Living Light, living green

We were approached by CBRE’s Architecture and Design division to come up with an innovative concept for their new headquarters in Henrietta Place, London. As part of the brief, we included an interpretation of their early stage brand phrase, ‘living green.’ This phrase became a trigger for one of our concepts, which was to make the building as a whole feel like a sensory experience with the integration of innovative lighting, sculptural and audio visual applications, as though the building itself was alive (living green).

On the ground floor, one of the principal innovative lighting features was the installation of an art-based structure (utilising Philips iColour tiles technology), which allowed abstract, large format video to be displayed within a sculptural lighting installation. These were housed in the reception area and became a real talking point with visitors due to their abstract, almost hypnotic quality and were one of the first of their kind to be installed anywhere in the UK. You can see a short video of them in action here:



This is also now featured on the Philips Lighting Youtube channel.

From a textural/sculptural aspect we created a wave graphic that was applied to interior windows and interpreted around the wall surfaces. We used large format three dimensional tiles that reinforced the ‘living’ concept as well as adding an element of boutique style and sophistication. The tiles were carried through the ground floor break out area, working in tandem with LED floor lighting. This enabled the whole wall to change colour so that CBRE could change the mood of the area from a cool business environment to one suited to client entertainment, when the area took on a more exclusive bar-like quality.

We also proposed installing a large format LED display for the lower ground floor CBar area (4metres x 2.5 metres). The flexibility of this technology would enable CBRE to either create the effect of an abstract moving wall of light or again change the mood to display cinema sized film or video for entertaining staff or clients. In the interim, CBRE has installed a projector, housed in the ceiling, which acts in the same way but without the luminosity and visual impact of the LED mesh.

Throughout the six month project we were also involved in a consultancy and project management role, advising on other aspects of the interior, from signage and wayfinding to colour coding and imagery.

The finished building provides a stylish, innovative and modern corporate headquarters that not only reflects the gravitas that one would expect from one of the world’s largest global real estate organisations, but the inventiveness, energy and dynamism of the CBRE brand and its employees.

update: Estates Gazette has a video feature on the new space, watch it here: http://bcove.me/8cdgst25

(click on any of the images above or below to view full size)

Engineering a graphic solution for EPSRC

We have just finished work on a challenging data visualisation project for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s (EPSRC) website. The brief was to communicate where EPSRC - the UK government agency for funding research and training in engineering and physical sciences – allocates funding to its many research disciplines.

So how to communicate this in an innovative, aesthetic and accessible way? Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Believe us, it wasn’t!

EPSRC divides its research portfolio into a number of different challenge themes: Healthcare Technologies, Global Uncertainties, Digital Economy, Manufacturing the Future, Energy and Living with Environmental change and capability themes: – Engineering, ICT (Information and Communications Technologies), Physical Sciences and Mathematical Sciences. Our task was to visually represent these so that they are clear and easy to understand.

So far, so straightforward. However, given the nature of EPSRC, there is huge overlap within the different themes and within each central theme there are numerous individual research areas that interconnect with each other. Take Physical Sciences for instance. There are 28 research areas within the theme, (yes, we counted them), all of which connect with one or more of the other 27. Therefore, we needed to design something that showed clearly the overall research portfolio, the challenge and capability themes, and their related research areas whilst also representing them as individual entities.

An essential part of the project was to show the current funding for every research area and represent their relative funding over the next year.

There were a lot of numbers involved so we needed to find a way of simply representing these figures. After brainstorming a number of creative concepts, we opted for graphic maps. Our first task was to create a main overview map to show the challenge and capability themes.. Each of these then had its own graphic map, featuring circles representing each specific research area and interconnecting lines to link related areas together. The circle size represents the level of funding received up until April 2011, with the colour indicating whether the relative value of funding over the coming year is expected to grow, reduce, maintain or if it is still under review.

To make matters more complicated, we also had to ensure all the maps were accessible for visually impaired audiences – again, a core part of the brief. So we had to be creative whilst constrained by the limited choices in the visually impaired palette. We used yellow, pink, green and blue to represent funding status, along with white text on darker backgrounds and black text on the lighter colours.

Altogether, we created nine maps, all connected to the head diagram. It was our aim to create something that combined aesthetics with functionality and we are very proud of our efforts. And EPSRC felt that the resulting graphics helped to communicate the complexities of their portfolio.


(click the diagrams below to view full size)

we're hiring!

This is just a quick post to say that despite all the gloom and doom and economic woe, we seem to be as busy as ever as the moment, therefore we're looking for someone new to join our team.

We're looking for a Mid to Senior level designer. Our ideal candidate will have at least 6 years plus experience, be passionate about design and have a hands on approach. So, if you have spent some time in one of the big corporate branding consultancies, or you have been instrumental in the growth of a small consultancy that is no longer challenging your ambitions, this could be the job for you.

We're looking for a great all-rounder, capable of everything from from pitch presentations to creating artwork – from excellent knowledge of print processes to the complexities of website design.

For a bit more info on the requirements, visit our website here:
http://www.tothepoint.co.uk/contact/opportunity.html

to the powerpoint

Sometimes it's the simplest solutions that get the best results. Case in point, we've just completed a project for The Technology Partnership (who spookily also refer to themselves as TTP - no relation!).

As a bit of background, TTP is a technology and product development company. They work in partnership with their clients to bring new products to market, creating new business from advances in technology – developing and commercialising diverse technologies and products across a broad range of sectors.

So how to communicate this in an interesting, dynamic and innovative way? The original plan was to create an interactive corporate presentation featuring an animated company overview and multiple case-studies. To make matters more complicated they wanted to be able to edit and add to these case-studies at any time. Hmmm.

Lots of different technical solutions were considered but for time, cost and practicality we ended up producing the whole thing in PowerPoint. Now, at the mere mention of Powerpoint, most designers groan in disappointment. It's well known that PowerPoint often produces tedious, poorly designed presentations with nothing going for them apart from the fact that they can be edited with ease and usually have some sort of clip-art or tacky sound-effects attached.

However, with judicial use of embedded video and plenty of interactive links to take the user around the presentation, it's amazing what can be produced. In order to personalise the company and 'keep it real' (as the kids say) they commissioned us to undertake both a team photoshoot at their own offices and a separate product shoot at a photography studio. This gave us striking images to work with that kept the whole presentation both impactful and consistent.

The full video animation was split into five different sections - each can be viewed independently within the main PowerPoint presentation using a simple menu. You can see all five sections together in the full piece here.

 

Worcester source

We have recently completed the name generation and branding for a new shopping destination in the heart of Worcester. The development called St Martin’s Quarter is a joint venture between Carillion and Richardsons Capital LLP, and is our first project for them. The scheme will be offering the city, new, large floorplate, food and retail units that previously have not been catered for in the small traditional shops on the High Street.

The chosen identity, designed by our senior designer Nikki Saunders, is based around a rare, local variety of pear (known as the Worcester Black Pear). Sourced from its appearance on the city’s coat of arms, it perfectly combines the city’s tradition and heritage with the freshness and modernity that the scheme will bring to the city. The colour palette of charcoal grey and lime green underpins this and will help the scheme transform a previously run down area of the city into a thriving destination.

It was important to us and the client that the brand not only has the flexibility of translating across the immediate deliverables such as signage, leasing brochures and hoardings but to more abstract interpretations, with potential for the brand to be used for public art and commissioned sculptures. We liked the idea that the brand would translate into a three-dimensional experience that the public would interact with and that becomes a talking point for the community. Shown below are our initial ideas for a metal Pear Tree structure occupying centre stage on the pedestrianised public space and large commissioned metal gates at the entrance of the scheme that comprise of pattern repeats of the logo.

The scheme will occupy what was previously an old industrial site which is of historic value and now a conservation area. A few of the existing buildings will be retained and restored such as the Old Infirmary, Counting House and New Filling Shed, and these will sit alongside the new development which is due to open next year.

update 1: view local press (and plenty of comment!) here

update 2: a nice write up in Design Week (may require subscription to view) here

there is a follow up to this story here

Working with Wokingham

Our latest recruit, Jim Demeza, is certainly hitting the ground running. Hot on the heals of his work with Actis for their AIM 2011 conference, his first project win was launched this week. Working closely with the design team here, he steered us to victory on the the tender to create a new identity for Wokingham Council’s new independent local authority trading company, Optalis. As a local authority trading company (LATC), and only the second independent LATC to be formed in the UK, Optalis will be able to operate competitively in the adult social care market, providing it’s customers with more choice and greater control in their support services and spend. It will also allow those who are not eligible to receive help from the Council, to buy services privately. The final design was created with the assistance of the Sensory Needs team to reflect a bright, friendly and modern organisation. The design can be viewed on our 05/11 news page here.

Designer Mark Stevens, who worked on the branding said:

"Transferring existing adult social care services into an LATC offers those in need of care, a greater choice over their support arrangements, allowing their needs to be met in a more individualised way. Working closely with the Optalis team, we used colour to communicate the importance of these 'new choices for living' and backed it up with a succinct tagline, to create a warm, approachable marque for an auspicious new scheme."

Design Week took an interest in what we had done too, so if you are a subscriber you can view the article here.

We are currently in the process of working on the brand guidelines, and a range of templates, to help them save money on both their internal and external marketing, whilst also ensuring they retain brand consistency across all collateral.

Here's the official Optalis Press Release:

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OPTALIS TAKES OVER THE REINS OF WBC’S ADULT SOCIAL CARE PROVIDED SERVICES

Vulnerable adults with a disability, and older people who need care and support, will have more choice from today (June 6) as Wokingham Borough Council launches Optalis; its new adult social care company.

Optalis, which is wholly council-owned, has today taken control of all the borough council’s adult social care provided services. This includes day centres, employment services, home care, residential care and supported housing services, as well as brokerage and support and sensory needs services.

The council was prompted to set up a separate company by a combination of its policy decision to become an increasingly commissioning authority and the national policy of Putting People First, which allows adults who are entitled to personal budgets to choose who provides their social care, rather than being told by social services. This has meant people have more choice and control about how they spend their budget. Whilst this is extremely positive for the borough’s residents it has meant that the councils’ long-established care services couldn’t be guaranteed to be able to survive.

Moving to a separate company allows those services to better manage their costs and to better respond to personalised care needs, ensuring they will continue to be attractive to personal budget holders. It will reduce operating costs and overheads, and grant new flexibilities and freedoms that are not possible as part of a council set up. As Optalis is now operating competitively in the social care market, it will be available to those who previously may have wanted to buy Council’s services, but were not able to because of legal restrictions on the council selling its services. The launch of Optalis will therefore offer more choice than in the current market. This way our existing and future clients will get the best of both worlds – having the choice of a proven high quality service and also one that has freedom from public sector requirements.

Stuart Rowbotham, strategic director commissioning, said: “Doing nothing and remaining as we were was simply not an option. In order for our services to flourish and to continue to provide our excellent services to the public, we needed to be able to trade and contend with both established and emerging market competitors. Transferring our in-house adult social care services into a new company is our best option for doing this. We have invested £250,000 to set up this exciting new company which the council will recoup over time.

“We expect Optalis will be able to grow and develop new and improved services, including those that are currently missing from the social care market and are in demand. This will, in turn, offer more support options and activities that until now vulnerable adults haven’t been able to access.”

Cllr Julian McGhee-Sumner, executive member for health and wellbeing, said: “Our key priority is to sustain and improve the services we already provide and to give continuity and high quality support to the people who already use our services as well as those who may do so in future. Transferring our services gives us the best chance of achieving this.“

Mike Walsh, managing director at Optalis, said: “We have been working hard to ensure the transition period is smooth and those customers already receiving a social care service should not notice much difference day-to-day other than the change of organisation name and image. Most importantly, people should continue receiving support from staff that they know and are happy with because the council staff delivering the service have been transferred to Optalis. Those vulnerable adults who receive a service from us will experience greater choice and control over their support arrangements; and the risk of disruptions to their service or a loss of service altogether will be far lower. It’s an exciting time to launch Optalis.

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air freshener...

We've just helped our BID team at Better Bankside, who teamed up with Vertical Garden specialists Treebox , Network Rail and Skanska, to bring a 35metre length of green wall to Bankside. Across the street from the Hop Exchange on Southwark Street, the original hoarding has now been transformed from a hard and flat surface to a lush green living wall of ivy, incorporating graphics by to the point.

The area around the Borough High Street / Southwark Street junction sees high traffic volume and as a result can often experience poor air quality. The living wall is being monitored by students from Imperial College, London, to see what impact the planting has on local air quality.

The Mayor of London launched the London Air Quality Strategy in late 2010. Better Bankside hope that this small contribution within Bankside will provide valuable learning and practice that can be replicated elsewhere in London. The living wall also helps to increase the amount of green space in the neighbourhood, again helping achieve Mayoral targets of increasing green cover in London by 5% by 2025.

Valerie Beirne of Better bankside signs off "We know it will help make Bankside become a thriving place to work, visit and live!"

Preserving trust...

The signs of recovery are clearly here. The new clients we are currently working with are innovative, driven and hunting out the opportunities that exist in the changing landscape of their local, and global, economy. We've had a lean couple of years and seen private sector work drop off while public sector continued and then the recent reversal as private sector picks up and public sector halted slightly more  immediately than expected!

However, with our broad spread of sectors, and balanced split between public and private sector work, we have come through these tough times stronger and in a position to still offer the breadth and depth of experience that is essential to help drive the visions of these new businesses forward. Whether it's helping in-house teams set up systems and templates using Microsoft Office to communicate consistently and on brand, helping businesses evolve through accessible change management programmes or naming and creating new identities and branding for start-ups, our skill sets are again being challenged and enjoyed by our clients.

With the naming exercises we've undertaken recently, the unsuccessful search for related URLs demonstrates why so many companies are opting for made up or mis-spelt names. But the name is an integral part of the brand so a little more lateral thinking relating to meaning and how the name might be developed as an identity helps create a stronger more effective brand. 

This month, we looked at two new business wins that are capitalising on changes and requirements within their environments. Both early stage but already the feedback that design is helping them to differentiate and raise awareness of their services is great. Efront started with the naming exercise that has worked on both the meaning front and from a visual perspective with the 'Pevara' solution. But beyond naming, the fact that we challenged both companies preconceived ideas, can look at their vision and requirements objectively and that they listen and adapt, is testament to the preservation of partnership relationships built on trust.  Long may this continue. Feedback from our contact at Alpheus sums it up nicely - thanks Robert:

 “Working with TTP has been a refreshing change from other deign agencies with whom we have worked in the past.  TTP are more inclined to spend time understanding and challenging our ideas and assumptions by getting under the skin of what is important to our business.  Simply re-hashing old ideas is not an option, but thinking laterally and understanding the big picture is second nature.  This process has allowed us to, collectively, reach the desired goal, and, as such, we have already recommended them to our customers!”

You can find out more about FLOW:Coherence from Alpheus here: www.flowcoherence.alpheus.com

targeting new business... bring on the fun

With tothepoint’s ‘I Shot The Serif’ app game taking the world (well, North America and Germany) by storm, our thoughts turn to what other innovative methods of drumming up new business have been doing the rounds lately. Here, we provide some thoughts on how successful they can be for design firms looking to expand or just get some work through the door.

We all want to work with well-known companies that do great work, but it’s the companies that aren’t well-known and have poor branding that can be the easier win, discovering the benefits of good design. These companies often rely on PR for their exposure so reading the national (rather than design) press will help you research and find these opportunities (obviously, still read the design press for inspiration!). Some quick searching online can reveal the in-house people who generate these releases so, with access to their email or postal addresses, you can send a bespoke letter or email that touches on how they could improve their profile and how you can help them achieve this. With overloaded inboxes we find a well-crafted letter is more often read and remembered, helping you to start a dialogue. But don’t expect them to ring you – you need to follow up with a call.

With email you can also take the volume approach, as long as you don’t mind the possibility of clients thinking you’re spamming them. If you buy mailing lists for specific sectors you can tailor the emails with appropriate case studies of your clients in this sector and hopefully show the benefits, or better still the ROI, you have achieved for these clients. Always play to your strengths rather than seek new challenges in new sectors – the grass isn’t always greener and clients like to feel you understand their business so there isn’t such a steep learning curve.

Multi-mailing ('multi' so you can manage it, 'mass' you won’t) is a very effective route to getting your message in front of a large number of prospects for very little outlay. However, be warned. Some people can get quite touchy about it so, if you have the resources or you can afford a new business agency, a cold call to the intended recipient before sending an email can break the ice and make it more likely they will read it.

Allocating time to new business is essential and you shouldn’t stop when you are busy. Plan ahead for those quiet times. A good database (or CRM system) will help you to develop and manage a mailing list of the people you speak to. Make sure you ask them if they are happy to receive materials like a monthly newsletter. This way, if they haven’t got work now, you are more likely to be in contact at the right time when they do have work. Just make sure your materials aren’t only about you but also offer useful advice and insight into ideas that may benefit them.

The best way of engaging with prospective new clients is, of course, by allowing them to find you and this is where keeping your website dynamic, blogging and other social media marketing techniques come in to place along with PPC and SEO. Some people say “clients won’t find an agency by searching online” and they may be right. It’s quite unlikely that a marketing director will Google “branding agency UK” and think “oh look, there’s half a dozen, I’ll get them in to pitch!” But think a bit laterally. If you were thinking of rebranding, which steps might you need to go through first? Maybe some research into employee engagement? Is there actually more going on than a simple rebrand (if there is such a thing!); perhaps the client is merging – would ‘managing change’ be further up their agenda?

These are the questions you need to ask yourself. Then you need to consider what your audience, if looking for help with these issues, might search for. Make sure that you have an opinion on these things and that your opinion can be found by writing white papers on these subjects and submitting them to the right places including your own blog with some good SEO content and techniques.

But this by itself is probably not enough. As Adam Whittaker, of new business agency RSW, explores “The number of people you probably could engage with is huge, tens of thousands, and for all these people you need PPC, SEO and a good blog. But there are probably only a few hundred who are your absolute priority and for these people, you need to be SURE they know where you are, which is where the integration of social marketing with one-to-one marketing really comes into its own.” He goes on the explain how, by using Twitter and LinkedIn to broadcast your thoughts to your target audience, it’s possible to significantly raise awareness of your firm so that clients know how to contact you, as and when they are in the market.

“And that” Adam sums up, “is what you really want to do – make sure YOUR firm is the one that first springs to mind whenever they have a need for the service you specialise in.”

Gemma Went, Founder of Red Cube Marketing, has worked with a number of design firms on their social media activity “Many dismiss it as something that doesn’t apply to them, but after illustrating where people they want to engage with are online and how easy it can be to strike up a conversation with them, they tend to be more comfortable about investing time in it.” When asked which social media platforms tend to work well for new business, one came out on top, “The blog is a fantastic tool for ‘showing’ people you’re great at what you do, which is opposite to the website which ‘tells’ people. With a blog you can showcase credibility and establish thought leadership, something that can be extremely powerful for any design agency. It also gives people the opportunity to engage with you and get into hearty debates, another great way of illustrating your knowledge. Partner this with a Twitter profile and LinkedIn activity to find people you want to engage with and you have a powerful marketing tool.” Gemma continues, “I also find it levels the playing field. In the past the bigger agencies had more money to invest in advertising, a PR agency and such like. Social media doesn’t yield better results by investing more, a small business can create a blog or engage with people on Twitter in exactly the same way as a bigger firm, getting the same results, at the same cost.”

At tothepoint we welcome digital communication but balance this with more traditional techniques to keep us in front of our clients, like our printed desktop calendar, we’re there in front of them all year. But I can certainly say our fun iPhone app has opened some new doors we weren’t expecting… give it a go on our website or download the free iPhone app: http://www.tothepoint.co.uk/more/fun/shoot_the_serif/ and good hunting…

note: this article also appears in Design Week: Feb 2011

Words in the clouds

So how was 2010 for you? It was certainly full of variety for us! Looking back across all our news posts of the year (you can see them all on one page here) we certainly dealt with a wide variety of projects and clients - and whilst many have struggled during this difficult year, we seem to have kept ourselves pretty busy each month.

As a nice visual way to try to make sense of all that news we've create a 'word cloud' - built from all the news we sent out to you in 2010 (word sizes are based on how many times that word was mentioned). As you can see, 'new' featured quite heavily - which we take as a positive sign!

You can also see another word cloud taken from all our 2010 blogs (and just in case you missed any of them, they can all be read below!)

Although we'd love to take all the credit for the painstaking creation of these, we actually used a nice free service called 'Wordle' - http://www.wordle.net - this site lets you copy and paste any text (or import an RSS feed) and build a word cloud image from it - letting you tweak the layout and colours till you're happy. Give it a go - it's a nice way to add meaning and typography* to something that could be a little dry otherwise. Of course, for more customised ways to design and visualise your data, just give us a call.

We look forward to seeing what words define 2011 - in the meantime, we'd love to hear about the 'keywords' that defined 2010 for you.

Ben Jackson, Head of Digital Media

*Oh and talking of typography, did we mention our latest little free game and iPhone app..?