Eastpak by Eley Kishimoto: party again!!!

Eastpak had to celebrated (another) extraordinary cobranding with Eley Kishimoto with a great music party. On Thursday the 20th of November, Mark Eley and Wakako Kishimoto landed in Milan to do it. This couple in their private life and design one have already worked for LV, Marc Jabobs, Alexander McQueen, Jil Sander e Cacharel. Here, they are to show their four fruits for Eastpak.

Online customers search excellence

What the Customer Focus Study Reviewed

The study consisted of visiting a retailer’s website and answering a series of Yes/No questions about the availability of 69 different factors that reflect a focus on customer experience. These factors were weighted based on our 10 years of optimizing retail website experiences and totaled to arrive at an eventual score for each site. The features we asked our shoppers and analysts to address include:

• Quality and detail of images
• Product copy description answering the shopper’s implicit questions
• Whether the retailer offers customer reviews
• How the retailer met the shopper’s gift buying needs
• Ease and simplicity of checkout
• Retailer’s ability to address the shopper’s concerns
• Ease and clarity of retailer return policies
• Providing of shipping and tax totals early in the checkout process
• Offering multiple payment options
• Offering estimated delivery times and showing in-stock availability for items
• Offering in-store pick-up where physical stores exist

We specifically asked the mystery shoppers to ignore:

• price points
• the ease in locating the products;
• the efficacy of the brand in conveying confidence;
• the impact of overall design on credibility and sales;
• the entire customer experience from search to purchase fulfillment

Rather than evaluating the entire customer experience, this study provides a benchmark for retail sites based on more objective criteria. Therefore, our 2007 Retail Customer Experience Study provides a thumbnail view of how businesses speak to the needs of their customers. There’s much work still to be done and plenty of opportunity for improvement. The top-rated site in this study scored only 67 out of a possible 100. Even the top-rated company has plenty of room to grow before it has thoroughly delighted its customers and improved its bottom line. Given the results of our study, Future Now further believes that companies which lavish attention on improving customer focus will reap more sales and experience superior customer-retention rates in the long term .

The Results: 2007 Online Retail Study for Customer Focused Excellence Congratulations to the top fifteen retailers for their efforts at providing visitors a customer-centric experience. The Overall Leaders:
SmartBargains.com 67
BestBuy.com 63
Compactappliance.com 63
BlueNile 63
EasternMountainSport 63
BackCountry.com 63
TigerDirect.com 63
CDUniverse.com 63
Ebags.com 63
Staples.com 63
AmericanMusical.com 62
Landsend.com 62
Crutchfield.com 62
Walmart.com 62
Walgreens.com 62

*Moved from 11th to 2nd since launching customer-generated reviews. Average score for all retailers = 43 (± 11)

The Leaders by Category: Apparel / Fashion: eBags.com, Landsend.com, Lids.com, Bluefly.com, LLBean.com Electronics: BestBuy.com,TigerDirect.com, Crutchfield.com Food: SurLaTable.com, Cooking.com, Berries.com Jewelry: BlueNile.com, Ice.com, Diamond.com Children / Toys: OneStepAhead.com, KBToys.com, BabyAge.com Housewares / Kitchen: CompactAppliance.com, BedBathandBeyond.com,SurLaTable.com Office: Staples.com, OfficeDepot.com, OfficeMax.com Mass Merchants: SmartBargains.com, Walmart.com, Target.com

Selected highlights learned from the study: * 58% offer gift certificates.* 24% do not allow customers to enlarge the product image.* 37% offer multiple image views of products.* 33% offer customer reviews.* 38% of sites have difficult to read fonts. (This is especially telling considering that, this year, our average age of reviewer was younger than ever before. Only 14% allow customers to change the default font size while viewing their website.)* 43% offer free shipping.* 61% do not offer any information on the product page regarding in-stock availability* 52% of retailers have physical stores; only 10% of all retailers offer in-store pickup of orders.* 74% offer estimated delivery times.* 42% provide shipping cost early in the checkout process. 35% have a checkout process with more than 4 steps.* (Only) 58% correctly answer an e-mail question within 24 hours.* 20% offer pay-by-check, 10% offer Google Checkout, 20% accept PayPal and 18% offer Bill Me Later.

This study reflects significant factors that customers have come to expect. Having worked with online retailers for the past decade to observe how customers buy at retail websites, Future Now knows that customers notice the little things. In the long run, customers vote with their dollars for companies that have an intense focus on satisfying their needs.

Wave75

photos by Wave 75 staff
Wave 75 can appear like the common story of a group of friend with a bright idea. In fact, it is: everything started from some surfers that needed to communicate their passion outside their crew. Like this, Wave 75 was born 2 years ago with a brand new shop in via San Vittore 11, Milan.

The one brand store is focused on surf. Therefore, streetwear is the guideline like sweaters, t-shirt, coats and the space is decorated with so simple objects like surfboards, photoframes, particular lamps that clients can feel at home.

The customer satisfaction is high and getting higher. Thanks to the attention to the new and to the quality of the fabrics, Wave75 offers the best of the best to its clients. Even though it has been opened recently, there is a good feedback and customers are pretty always back.

Also press is paying attention increasly to it. Not only am I writing about it, but also it has been reviewed on a lot of specialised magazines like Surfer, Baco Magazine, pop-mags like Vivimilano, Corriere della Sera, and fashionmags like Sfilate.it and Modaonline.it. Moreover, it organises a lot of parties in its store (for example, the one on 4th of November 2008) to gain visibility. Currently, it is going to have some surf contests in Tuscany.

Why don't join them if the wheater is good?

info@wave75.com
http://www.wave75.com/

Is financial crisis the wayback to the grey scale?

Attending Paris fashion week while the world’s economy goes into freefall is a disorientating experience. There’s nothing like watching the talking heads on CNN getting increasingly apocalyptic about the state of your finances, only to turn the TV off to rush to a fashion show featuring dresses and shoes with four-figure price tags. Of course, clothes take months to design and produce, so the styles that were on the runways last week were designed way before “credit crunch” sounded like anything more than a cute piece of alliteration. In that sense, you can’t really blame the designers for being as free as ever with the gilt and the gold.

As fashion is used to do, it has got a whiff of the crisis. That's why in the lastest shows disapperead the costly flights of fancy that have characterized the runways for the past few years: the tulip skirts, the enormous handbags, the heavy detailing, the frills and ribbons. Instead, they’ll return to tailoring in safe colors—blue, gray, and black—because customers will need to be convinced of the durability of any of the few purchases they make. You can say a lot of things about a metallic tulip skirt with frayed edges, but “durable” is probably not on the list.

Then again, that line of reasoning is probably too simplistic. Designers will likely opt for even more ostentation, because they know that the real money is with people who won’t be affected by this financial downturn at all. Fashion houses will be aiming for the new markets—Russia, China, India, the Middle East, and South America—and the enormous wealth therein. The lower end of the upper market (i.e., those who live in the West) will be the ones cutting back. The people who are buying up Francis Bacons and sailing round on super yachts (mentioning no names. Oh, just one, then—Roman Abramovich) will continue to shop without concern. This newly emerging demographic don’t just not worry about price tags, they don’t even look at price tags. So what we’ll see on the runways will be a microcosm of the world itself: the plain will get plainer and the ornate will get even more ornate.

Digital signage

Digital signage seems to have been my favourite topic recently. Precisely, digital signage is an adverisement form well known also in Italy, whose content are projected on electronic and digital screens in public spaces.

The features of digital signage consists on:
1. not to have to change phisically the billboards
2. to get a message across in specific places at a specific time

Economical aspects:
This kind of adv offers a better price/quality ratio than traditional printed billboards. Even it's malleability enables the transformation of advertisement posts in different applications in a little time.

The content ranges from the simple text to static images, and to videos with or without sounds, too. Some networks of digital signage are similar to a Tv channel with a infotrateinement profile. Moreover, it is possible to create multimedia contents on LCD with an high quality image.

The messages can be controlled remotely by a software in a pc by a team that can modify easily through the Internet.

Alberta Ferretti's flagship store in LA

The inauguration of the new flagship shop of Alberta Ferretti in LA wasn't to lose. At te 8626 of Melrose Avenue, all Hollywood was there. In that occasion, friends and devoted to the brand had the possibility to appreaciate the new pap of Alberta Ferretti and Philosophy, as well as the last accessories' line.

The interiors of the boutique show a new concept of the brand. For instance, the architects' studio Sybarite from London has created a spacious, luminous and sophisticated store according to the brand image: 420 m where the white predominates, in contrast with the living colours of the collections that float in the space hanging from magnetic hangers.

Besides the already existent lines, Alberta Ferretti Girls has been launched and it is reserved for girls from 5 to 12 y.o. Moreover, in the next two years, AF plans to open a middle-east network in Doha, Jeddha, Dubai, New Delhi e Beyrouth. AF: another example of italian fashion spreading all over the world!

Magnetic Clothes Hangers

Hangers haven’t changed significantly their shape in the course of time. Indeed, the morphology is really static and consolidated, although a lot of designers concern about making hangers original and catchy.

One of them is Daniel TO. This man has elaborated the Magnetic Clothes Hangers, which are the first ones to be magnetic. Particularly, this incredibly innovative idea is handy for the shops thanks to its design. In other words, the simple and essential system avoids the use of the traditional pole, which the hangers hang down. Like this, it allows extreme freedom of movement and configurations with a simple metallic bracket to which all the hangers are attached.

The vertical development of this tool could be interesting. If it were possible to tilt the hook in order to hang the hangers also on walls, it might make this object even more suitable for fashion retails.

How a window speaks about current events

India is the star of the holiday windows at the famous label Hermès flasghip store on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. An enchanting display that's a far cry from the latest Mumbai tragic events. Director of decoration Leila Menchari's aim was to captivate passers-by with unique and exclusive pieces.

Retail Design:Inspiration for Beauty in AmorePacific

Retail design has become the new outlet for brand expression. By controlling everything from images, textures, sounds and in some cases smell, designers are taking the retail experience to a whole new level.

Korean cosmetics giant Amore Pacific approached Continuum in 2004 to design a series of changing retail environments for 'The AMORE Gallery,' their flagship store in the ritzy Apgujung-dong neighborhood of Seoul. The spacious, glass-fronted location provided a unique opportunity to bring the core elements of Amore Pacific's brand -- a contemporary, Asian-inspired balance of natural purity and cutting-edge science -- to an immersive environment where consumers can relax while trying out products or indulging in spa treatments.

To give the Gallery a fashion-forward relevancy that would be refreshing and inviting to passers-by, Continuum (the design studio) developed changing themes throughout the year based on the four seasons. For winter, spring, summer and fall, Continuum's designers recreated store-front graphics, display cases, wall graphics, lighting, banners and sculptured elements anew, infusing the colors and images at every level with Amore's unique naturally-inspired, contemporary look. Continuum also designed and developed the displays for a special exhibition and the Pink Ribbon 2005 campaign to benefit Breast Cancer.

Our eye-catching designs increased foot traffic and word-of-mouth, as the attractive Amore storefront became a landmark known for its modern and engaging displays.

Fiat: another example of interactive windows

Diesel's interractive windows

Diesel Creative Team, in collaboration with Nanika from London Think & Make It of Milan, two agencies which work on ‘interactive art', has transformed in digital installations the windows of Diesel store in Piazza S.Babila.

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A simple idea for a great effect. Basically a camera shoots the actions of the passers and reproduces them in a deforming, artistic way. Two big screens in the square reproduce the situation and the passers become the main character of the work of art.

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This attention to new technologies and artistic expression will caracterise the mega-store Diesel in Milan and its 1300 mq.

From Anila farm to Anila shop

Young Italian accessories label Anila has called upon English designer Joanna Sykes for its summer 2009 collection.

How to transform an adv into a bag by Girbaud

An exclusive François Girbaud interview about ecology and inventiveness. An example : Marithé and François Girbaud's bag made from advertising posters.

Save your logo

Nowadays, fashion and nature are closely related. Besides the animalier textures used for the dresses, a crocodile means LaCoste, a puma reminds you of a sweaty T-shirt, a dear of Abercombie&Fitch, for example.

According to this trend, the Global Environment Facility has launched the campaign "Save your logo" in order to stimulate the firms to save the animal which inspires their brands. Fortunately, for the prestige of the enterprise and for the future of those furry animal, some good results have been seen.