Historically, we are used to thinking of Apple as a niche player, it still is in many ways, but its new businesses appear to be scaling pretty fast.

Movies

According to Variety, Apple's move into the movie business appears to be working quite well.

"Studio execs said that iTunes movie sales and rentals -- which the computer company said tops 50,000 daily -- dominate the small but closely watched digital movie biz. Apple is now on track to sell or rent 18.25 million movies a year, or triple the number of last year, before it inked deals with all major studios for new-release rentals and sales."

Phones

Apple placed an order with Samsung for 50 million NAND flash chips. It's basically taken over Samsung's production. The order is so big, Samsung is asking its other customers to wait. A fascinating development when you consider that Samsung also wants to play in the phone wars, but here it is helping a foe with a critical component.


Posted by Ed Cotton

I spotted this in NYC yesterday.

The Whitney Museum engaging in some creative use of media to promote its Bucky Fuller exhibit.

Using a vacant store 50 yards from the museum, they put up a relevant quote.

Makes you think a little and work to connect the dots.

Is the store part of the museum exhibit or is it an ad?



Posted by Ed Cotton

Personal data is the new "blood" of the web and beyond. It's giving rise to a whole new generation of web experiences and external sensors and monitors are capturing data about us in ways we could never have imagined.

Tom Coates of Yahoo and Matt Jones of Dopplr gave this fascinating presentation about the topic at this years Web 2.0 conference.



The personalization of experiences through this information suggests that no experience should ever be the same.

After years of talk and nothing to show for it, we are truly moving into a one-to-one world.


Posted by Ed Cotton

Months on from Cadbury's landmark ad from Fallon, that did this.

“Its 28 different postings on YouTube have garnered 10m views.  It has been spoofed with a toy gorilla as well as remixed with a 50 Cent and a Bonnie Tyler track.  It is simple, bonkers and funny”   

Media Guardian-October- 2007

What have we learned?

1.Sales Performance: It worked- Dairy Milk got a 9% bump in sales

2. Some Creatives Get the New World: Creatives liked it and it won big at awards shows including Cannes

3. Some Creatives Don't Get the New World: Creatives didn't like it- it caused some significant debate at awards shows including Cannes

4. There's No Such thing As A Formula: It's hard to repeat success- the second spot, despite it's craziness could not capture in the way Phil and the gorilla did

5. The Planners Worked Hard: Despite the feeling that planners weren't involved in this- they did a ton of work setting the stage for the client to accept a new form of advertising. Things like:

Why being matters more than saying

Being true to yourself, rather than pretending to be something you are not

Being authentic vs. contrived

The idea of brands taking on the role of entertainers.

6. Research Can't Explain Everything: This thing was tested to death- it blew the lid off Millward Brown's ad testing scores, but the company couldn't explain why.

One thing is for certain, it's paved the way for other clients and agencies to take more risks. Not everything is going to work, but they are going to have a lot of fun doing it.


Posted by Ed Cotton

Mark Earls and Domenico Vitale are doing an interesting session on the future of planning at this year's AAAA's planning conference in Miami.

They are keeping up with these 2.0 times by using a wiki to record the thoughts and insights from other planners.

Here's what they are asking.




Posted by Ed Cotton

There's a provocative piece by George Monbiot in today's Guardian, where he talks about the failure of politicians to grasp the concept that there are either higher energy costs from renewable sources or no energy at all.

People are still thinking about alternative energy as alternative to oil, but what if there isn't one? Higher prices are the likely new reality.

Brands thinking about the future are going to have to realize that consumer's disposable income is going to decrease based on increased expenditures on items that we've previously taken for granted; fuel, energy and food. In addition, the knock on impact of this on costs of goods will be significant.

The prospect of decreasing standards of living looms large, but this appears to be the price we are paying for a reliance on an oil-based economy.

"Almost everyone seems to agree: governments now face a choice between saving the planet and saving the economy. As recession looms, the political pressure to abandon green policies intensifies. A report published yesterday by Ernst & Young suggests that the EU's puny carbon target will raise energy bills by 20% over the next 12 years. Last week the prime minister's advisers admitted to the Guardian that his renewable energy plans were "on the margins" of what people will tolerate.

But these fears are based on a false assumption: that there is a cheap alternative to a green economy. Last week New Scientist reported a survey of oil industry experts, which found that most of them believe global oil supplies will peak by 2010. If they are right, the game is up. A report published by the US department of energy in 2005 argued that unless the world begins a crash programme of replacements 10 or 20 years before oil peaks, a crisis "unlike any yet faced by modern industrial society" is unavoidable.

If the world is sliding into recession, it's partly because governments believed that they could choose between economy and ecology. The price of oil is so high and it hurts so much because there has been no serious effort to reduce our dependency."


Posted by Ed Cotton

Interesting article in the London Times about Barclays and its approach to branch re-design. It picks out Apple stores, The Science Museum and obviously, Tesco, as being inspirations for the project.

"At the beginning of last year, Ms Oppenheimer poached Helen Dodd, a retail design expert, from Tesco.

Ms Dodd, who has spent 20 years working out how to attract customers to shops and keep them there, trooped 250 Barclays customers and staff through the Northampton warehouse to test the new layout and technology.

Nothing was sacred, not even the good old British queue with the black tape barriers. The new Manchester branch is experimenting with a ying-yang-shaped queue, broken up by waist-height pillars housing computer games. The branch's space-age information desk is pure Apple store, while, according to Ms Dodd: “We're trialling a lot of different queueing methodologies - people do PhDs on this stuff.”

The childrens' play area is inspired by the Science Museum. There is no glass separating tellers from customers, to stop people from raising their voices, something that Ms Dodd believes makes banking more stressful.

Curves are used to make customers feel “warmer”, while the glass frontage will make women more inclined to enter. “At the moment, they don't feel welcomed into branches,” Ms Dodd said. Concierges, dressed in uniforms by the designer Jeff Banks, will issue customers with tickets telling them how long they must wait and even if they would be served more quickly if they went to another branch.

Getting the right doormat was key - customers like dry feet, so Ms Dodd found a mat that dried wet soles within four steps. The Manchester branch operates to the same timetable as other retailers, with late night and weekend opening."

Posted by Ed Cotton

On July 9th at 6.30pm, Influx is presenting an evening with Dawn Danby at Method's Home's HQ in San Francisco.

Here's how Dawn describes herself.

"Dawn Danby explores the intersection of design, sustainability and business. Which is a fancy way of saying that she wants the things we make to benefit both people and the world.

An industrial designer by training, she's a boundary-spanner and synthesist who has acted as a cross-disciplinary designer, strategist, art director, project manager, producer and artist."

Dawn is a sustainability expert and will talk to us about what's next for brands and companies as the start to face the issue head on.

We have very limited space for this event, but if you are interested please email ecotton@bssp.com and hopefully we can squeeze you in.


Posted by Ed Cotton

A nice contrary thought from John Thackara.

"INNOVATION IS NOT GOOD IN ITSELF - IN FACT, MORE INNOVATION DOES HARM, THAN DOES GOOD.

My evidence for this statement is contained in a breathless announcement from Mintel, the market research company, that a "Record-Breaking Number of New Products Flood Global CPG Shelves" and that (the numbers are for 2006) "close to 182,000 new products were introduced globally, with key booming areas focusing on mind, body, and general good health".

Well over half of these of these innovations - 105,000, to be precise - were food and drink products. This flood of innovations enable us to profit from such trends as "brainpower foods, age-defying treatments, increases in portion control, and "just for you" customised products”.

Now I may have misunderstood something here, but surely the Mintel numbers mean that more than half the innovations that reach the market all over the world - 300 innovations, every single day of the year - decrease the resource efficiency and hence sustainability of global food systems?

Good, so that's Innovation dealt with. Bring on the next killer word!"

However, shouldn't innovators now consider the social and environmental responsibility of their actions?

If they do, innovations shouldn't be product launches for the sake of it, but new products that improve upon the social and environmental footprints of their predecessors and then innovation would be a good thing?

Posted by Ed Cotton

Dom was a fellow speaker at the Idea Forum in Bucharest the other week. Since Glue is blazing quite a trail in the interactive world at the moment, I thought it was worth asking its technology guru some questions about his job and the changing world of brands in the interactive space.

1. Briefly describe Glue and your role at the agency?

I work at UK digital ad agency glue London (current clients include the likes of Adidas, Toyota, Bacardi, Nokia, 3, Playstation, McCain, COI and Virgin Trains)

My role is Head of Emerging Technology which is a job title shrouded in ambiguity I know, but actually means I focus on identifying how technology can enhance glue’s creative idea, and how technology can be harnessed to take the creative idea out to new audiences. A lot of time is spent digging out links to the best campaigns and technology partners, creating learning's and then trying to educate and inspire the wider agency on how to do cool stuff.

2. How does technology integrate itself into the creative solution?

We strive to integrate technology as seamlessly as possible. We always approach things from the consumers perspective who on the whole couldn't care less about technology. What people want is a great experience that's tailored to the channel they're on. People should stay oblivious to what's going on under the bonnet. The best technology is invisible.

Once we have a creative idea and understand who the audience is, we're then in the position to identify which channels could be relevant - out of which the technologies generally fall. It's massively important to fully understand the opportunities and limitations of each of the channels, and to try and push those boundaries with each project.

3. What new demands are clients placing on interactive communications?

We’ve witnessed a shift from brands buying time with an audience, to a need for brands to create time with an audience – and by that I mean creating experiences or utilities that add value and that people choose to spend time with.

It’s human nature that once we’ve had a great experience we tell our friends about it (and by experience I mean any experience). Our objective is therefore to enable our brands to enter peoples everyday conversations in a positive fashion, and we do this by building rich and engaging experiences or utilities that people want to spend time with. 

4. Looking ahead, what technology trends do you think are going to be big in the interactive space?

Everything is so new that the industry as a whole is on a collective learning exercise to understand what channel opportunities are out there, how people are using these channels, how brands can add value to people on these channels, and also how to build for them. (Made easier by the fact that all of these are constantly evolving!)

For me the special campaigns will be those that understand how people use particular channels, and identify when to employ them in combination to produce something special. The Nike piece is a perfect example.

The other big thing for me is dynamic video. The digital industry has historically been restricted on how work is executed by the limitations of Flash. Motion graphics and 3d applications offer a much wider variety of techniques and better production values, so I think we’ll see a lot more agencies moving into this space.

5. What work out there do you wish Glue had been involved with?

There is so much good work out there. The work R/GA do for Nike is amazing. I love Absolut Machines as an example of how to create a real world experience that is controlled virtually. The Japanese have always been good at technology and their creative skills are now catching up fast. The recent Uniqlock piece is a great example of this and is a strong creative idea is deployed over a variety of channels.

6. Where do you find your inspiration?

I have a wide group of friends from all walks of life. I expose myself and absorb as much as I can across all disciplines. I make time to look on the interweb but also make sure I do real world things too.

There’s an interesting insight to be had everywhere. We’re lucky in London because there’s stuff going on around us all the time, the trick is finding the time to go to it.




Posted by Ed Cotton

Everything is going crazy over at Yahoo as the brightest and the best leave the ship.

(Grant seems to have all the details and more in his post).

Yahoo was a brand that shone bright at the earliest part of the internet revolution, but it failed to keep pace with the times. However, the recent years have not been without hope. The company made two great acquisitions in Flickr and deli.icio.us- leading edge 2.0 companies with really smart founders, and really nice brands.

Everyone understands the smart thing to do with nascent brands is to let them be, give them space and autonomy as soon as you start screwing around with them all hell breaks loose.

However, in this supposed war for the most talented, shouldn't companies really be paying more attention to the people who created these entities?

For as much as they are buying the power and uniqueness of these new brands, they are also buying the talent of their creators, who's needs also have to be nurtured.

Time after time companies fail to capitalize on the talent they acquire because they can't find a way for it to fit into the culture or the culture itself crushes them.

Yahoo really need Stewart Butterfield, Caternina Fake  and Joshua Schacter to spearhead the development and build out of Yahoo 2.0.

Why that really never happened, only the insiders will know, but clearly companies need to plan their acquisitions better and pay closer attention to the talent they are buying, rather than focusing their thinking on scaling through their system or saving costs by eliminating  duplication and inefficiency.

Of course, Stewart Butterfield had the last laugh with his zany resignation letter, that tells his boss- he's thankful for his 87 years of service and doesn't need no gold watch.

Reading between the lines, it's clear giant corporate culture crushed his spirit and energy just at the time when Yahoo most needed those qualities.




Posted by Ed Cotton

Things seem to be happening so fast as the  rapid change in the economy coupled with all sorts of other concerns seems to be changing consumer behavior in a rapid fashion. The suburban dream has been questioned for years, but I find it fascinating to see the European and New York city mantra of the value of neighborhoods starting to be widely embraced. One great manifestation of this comes in the form of the Seattle based Walkscore, a website dedicated to helping citizens discover the walkability of various neighborhoods.

The site explains the multiple benefits of walking.


Posted by Ed Cotton

The National has an amazing story about the South China Mall.

It was planned to be the world's largest and it now sits under-used (planned to house 1,500 stores and currently has just 12), the victim of a dream that failed to materialize.

Many speculators had big plans for China and wanted to capitalize on the supposed massive growth of the new middle class. Sadly, this growth didn't happen fast enough to propel this new mall to greatness.

It's perhaps a lesson that shows just how easy it is to get carried away with projections of potential and suggests that China's amazing growth can continue for ever.

"On a recent Friday afternoon, an amusement-park employee, slouched in a forsaken ticket booth, tried to kill time by making origami. Another worker slept, with perfect impunity, on a table. In front of the haunted house attraction, one attendant was doing hand-stands while two others looked blankly on.

There was nothing else to do, because the South China Mall, which opened with great fanfare in 2005, is not just the world’s largest. With fewer than a dozen stores scattered through a space designed to house 1,500, it is also the world’s emptiest – a dusty, decrepit complex of buildings marked by peeling paint, dead light bulbs, and dismembered mannequins.

“They set out to be the biggest, and hoped that being the biggest would be the attracting factor,” says David Hand, a retail analyst at Jones Lang LaSalle in Beijing, who has followed the project. “It hasn’t delivered.”

The world has plenty of empty malls; there’s even an American website, deadmalls.com, where connoisseurs of desolation post photos and reminiscences of the once-great, now-gutted places where they spent the Saturday afternoons of their youth. What sets the South China Mall apart from the rest, besides its mind-numbing size, is that it never went into decline. The tenants didn’t jump ship; they never even came on board. The mall entered the world pre-ruined, as if its developers had deliberately created an attraction for people with a taste for abandonment and decay. It is a spectacular real-estate failure – but it is also, as I saw when I spent two days exploring the site in May, a strangely beautiful monument to the big dreams that China inspires."

It's a strange coincidence that the story appears in a Dubai based publication- a country that has pushed development to the limits in the hope of becoming THE new tourist destination.

This story came from the amazing BLDGB blog, who has its own post on this incredible story.


Posted by Ed Cotton

MySpace is going through some tough times these days because of the intense competition its under from Facebook. Instead of calling up a large ad agency and briefing them on the challenges, My Space went to Adaptive Path (a user experience consulting firm) and asked them to help re-design the experience.

Since the brand is the web experience everything that happens there is critical to how people use and perceive the brand. It appears that Adaptive Path did tons of work to make MySpace a cleaner, less cluttered experience.

Lots of detailed and complex research and testing with users to make the improvements. However, it's way more than a cosmetic, because such changes impact the organizational culture and how the company functions.

Monkey Bites has a very interesting post discussing the process.

"Ryan Freitas, the project lead for the redesign, spoke with us over the phone Tuesday. Freitas says his team’s focus was to change the old way of thinking that was gunking up the MySpace experience, namely that you don’t need to put everything in front of the user all the time."

"Most importantly, Freitas says, these changes were more about the design process than the usability enhancements............

“You can see the way a team operates internally based on the way their product works when it comes out,” he says. “MySpace is pretty democratic, but they hadn’t ever streamlined their collaboration between tech, content and presentation.”

He says the Adaptive Path team pushed MySpace to become more inclusive as an organization. They brought all of the various stakeholders, from ad sales and technology to visual design, into the process of designing the user experience.

“It’s not just a UI change, it’s an organizational change,” he says. “It was a true ‘teach a man to fish’ situation.”

If some agency group isn't thinking already about investing in Adaptive Path, they soon will be.

This company appears to be at the front-end of a new world of positioning and re-positioning brands through experience.


Posted by Ed Cotton

Influx recently wrote about the power humans have to process images and how this impacts web site design. It now appears Google is placing a value on fast. It is now adding load time as a factor in how it applies quality scores to keywords.

The company explains the reasoning behind the move as follows..

"Two reasons: First, users have the best experience when they don't have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate."

We are now in a world where milliseconds matter and clearly now there's a price to pay for being too slow.



Posted by Ed Cotton

Over at the blog ‘ideasonideas‘ Eric Karjaluoto has posted an interview with the well known (Sir) Kevin Roberts from Saatchi.

I thought I’d want to post my very own comment on this here since the interview is touching some good arguments that summarise my recent efforts (both theoretically as well as practically) on building an argument why it is essential for the design management community to understand and embrace the impact of digital communication and ‘social networks services in particular.

In a current client project I’m involved in we (that means Erik & Edwin from designest) are challenged by identifying the various digital and social touch points of social media with the brand in relation to the consumer.

What makes this process challenging is the somehow unknown territory we’ve entered therefore I’ve read with some relief Robert’s response to the question:

Eric: What kind of experiments are you running in interactive? Are there areas that you are testing with greater success than others?

Kevin: Our whole approach is pretty much one big experiment at this stage. There?s no proven pathway (Thank God!!!).

Accordingly we are currently combining tools of design research (consumer journey’s, empathic observation or ethnographic research in its broadest meaning) in conjunction with considering the whole spectrum of social network platforms & tools currently available.

While we still have a long way to go I do think that we are coming closer to “expanding tools, technologies and teams to get closer to consumers on the terms they want.”

However this all wouldn’t be possible without our client to allow for some degree of freedom and exploration that Eric and Kevin are discussing here:

Eric: What?s the sense like amongst your clients? Are they racing to embrace these new tools, or are you finding them more cautious?

Kevin: They?re emotionally engaged and rationally careful. But ? they?re becoming less cautious as they see the benefits of keeping up with consumers. You miss 100% of the shots you don?t take.

My personal conclusion so far is that the design management community has not embraced this challenge pro-actively so far (maybe there have been some discussions at the recent DMI conference in Paris of which I’m not aware). However what I mostly hear from my peers in my network is more lip service than actually founded arguments & insights.

Simply talking about ‘customer co-creation’ and ‘user driven design’ sounds nice and might sell good, but I’d like to see applications beyond being able to customise the colour of your sneaker …

Bubble-bursting stress toy launched in game version.

Given our infatuation (and newsbreaker status) with the entire Puchiverse, we can?t quite figure out how we missed the news about a new video game based on the Mugen PuchiPuchi virtual bubblewrap toy.

Ouchi de Mugen PuchiPuchi Wii (Infinite Bubblewrap at Home Wii) is a game where you pop virtual bubblewrap onscreen with the Wiimote to the sound of music. While PuchiPuchi is supposed to relieve stress, the song on the game?s homepage may just counteract any benefits.

Not sure how we missed this one either, but here?s a demo movie from the Mugen Edamame (Endless Soybeans) we blogged about here.

Check out PuchiPuchi on Youtube

Now that we can puchi on the train, at home, with friends, and at the dinner table, will there be anything left to puchi when Bandai?s self-made trend runs its course?

I?m sure they?ll think of something.

For the original post and other Japanese trends please visit our CScout Japan blog.

Young Beijing bloggers share their thoughts online.

Blogging in China is an increasingly popular pastime. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, as of November last year there were over 72 million China-based blogs and over 47 million Chinese blog writers (roughly one quarter of China’s total number of netizens). With ever greater numbers of Chinese youth heading online to get connected and have fun, many are turning to blogging as a way of sharing their feelings and opinions in a relatively anonymous fashion.

A new blog called Beijing Youth Voices (needs proxy server in China) is being maintained by 6 teenage Beijingers. For the next few months Iris, Siqi, Steven, Linda, E-mail(!), and Kelan will be posting bi-weekly blogs, giving readers a peek into their lives and life in China. The blog is a project between US NGO What Kids Can Do, Inc. and Adobe Youth Voices. As most Chinese blogs are obviously written in Chinese, this will be a great chance for non-Mandarin readers to hear about what life is like in this Olympic city from a Chinese viewpoint, and to learn more about the opinions, ideas, hopes, and dreams of some everyday Chinese youth.

For the original post and other Chinese trends please visit our CScout China blog.

Innovative household products follow the green trend in Japan.

The current mania for all things eco is producing a fair number of impressive innovations in addition to the expected gimmicks. An example of the former is ?Eco Tokukun? from Kankyo Souken, a product to make your household fish grill more environmentally friendly.

These small stones, made from recycled paper sludge and silica, aluminum oxide, and calcium oxide and designed to lie in the bottom of the gas grill, promise to cut carbon emissions from the cooking process by 25%. They also increase thermal efficiency, cutting cooking time by 25% and thus your gas usage (and bill). Considering that the fish grill is a kitchen appliance common to pretty much all Japanese homes, and used on a regular basis, these are pretty significant numbers.

As if all that weren?t enough, Eco Tokukun (only ¥450 a pack) also absorbs the odor and juices from the cooking fish, which eliminates waste and the need for unpleasant cleaning, and can be used up to 30 times before needing replacement.

Meanwhile another eco-gadget, the Eco Watt (¥3,150), from Enegate, aims to educate people about their own energy consumption. While similarly named products have flitted in and out of the market for a few years now, the current eco boom has brought the Eco Watt back into the spotlight in a new sleek modern form.

Plug any of your household appliances into the Eco Watt, which then itself gets plugged into the wall outlet, and the digital screen displays the amount of electricity being used, the estimated cost of said electricity, the estimated amount of carbon emissions the power use is causing, and amount of time the power has been running.

For the original post and other Japanese trends please visit our CScout Japan blog.
To purchase the latest in cool Japanese gizmos and gadgetry please visit the CScout Japan Trend Shop.

• Twitter interviews on ReadWriteWeb. Strange Attractor: Picking out patterns in the chaos
  My colleague Edwin already pointed me to this article about participation inequalities and relative time spent by people on various social media sites and services. This one here is another reference.
  (tags: participation socialmedia social web 2.0 twitter application)
• Does Your Company Need a Chief Blogger?
  This article reflects on a phenomenon I stumble across more and more. While for most companies the question of having a Chief Blogger is not 1st priority the fact to think about the impact of social media is very often neglected not only in the DM domain.
  (tags: blogs social media web 2.0 corporate_blogging web2.0 socialmedia blogging)

This article reflects on a phenomenon I stumble across more and more. While for most companies the question of having a Chief Blogger is not 1st priority the fact to think about the impact of social media is very often neglected not only in the DM domain.

My colleague Edwin already pointed me to this article about participation inequalities and relative time spent by people on various social media sites and services. This one here is another reference.

Sega Toys’ cut-price ODO feels the robo-rhythm.

In the wake of the Sony Rolly, the original iPod dock on wheels Miuro from ZMP has collaborated with Sega Toys to produce Music Robot ODO, a Miuro-like speaker robot that costs significantly less than the original but still bumps out the tunes.

Music Robot ODO doesn?t have the wireless LAN or camera features of the Miuro (among other missing features), but at a tenth of the Miuro?s over $1000 price it?s hard to complain. The LCD screen in the front changes the ?emotion? of ODO as it dances along to the tempo of the music, and the remote control gives motion control as well so you can drive it into a loved one’s room while playing Never gonna give you up. It?s a rolling Rickroll for the masses!

Check out the demo video

via AFPBB News

For the original post and other Japanese trends please visit our CScout Japan blog.
For the latest in cool Japanese gizmos and gadgetry please visit the CScout Japan Trend Shop.

Today, the second scheme first shown on the original post introducing the Suburban House project. In this scheme the house takes on a "T" shaped massing, with the garage front and forward creating an entry courtyard between itself and the house.



Although this scheme was a different configuration than the first scheme, there was the same mission to attempt to gather the spaces around the living room. To that end the plan repeated some of the changes in level we saw in the first scheme, however with much less success.

click the link below to continue reading.


You'll see in the ground floor plan here that you enter a half level down from the living spaces, but on the same level as the master bedroom. The bedroom is remote from the door giving it privacy and a corner view out to the site, but this is essentially the same configuration as the other scheme. From the entry you would proceed up a half flight of steps to the living area. At the top of the plan there is a similar entry sequence coming from the garage which brings you into a mudroom entry of sorts, a half level down from the kitchen.


Meanwhile upstairs resides the two additional bedrooms, but they are reached from the stair at the far end by the kitchen which takes you on a long path, a gallery of sorts, overlooking the living space and kitchen to bring you to the secondary bedrooms which are also open and overlook the living space a half level below. From this gallery there is also a passage to the home office/studio over the garage. This passage on both levels distances the garage from the house creating the entry court.


the back corner where the master bedroom overlooks the site


the back wall of the house where the kitchen and living spaces would open out to a terrace

The conclusion was that while there were many interesting aspects to this plan it was simply stretching too much to try and make the multi level circulation work. It was set aside, but ended up re-entering the mix later on in a new form. We will get to that later.

Technorati Tags: modern design, modern house

Ambient lights featuring lunar motives.

Trend Description:
It?s hard to escape the magic of the moonlight. Now manufacturers - inspired by the soft illumination of the nightly sky - are designing ambient mood light installations, some just for the pleasure of it, some to make the consumers more ecological aware (please read our Trendblog posting: Power Awareness). Many are even using alternative energy sources, like the sun, to bring the power of light to areas without infrastructure (Please read our Trendblog posting: Solar Design).

Cases:

Full Moon Sideboard
The Full Moon Sideboard is a limited edition piece with a neat trick and a green twist. If you turn the lights in the room down low, the photo-realistic image of the moon?s surface will appear and produce a soft glow. Designer Sotirios Papadopoulos used a special luminous and ecological paint called ELI (eco light inside) which he created especially for this project. Supposedly the gelcoat, which makes the image of the moon glow is derived from an ecological powder. The piece is not available to the public yet, but can be seen at the dEMOsign exhibition at the SOHO gallery in Milan from April 18th to April 22nd.

Sega: Homestar Planetarium
One of the biggest trends in Japan last year has been space. While it?s basically impossible to view the stars clearly in a big city like Tokyo, products like the Homestar Planetarium from Sega bring the nightly sky right into the living, even with the occasional shooting star blasting through. The Homestar Planetarium was such a big success that there is even a PSP software available now, which let useres zoom and navigate through the galaxy, including detailed information about constellations, planets, and the rest of the universe.

Trend Impact:
Beautiful design definitely can draw the awareness of the consumer towards more ecological products. First amazed by the sheer appearance of a light fixture or a piece of furniture, people will look closer and get interested in the idea of ecological design and the smart and energy saving usage of resources and power. People have to be aware of the beauty of their surroundings to be willing to take care of them.

Full Moon Sideboard

Sega: Homestar Pro

Michael Keferl shares his expertise on the latest in Japanese food trends.

CScout Japan Managing Director Michael Keferl was a guest on CNN Today with Kristie Lu Stout and Andrew Stevens to talk about some food trends in Japan. The focus was on our recent posts about character lunch accessories, ?udon? pudding, and a new ?fresh tea? bottle innovation.

Of course, the character lunches and pudding are Japan-centric (and we don?t expect to see a wave of udon pudding shops opening up either), but the bottle from Aojiru Tea has great potential for many different kinds of beverages in and out of Japan. tO check out the video click here.

For the original post and more Japan-based trends please visit our CScout Japan blog.