Looking at Corporate Social Responsibility

Business Link defines corporate social responsibility (CSR) as "understanding your business impact on the wider world and considering how you can use this impact in a positive way". To elaborate, this spans human rights, fair trade, local economic development, non-discriminatory employment practices and reducing waste and emissions (Collings, R.)

While the cynics amongst us might write it off as "green-wash", arguably, it's human nature to want to feel good about the decisions we make, and in this case, what we consume. Organisations/companies with credible CSRs would therefore be seen to have integrity in their operations and win consumers over; mutually benefitting each other and the wider environment. Perhaps then, it's little wonder that the likes of Pret a Manger, Innocent and (RED) have gained their following. 

Pret's CSR policy takes into account sustainability issues from packaging, food sourcing to energy consumption, as well as community/charity involvement via its Foundation Trust, all carefully detailed on its website, and even clues in its customers on how staff are rewarded. It's great that this information is so easily available; coupled with a well-designed identity, I get the impression that Pret takes prides in the little details.

Innocent works on a very similar model to Pret in terms of its CSR, and perhaps what's encouraging is that it readily shares information on the methodologies used in determining their efforts in sustainability, complete with helpful charts and graphs.

(RED) however, is an interesting case study, billed as a "business model designed to create awareness and a sustainable flow of money from the private sector into the Global Fund, to help eliminate AIDS in Africa". This is done by channeling a part of the profits from the sale of specially created (PRODUCT) RED products fronted by leading brands globally, and championed by U2's Bono,

Striking some as highly ambitious, (RED) deserves at least to be commended for being innovative in its approach and on such a scale. To date, $140 million has been raised, with less than 3% put down to administrative costs. Accountability here is highly integral, and the Global Fund has had to suspend grants to Uganda and Ukraine following the misuse of funds.

As a designer, I feel it is important that the service/product I'm designing doesn't over-promise and under-deliver, in particular, the copy being featured. Being a consumer myself, I really dislike being misled by sleek graphics only to be let down later. Sourcing appropriate materials and minimising waste also matters to me, and to that extent, I try to ensure that collateral is effectively distributed and easily recycled. 

Gearing up for business

So. What's in a name?

In an effort to come up with something suitable for a would-be company, I thought up a list of potential names suited for an outfit that would delve into advertising, and potentially, experiment on the side, with its own self-initated projects.

• nova
• notabene
• frequency
• searchlight
• the edge
• transmission
• woven
• weave
• hatch
• scene
• etcetera
• spark

My favourites so far are spark, amplify and hatch – no doubt, more logo development in the pipeline!

Animation Junkie

With Pixar held up as quasi deities in the world of animation, surely The Sancho Plan must be contented with Wired magazine's review of The Black Page – "Something Pixar would do if it gave up family films for avant-garde performance art, and started hanging around with Thievery Corporation and the developers of Rock Band. If only they would."

The Sancho Plan: The Black Page from The Sancho Plan on Vimeo.


And if there ever was a reason to visit Linz, Austria, The Sancho Plan's Jungle Imperator would be it. Exploiting ultra-HD imagery on the wall and floor coupled with surround audio and stereoscopic 3D, the installation immerses its audience in an audio-visual adventure which allows them to control a cast of animated musical characters.


Jungle Imperator from The Sancho Plan on Vimeo.


So while it appears that animation/digital design is hurtling towards all things 3D, HD and hyper-reality, its 2D and stopmotion cousins are still very much in favour too. Especially with 'craft' back in trend, it's no wonder music videos like The White Stripes' Fell in Love with a Girl by Michel Gondry (Partizan) and Ramona Falls' I Say Fever by Tourist Pictures' Stefan Nadelman continue to have such strong fanfare.




Ramona Falls "I Say Fever" from Barsuk Records on Vimeo.

Wayfinding: 104 / Le Cent Quatre

Officially opened in 2008, new French cultural institute 104/Le Cent Quatre first roped in Experimental Jetset to 'simply' design a fully comprehensive corporate identity manual that would later be implemented by other designers. The initial brief had even stated that no logo was required, but as luck (and possibly fate) had it, the institute's directors liked the proposed logo so much that they retained it and commissioned Experimental Jetset to see through some of the collateral.


As such, Experiment Jetset did manage to use their wayfinding system as they had originally intended in La Traversee (images above), an exhibition that took place in the cultural institute before it was officially opened.  The concept centred on work-in-progress – "the idea that 104, as a project, is never finished, always evolving, eternally 'under construction' " and the use of scaffolding as an idea to represent the "continuous cycle of building, demolishing and rebuilding".


Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project ,which had a chapter on the history and ideology of metal constructions and the use of iron in Paris (for eg. the Eiffel Tower), provided a rich source of inspiration for Experimental Jetset, particularly the idea of street furniture (barricades, billboards, kiosks, etc) and the 'street as a theatre' or 'theatre as a street' as expressed in Liubov Popove's constructionist stage designs.

Set with the notion of using iron constructions to emphasise the early industrial architecture of Le Cent Quatre, Experimental Jetset created a modular system of street furniture to house their sign system. Futura was chosen as the corporate font and then modified in parts due to its geometric form and early industrial references. With inspiration taken from the old geometric SMPF sign that stood at the site, they developed the cultural institute's logotype with the line/stripe, circle and triangle that made up 104, providing a base for the sign system:

• stripe as line to be followed
• circle as spot to mark a location
• triangle as arrow
  
  
  
  

Strengths
good contrast type
complements its environment 
cohesive link to its overall corporate identity


Weaknesses
circle denoting area might not be immediately obvious to the viewer as a destination marker
Experimental Jetset were not retained to complete the design of the remaining wayfinding system
– leaves the design vulnerable to being less effective and might result in confusion for the public

A Tale of Two Typefaces

FF Thesis

Cousins and second cousins abound in this font family, branching out into 6 variants from each of the 3 “distinct letterforms” – TheSans, The Serif and TheMix. That’s a staggering 144 incarnations!

Officially released in 1994, Parenthesis, as it was originally called, was born in 1989 and adapted in 1991 by Dutch-designer Luc(as) de Groot, who was reportedly dissatisfied with the lack of good typefaces available for corporate use then. The font grew out of a project that de Groot was working on for the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management.

The Sans has been my personal favourite for use in corporate identity projects since discovering it 7 years ago (!), so it was a pleasant surprise to learn that it was indeed developed with the intention to provide a “total solution to corporate needs”.

Characteristics

available in 8 weights 
• Extra Light, Light, Semi Light, Normal, Semi Bold, Bold, Extra Bold and Black

6 variants in each weight 
• Plain, Italic, Small Caps, Small Caps Italic, Expert and Expert Italic

different sets of numerals specific to each weight 
• for eg. hanging figures when used in lower-case text and lining figures when used in small-caps (where the figures share the same height space)

letterform based on writing with broad-nib pen

true italics 
• individually designed, not directly adapted from the roman versions

low-contrast typeface 
• defined as having differences between thin and thick strokes that are not very pronounced

Strengths

extensive font family

good ‘readibility’

Weaknesses

not easily modified 

Interesting anecdotes

“…when you type ABCD you get the name of the ministry in Dutch; type EFGH to get the name of the first department and so on for five other departments. Then if you apply text-style bold, you will have the English translation. If you apply italic you get French and with bold-italic it's all German!” – www.fontfabrik.com 

INBETWEEN

 

On the other side of the spectrum of fonts (pun alert! – the word antithesis springs to mind), the experimental form of INBETWEEN just screams to be used in less conventional projects.

Conceived by Berlin-based design group Jutojo, the font was originally constructed for Jazzanova album’s “Inbetween”, but was confined to making a humble appearance in six 3D letters for the spelling of Jazzanova instead. This then led to the completion of the rest of the alphabet from the existing six letters, all made of wire covered in plastic tubes, and released in 2004.

The visually exciting INBETWEEN sprung forth from Jutojo’s desire to “create a font that fits into a three-dimensional space”, which sounds suitably apt considering that they view design as an image of space. With work that spans graphic design, visual installations and the music scene, it seems only natural that they arrived at this typographical solution. 

Characteristics  

• 3D display ‘wireframe’ type, angled at 40 degrees

• no upper case but alphabet is angled at -40 degrees instead, allowing users to “build spatial letter formations on two axes”

Strengths
visually arresting

Weaknesses

not easily readable  

limited use

Win With Tin campaign

At long last, the campaign is done, complete with an iPhone app.

Win With Tin: Critical Reflection

In tackling the campaign to promote canned food, the brief had to firstly be dissected to fully understand the scope of the project and its requirements. Once this was done, I read the resources available through the RSA website to get a better idea on how to begin mapping the project.

Fortunately, the mapping exercise done in groups in class provided a boost in throwing up areas of the brief that I lacked sufficient knowledge in. These ranged from the recycling process, the steel manufacturing process, facts and figures on canned food and consumer perceptions, to more ‘upmarket’ food and drink items that were packaged using some form of metal. Additionally, I kept myself updated on the research that fellow classmates conducted via their blogs to gain further insight.


While secondary research on the above areas was reasonably easy to obtain online and through trade journals such as The Grocer, I conducted my own questionnaire in the form of an online survey and circulated it amongst classmates and friends to obtain actual consumer perceptions of canned food. I also drew up a short list of questions and posed it to UK Canned Food and Sainsburys. Visits to Selfridges, Harrods and Harvey Nichols provided observations on types of food that were sold in tins there as well as the design of the packaging.


Although repeated efforts to get a response from Sainsburys failed, UK Canned Food kindly shared some interesting findings on the campaigns that they had rolled out. The latter presently rely on the appeal of celebrity TV chef James Martin with podcasts, webcasts and roadshows while using a largely informational approach in schools. Interestingly, these roadshows had only been held in the Midlands, instead of nationwide.


In summary, the consumer perceptions survey confirmed that the prevalent view of canned food was very much a negative one despite nutritional and environmental facts being widely available. What was unexpected was finding that a percentage of people did not realise that cans were easily recyclable.


Based on the research conducted, I decided to reframe canned food in a positive light, tapping into the emotional aspect of winning or gaining. This would ideally be more engaging to consumers as opposed to a campaign that was merely informational in nature. The campaign would set out to target busy adults likely in their 20s to 40s who stood to gain from the quick recipes that canned food lended itself to without compromising on nutrition – simultaneously, helping the environment through the sustainable packaging.


The design concepts were then developed by exploring different ways of expressing ‘winning’, positive messages playing on the word ‘can’, sustainability, nutritional benefits and canned food’s ‘green credentials’ amongst others. Through this, Win With Tin emerged as the strongest proposition, which led to more mapping and brainstorming for visual solutions.


While considering visual analogies such as the use of a podium, vault, medals, and jackpot machines to name a few, the idea of using a ‘scratch & win’ card seemed like an irresistible fit for the campaign. This was chosen to offer a more personal form of interaction for the consumer while providing an easy platform in which to convey little-known facts about canned food and act as a driver to the campaign website. The potential incentive could be a chance to win a range of prizes from a can of artichokes to a Waitrose hamper of organic canned food. The scratch & win cards would ideally be distributed with every £20 spend in supermarkets.


Outside of the supermarket arena, I came up with the idea of a lenticular poster using an image of the top of a can to resemble a vault. Placed in high commuter areas such as tube and train stations, the poster would appear to reveal itself with the message “You’re on to a winner with canned food” to entice viewers to find out more about the campaign.


The campaign website, key to housing the myriad of benefits of canned food using different can forms, incorporated the ‘revealing’ aspect that had surfaced in the overall design. I also designed an iPhone application as a handy way to access canned food recipes that only took 10 minutes to prepare, providing an easy point of reference when grocery-shopping or cooking.


Where possible, I simplified the can forms that I used in illustrations and chose photographs that were stripped of all labels, highlighting the bare metal, and kept to a basic colour scheme using lime green as an accent with black and white on metallic backgrounds. The graphics were executed in a contemporary, clean fashion to project an image of canned food that looked fresh and stood out from similar campaigns.


To test the scratch & win card with my target audience, I designed a short questionnaire asking if consumers would be interested in getting such a card, whether they liked its design and if they thought the logo was easy to understand.  Armed with mock-ups of the scratch & win card, I then approached random shoppers in Sainsburys, Tesco and Waitrose, noting their age groups and gender. While I am happy to report that the card was a resounding success with all 10 people surveyed, one person was not interested in receiving the card, explaining that he did not live in the UK.


Overall, I was pleased with the outcome of the campaign, although It would have been a great learning experience if I had been able to develop working prototypes for the website and the iPhone application. I would have also liked to be able to conduct more research, and the prototypes would have certainly been useful for this process.


This would include persisting in getting information from the main four supermarkets – Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and Morrisons, conducting focus groups as well as getting feedback from UK Canned Food and supermarkets to test the design of the entire campaign. In this way, I envision that the campaign would take on a more realistic edge in arriving at a solution that could be effectively implemented.