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Intel Museum of Me

When I awoke this morning I found something on my Facebook feed that made me smile when I clicked to open it.  Intel’s ‘The Museum of Me’ .  This wonderful piece of digital technology obtains your Facebook information and then beautifully displays everything in a digital museum setting, visually capturing everything about you and what you do via this social networking site. The application shows off digital technology at its finest and what could be achieved by mixing together the realms of reality and hyperreality.  With my own personal interests in pieces that emotionally engage the viewer, as well as being visual works of art, I would love to see more pieces developed like this, especially from students who have the freedom to innovate in such a way.  It would be interesting to see how much resources they invested into this and how long it actually took to develop.

Some people may say that it is a tad cheesy to display such things, however, I just say that they’re just miserable.  There is no denying that Intel has done an incredible job in terms of execution digitally, as well as a well considered story board, and music.  The layout of each Facebook item is also very clever, and the fact that the application uses all forms of data including your photos, videos, text and your friends.  They have managed to capture each item in way that it resonates with viewer and does indeed conjure up some form of nostalgic memories.

I’d recommend go and visit the website and see what’s displayed your museum…

Written by CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, Kevin Roberts, Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands was recommended to me as an essential read by my tutor Sue Jenkyn Jones.  With a deep interest in emotional branding/design and the like, this book explores how we, as consumers can become completely in love with the brands that we choose to buy – loyalty beyond reason.  I found this book useful in that for the developments of Coeur, and of course for every brand owner, the dream of having their brand become a lovemark, it provided me with some useful pointers as to how to develop Coeur further.  Of course, not all of these tips can be or be applied to every aspect of a brand since brands, like humans, grow in different ways and take different avenues.  However, these are also useful pints of knowledge for anyone that endeavours to go into creative environments.  Exploring emotional connections, relationships, mystery, sensitivity amongst other talking points, I found it intriguing to think deeper about how a brand can be developed than just on the surface.  One criticism that I do have of the book is that it seems at times a little hashed together in terms of the text, images and amount of space used.  More relevant visuals and less text would have been welcomed.

What is a lovemark?  A lovemark is a brand/place/object/something in the world that consumers just love, it’s their first point of call when purchasing their favourite items.  We all have them. These are the brands that we are loyal to and get excited by when new products are launched or new marketing campaigns are happening.  So here are a few of my lovemarks:

Lacoste L!VE

YMC (You Must Create)

A Networked Age – Can a Fashion Brand be a Starfish?

Leading on from my blog post about the book, The Starfish and the Spider, here is the result of the research that I conducted.  Looking at a variety of factors and strategies that brands could ingrain into their philosophies such as co-design, social inclusion, and the consumer involvement, I explored these possibilites within the modern day fashion context.  Illustrated with interviews from Beta Fashion and Filep Motwary, as well as case studies on ASOS and Diesel, I analysed how the Starfish paradigm could be used within fashion.  The Starfish paradigm is a particularlyu interesting model to look at, and I have really enjoyed compiling this research paper together, in which I hope that industry porfessionals could find useful and adopt within their own methodologies.