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Hövding’s airbag for cyclists

In collaboration with airbag manufacturer Alva Sweden, and in development since 2005, Hövding has just released the second version of its ‘Airbag for Cyclists’. Rather than the traditional cycling helmet made from plastic and polystyrene, this is a hi-tech collar.

At first glance, you’d be forgiven for not wanting to trade a helmet for a collar but this one will sense when you are involved in an accident, deploying an inflatable helmet in just 0.1 seconds.

It also covers far more of your head and neck, reducing the chances of whiplash, and is three times more shock absorbent than a standard helmet. Charged via USB, you get roughly nine hours of continuous cycling time with Airbag deployment guaranteed.

Here’s an excellent overview from the Stuff.tv team.

The stats are pretty staggering too. It has been tested by stunt bikers in every conceivable accident situation, thereby creating an algorithm that can determine when exactly an accident is taking place.  Apparently common-or-garden variety helmets will still result in serious head injuries for their wearers over 90% of the time – for Airbag wearers that’s reduced right down to under 2%.

Unfortunately, this technology comes with a £250 price tag for one-time use. Hövding will, however, allow you to buy a second one at a reduced price and is always keen to get its paws on the black boxes of used Airbags for future analysis.

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Compass Network newsletter – May 2015

Welcome to the latest Compass Network newsletter.

We’ve had a busy start to the year for partners across the network with collaborations, new business pitches and client wins. We’re looking forward to more opportunities for partners across the network to work together as 2015 continues.

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions about the Compass Network, please email: Compass AT nelsonbostock.com

Below are updates from some of the network on what has been a great few months!

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This quarter saw the retirement of our co-founder and Chairman Martin Bostock after 28 incredible years. Under his inspirational leadership our original agency, which was started by just him and business partner Roger Nelson, has grown into the award-winning agencies that currently make up Nelson Bostock Group Unlimited. Although he will be sorely missed both personally and professionally, he leaves with our appreciation and admiration.

As part of Canon’s partnership with Berlinale Talents, a lucky few from the Nelson Bostock Unlimited team flew out for the 65th International Berlin Film Festival in February. Mobile World Congress in March saw the HTC team busy, launching the HTC One M9 flagship phone alongside the well-received virtual reality headset – HTC Vive. We’ve also begun 2015 working with fantastic new clients, including UK success story Mind Candy, innovative payment platform Stripe and a series of projects for pest control market leader Rentokil.

It’s been an exciting quarter at Fever with some major new business wins – including; global music streaming service Deezer and a wellbeing venture from author and broadcaster, Liz Earle. Campaign work has been equally exciting, including a campaign with football legend Peter Schmeichel for HTCs UEFA partnership, plus The Big Boxtrolls Recycling Week Challenge to mention just two.

Here at Clearbox Communications in the last quarter, we’ve given media a special delivery from Mr. Grey for the launch of 50 Shades of Grey and taught the press how to drive like a stunt driver for the launch of Fast & Furious 7. We went ten rounds with the press and World & Olympic boxing champ Katie Taylor for www.its4women.ie, and we’ve expanded our team with the appointment of a new Media & Communications Manager, Leanne Reilly. The media landscape in Northern Ireland welcomed two new faces recently with the launch of Belfast Live and Belfast Vibe, two new news websites from Mirror Group and Johnston Press respectively. You can see them here – http://www.belfastlive.co.uk/ and http://www.belfastvibe.com. If you need a contact at either site, give us a shout!

Canela Spain has had a very busy start to the year with an office move for the Madrid Team. We have also had some very intense new business activity for both the Barcelona and Madrid offices, with the following clients wins so far in 2015; Café Royal, Peel, UNI Global Union, Rollei, Leef and PaySafecard. In addition to all of this, we are in the process of redesigning our web page and rebranding ourselves. We will be launching our new image after Easter to coincide with our 9th birthday.

Here at Spotlight PR during the first quarter we have hired Simon Zingerman as Creative Director and Magnus Nilsson as Art Director, as we are seeing an increasing need for us to provide integrated marketing solutions for our clients. Furthermore, we have started working for several new clients including DuPont/Corian, NTT Security and Primelog.

2015 started with an important win for MY PR: Paglieri Sell System, an Italian Company specialising in beauty and healthcare, and a leader in the large-scale retail trade sector. MY PR will cover the company’s media relations and digital PR in order to increase the awareness and visibility of its several brands. Our first project together is a corporate social responsibility partnership between Bieffe (one of Paglieri Sell System’s brands and a leader in the hair accessory market) and Me.Dea, an association that fights violence against women.

Schwartz PR is proud to announce several client and project wins for the first quarter of 2015. One new client, iCracked, launched in Germany in March and revolutionises the mobile device lifecycle. Powering a community of over 1,700 certified iTechs, it is the world’s largest and most efficient on-demand repair and trade-in service for smartphones and tablets. Barbara Mieth and Jörg Ankermüller have joined Schwartz PR recently as PR consultants. Barbara has a strong expertise in tech companies and Jörg contributes his broad experiences with crisis communication.

Insights

German editors are more ‘passive’ than ‘active’ users of Social Media…

Cision undertook detailed research into the social media activities of journalists in different countries. 60% of journalists in Germany use social media for their daily work – the percentage of them who use it for research increased from 64% in 2011 to 73% in 2014. By contrast, the percentage of journalists who do not use social media for their own publication or promoting their published articles declined from 64% to 60%.

Crisis is a time for new opportunities in Russia…

Natalia Buchelnikova, CEO of Moscow-based comms agency Buman Media, has written about the agency’s innovative thinking and high-quality work, and how they both continue to deliver excellent results for Buman’s clients. As far as she is concerned, the influence of strong visuals, social media and vloggers should never be underestimated!

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Life on Mars?

The Martian is an excellent thriller of a book, soon to be film, about a mission to Mars gone wrong that leaves astronaut Mark Watney stranded. Btw, we’re not giving anything away there, it all happens pretty early on in the story.

In parts, the book tells you what’s happening behind the scenes at Mission Control, including how the comms are managed.

Space, and crisis comms – two of our favourite things! It got us thinking how we’d handle it.

Before anyone ever set foot in the spacecraft, we’d have insisted on having a crisis comms plan in place. It’s important to have as a back-up at the best of times, but with something as risky as space travel it’s a must. Of course, you hope you never have to use it…

What goes into the plan? It should include organisational structure – which people and departments need to be involved in a crisis situation to ensure information is being shared quickly and accurately, so that everyone is giving out the same message. It’s also important because in a crisis, people don’t have the time or mental capacity to waste on things that aren’t their core job. It’s not difficult for press to find the email address of someone else in the organisation, and send off questions fishing for an answer. If people know to forward those on to the press office, it makes life a lot easier.

In this case, you’d want medical and flight control as a priority to establish what happened, and what the astronaut’s current status is. The worst thing you can do is speculate about Watney’s condition and have to retract it later – the public and the press won’t be able to trust your later comments.

While the pressure of the situation may feel like it demands an immediate response, you should always take time to consider options. If you rush, you’ll make mistakes. In this case, NASA holds all of the information and it’s next to impossible for anyone else to know what’s happening via other channels. NASA holds all of the information so there’s no pressure to compete, instead the response should still be swift but there’s nothing wrong with delaying a statement if the extra time will help.

The plan should also include big Qs about what can go wrong, with suggested responses. Who is your audience, and who do you need to win over? The comms team will have worked with different departments beforehand to develop this, so that anyone from the social team through to a medical officer can know the tone and content they should be responding with. If they should be responding at all…

The organisational structure will include the sign-off process. In a crisis it’s all too easy to lose track of who can and should be approving external comms. There would also be background about each of the astronauts and their role in the mission. In this case you’d also need to consider whether Watney had family who needed to be alerted before any detail was shared with the public.

The plan would also consider what kind of information needs to be shared, and what should still be kept quiet. Although you wouldn’t say it at the time, the responses would all need to consider the future as well – the statements issued today can’t rule out future missions etc.

As events unfold it’s also important to think about how and when detail is communicated to the public. For example, bad news should rarely, if ever, be broken over Twitter – 140 characters just isn’t enough to convey emotion – could you imagine announcing Watney’s death like that?!

If there’s a press conference, who are you inviting, which spokesperson will deliver the news (if it’s seriously bad news, it’s likely to be someone very senior, although in this case it could be someone in Mission Control who had a relationship with Watney) and will they be available to take questions after? Will you give any media background briefings, or have briefing packs available?

It can be difficult to change how you’re communicating updates to the public and press, so if you start with press conferences that include Q&As and then stop doing the Q&A element, people will think there’s something wrong and that will become part of the story.

As you can see, there’s a lot to consider. If you happen to be planning any space missions and need a PR company, just give us a call.

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“I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle…”

Arnold Schwarzenegger has lent his dulcet tones to navigation app Waze in their most recognisable ‘guise’ – that of the killing-machine-with-a-smooshy-centre, the T-101 – or quite simply, the Terminator.

As a virtual driving instructor, Arnie will be issuing you with a series of Terminator-based commands – perhaps not so useful for when you’re popping out to do the weekly food shop, but still CLEARLY VITAL at all other times.

These free-of-charge gems include:  “I need you clothes, your boots and your motorcycle… just kidding”, “I’m looking for Sarah Connor – but we can go to your destination first”, “In need of a Terminator? No problem, I will join the ride. Let’s move!” and, naturally, “You have reached your destination. Hasta la vista, baby!”

We can’t help but feel they missed a trick by not having “Come with me if you want to live” programmed for the beginning of every new journey – it would add a nice, ‘judgement day’ touch to your morning…

Arnie has hit the publicity road hard in anticipation of his upcoming return to the Terminator franchise in Terminator Genisys later this month – earlier this week he scared the sugar out of unsuspecting visitors to Madame Tussauds in Hollywood.

If you’re at all confused by this blog post, click here. And watch the trailer for the new one here. And while we’re here, we should show you the second, ‘cos it’s the best. Let’s not discuss numbers three or four.

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Weathering a media storm: What we learned from the PRCA’s Crisis Comms Conference

2015’s media storms have already given us plenty of ammunition for water cooler chat here at NBU Towers – from tragic theme park accidents, to errant tweets speaking their own crises.

It’s no surprise last week’s PRCA Crisis Communications sessions was jam-packed with a cross section of representatives, itching to discuss their own experiences. These range from the likes of Network Rail, the London Underground and Co-operative Group, to Carnival Cruises, Oxfam and even the Department of Health.

Despite the range of recommendations and opinions and the contrasting sectors they came from, there were five points which came through loud and clear by the end of the day:

1. Practice makes perfect. Nobody wants to manage a crisis, but swift, informed internal and external communication, paired with rapid operations management is key.

A well-oiled crisis management process is invaluable when the time comes, so identifying the top risks to the business, developing plans to address them and embarking on crisis media and scenario training regularly is key – “keeping our crisis comms muscle flexed,” as I heard one speaker describe it as. Managing a crisis is often unavoidably stressful, but having a set process to turn to can often take the initial sting out of the experience, even if it isn’t the exact scenario we planned for.

2. The crises which really stay with consumers and cause long-term damage to a business strike a corporate chord, and call into question an element of trust and/or integrity. We shouldn’t bank on an incident which falls within this bracket becoming the next day’s fish and chip wrapping if the response doesn’t put the customer at the heart of their next steps. It’s often not the initial issue, but the response which dictates whether it becomes the stuff of a PR professional’s nightmares.

3. Be flexible. The Department of Health revealed it evolved a flu epidemic crisis comms simulation when it became clear Ebola was escalating quickly, and this quick thinking and preparation contributed to the government driving a huge, downward trend in cases of the disease.

4. Brands shouldn’t forget their legal rights. Although the Defamation Action 2013 has the potential to make libel claims more challenging to win these days, there are still ways brands can show measurable damage as a result of factually incorrect coverage.

Ofcom also continues to reinforce formal processes media are required to follow when requesting a response from a business before publishing an article – we shouldn’t forget about our rights of reply, as this entitles us to a minimum of one hour for print, but also often up to 10 days to provide an appropriate level of information for broadcast enquiries.

5. A picture speaks a thousand words. Images are still key to media outlets, whether they’re online, broadcast or print. Releasing an image which encapsulates the issue being addressed can help move the narrative beyond the issue quicker than simply an updated statement.

During the session, Sky’s Online Assistant Editor reminded us journalists are generally morally guided towards stories, but many view news as drama, with heroes and villains. It’s always easier said than done, as we all agreed last week, but preparation really was the resounding answer to giving a business the strongest chance of coming out the other side of a crisis quickly, and (relatively) unscathed.

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Compass Network newsletter – June 2015

Welcome to the latest Compass Network newsletter.

As the summer approaches we’re half way through 2015 with 31 Compass Partners and some great client wins across the network.

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions about the Compass Network, please email: Compass@nelsonbostock.com

Below are updates from some of the network on what has been a great few months!

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Q2 has seen Nelson Bostock Unlimited busy as ever, with a selection of successful launches, projects and campaigns. We launched EE’s new WiFi Calling in the UK as well as supporting the launch of EE’s 4GEE Action Cam, the world’s first 4G connected action camera. We’ve supported Canon Europe’s acquisition of Lifecake, explained the mobile security risk for enterprises for Lookout, showed the transformative impact of the subscription business model with Zuora and attended RIPE70 where the Internet’s technical community gather to share best practice.

It’s been a busy quarter at Fever with some exciting star-studded campaigns keeping the agency busy. We had 30 minutes with the boys from Take That to launch ‘Kingsman the Secret Service’ on Sky Store; held a global press junket and fashion-pack party with supermodel Jourdan Dunn launching HTC One M9 INK; and helped Made in Chelsea star, Spencer Matthews, get over his ‘boxset break up’ for online TV streaming service, NowTV. Fever has also welcomed new board member, Crissie Campbell, to the agency bringing more than 10 years’ experience in international and UK PR, marrying the world of entertainment and culture with big brands.

We recently enjoyed some time in our New York office pitching new business and attending our first East Coast-centric marketing event, ‘Cracking the Code: A Discussion on NYC’s Tech Boom’. Whilst there, we received word that Bateman Group had won a ‘Best Places to Work’ award from the San Francisco Business Times. This quarter we also welcomed new clients, including Addepar, Bromium, Campaign Monitor, Fuze, Hackerone, LinkedIn, Prosper, ScaleVP, Sysomos and ZenPayroll.

At the beginning of April Ad Verum successfully attained Dell for media and social media relations in the Baltic States. Ad Verum also launched a new logo, created by Syrian graphic designer Muhanad Musto, with the brief to fashion a logo suitable for the international community. The Ad Verum communication project ‘Crematorium: Changing Beliefs and Fighting Fears’ was shortlisted in the finals of the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) Golden World Awards 2015.

At Clearbox Communications A Capella singing was on our radar this quarter as we put the media through their singing paces for the launch of Pitch Perfect 2, with the help of Ireland’s leading A Capella group, The Trinitones. We welcomed several new clients, including Nicobrand and The Jungle NI, Ireland’s leading outdoor adventure centre. We’ve also moved offices to Northern Ireland’s Holywood coast (home to Jamie Dornan and Rory McIlroy) as we continue to grow.

We have just celebrated our 9th birthday as an agency and have launched a new corporate identity, website and blog to celebrate. Canela was also the exclusive media partner for The E-commerce Awards in Spain, which took place on 2nd June in Madrid. Finally, our newest client Leef, portable memory sticks for use with iPhones and Android smartphones. We will be undertaking influencer relations, product review and press office activity for them.

The year started with an important win: Novo Nordisk, a global healthcare company with 90 years of innovation and leadership in diabetes care. On April 10, we have opened Novo Nordisk first factory in Russia specializing in production of modern insulin. High-tech manufacturing is located in the industrial park Grabtsevo in the Kaluga region. Over 60 representatives of federal and regional media as well as state officials attended the opening ceremony. Buman Media provided PR and GR support.

MY PR won an award at the prestigious SABRE AWARDS 2015 for the best EMEA PR campaign. The ‘#4EverSticky: How to Remain Attached for the Whole Life’ campaign, executed for 3M Italia, triumphed in the Consumer Marketing category. The project, developed in collaboration with WrondADV for the launch of Post-it® Super Sticky, pleasantly surprised a jury of some of the most authoritative professionals in the business for the campaign’s creativity and innovation.

Despite the rainiest May in 200 years, Northern Link PR has seen the sunny side of things. Back in Q1 we participated in a pitch for Innocent Drinks. Up against other big names in the industry we won this big project client with our “best understanding of tone-of-voice and creativity”. We are finishing the first project, ‘The Grassy Tour’, with great results as we speak. There are lots of big CSR-focused projects up ahead, too!

Emerson K Partners is proud to announce a couple of client and project wins for Q2: Treasure Data Korea will be opening in August 2015 and will revolutionise the big data service in Korea. Furthermore, we have started working for global sporting event ‘Universiade Gwangju 2015’ and global forum ‘2015 World Knowledge Forum’, for which Emerson K Partners will cover the organisation’s strategic MPR, consulting and inviting global key note speakers.

 

Insights

The Lithuanian IT sector is developing fast, according to Ad Verum…

The internet in Lithuania is one of the fastest and the cheapest in Europe. Lithuanians are technologically sophisticated and, when it comes to information technology and communications skills, ranks 16th in the world. These reasons recently attracted such giants as Google, Nasdaq and AIG to invest here; therefore it will surely be successful year for PR agencies to start working with the IT sector too.

News relating to start-ups, tech and investment gains momentum in Sweden from Cloudberry…

New sites solely focusing on tech companies and start-ups are gaining ground in the media landscape. The media industry sees such potential that Sweden’s largest tabloid Aftonbladet is launching a news site together with telecoms operator Telia to solely cover the internet, the digitalised world and the start-up scene.

The journalist shuffle is the new dance in Swedish media says Norther Link PR…

With several new, all digital and content focused media being introduced, journalists are moving around quite a bit. New outlets include Beaconomist, a marketing/business-focused media for tech-savvy publicists, and Kit, an online content-platform which has hired top editors from across the board.

Running To Stand Still: The New Reality Of Russian PR

Buman Media’s latest column about the new realities of Russian PR has been published in The Holmes Report.

Long Live Marketing Tech: 4 Takeaways From Our Media Dinner…

Paula Cavagnaro of Bateman Group has contributed this blog post on a successful dinner attended by client company CEO/CMOs, including AdRoll’s Adam Berke, App Annie’s Bertrand Schmitt and Sitecore’s Scott Anderson, alongside investor clients from ScaleVP and Accel Partners and journalists from Bloomberg and CNBC.

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Hot Topics

Our MD, Nick Clark, went to the latest Hot Topics event. Here’s his summary:

As an agency we have great experience of working with high growth technology companies and we spend a lot of time understanding their business challenges and consult on the best comms strategies to support their growth ambitions.

We mostly speak to companies after they’ve been funded and need to define messaging and build awareness for their proposition, but it’s also important to understand the motivations of investors as well as the numerous challenges early stage start-ups face before even picking up the phone to us. So the opportunity to attend the Hot Topics London event was too good to pass up.

It started with a short but insightful presentation from the Chairman of Skyscanner, Margaret Rice-Jones, who gave advice on how to secure early stage funding. As well as asking start-ups to think about why they need the money and whether they can self-fund through the early stage, she also advised that not all VC money is equal. Start-ups need to do as much due diligence on the investors as the investors do on them – are they the right fit and what support will they provide.

Then followed a panel session hosted by the Chairman of MOO, Simon Calver and including investors from Accel Partners and Balderton Capital, a government adviser and some interesting corporate investment perspectives from the Director of Corporate Development at Sky. As well as the usual thoughts about ensuring you’re solving a real problem (one of the panellist mused that anyone can create a social network for dogs but do we need one) and giving careful consideration to the market opportunity and valuation potential, a lot of the discussion focused on teams and personalities. Pretend to be a 24 year old Californian seemed to be the best piece of advice.

One thing everyone agreed on, and something that was present throughout the session, was an overriding feeling that there’s no better time to seek investment. There’s significant capital in the UK right now from home-grown investors as well as money coming in from the US and Asia in particular. This is being supported by corporates that are realising that they need to partner with, or acquire, entrepreneurial talent and ideas in order to stay fresh and ahead of competitors. The panellists clearly favoured the VC route but it’s clear that angel investors and crowd-funding are growing dramatically as well. Indeed, crowd-sourced and peer-to-peer funding is expected to exceed VC funding in the UK for the first time this year.

And we even witnessed this first hand as the 80 attendees were able to vote on which of three start-ups that presented at today’s session received a cheque for $250k from Qualcomm Ventures. The winner was a tethered drone that’s powered and controlled from the ground called Fotokite, meaning that users can take aerial images without worrying about crashing their drone into a tree. Does my vote make me an early stage investor? Obviously not, but it was a great opportunity to see what VCs are faced with when being pitched to by entrepreneurs.

It was left to Saul Klein, currently of Index Ventures, to end the session discussing a range of topics from how London has become one of the global powerhouses in tech investment (when asked why the UK is successful his simple answer was that we speak English but we’re not American), the support from the Government (the UK is the only G8 country that has an entrepreneur visa) education (children are the future but current employees are the immediate issue and need to be re-skilled for the digital age) and why he’s leaving Index. Saul’s responses were thought-provoking and clearly based on years of experience. He has a glittering career with many claims to fame, the highlight in my opinion being the person who launched the Fantasy Football League in the early 90’s when at the Telegraph.

As Saul said, too much is written about founders and not enough about teams. Entrepreneurs are often visionary, ‘go it alone’ types but investors buy people and teams are stronger than individuals.

Essentially, if you have a good idea that solves a problem (if dogs don’t need social networks, how about cats?) and you’ve built a great team, go looking for money as it’s there, in spades.

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#Lovewins, but do brands?

Following on from the US Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on June 26th, where same-sex marriage was officially made legal in all fifty states, there have been some wonderful expressions of celebration – many drawn from last Saturday’s Pride event in London.

Alongside enjoying America becoming the twenty-first (and largest, population wise) country to recognise gay marriage, the Armed Forces took the opportunity to send their biggest contingent ever to join in with the march (it was also Armed Forces Day) and Paul Coombs caused much merriment (and confusion, for CNN) by flying an Isis sex toy flag. This all follows hot on the heels of Ireland’s referendum on May 22nd, in which they became the first country to legalise marriage for same-sex couples by popular vote.

These rulings have also inspired an interesting response in the business world, with many companies / brands taking advantage of the multi-coloured filters available online and altering their profile pictures accordingly to show their support.

Now, we’re not saying that companies shouldn’t show support or their personalities – the opposite in fact. But there’s a fine line to tread. Changing your profile colours is one thing, but there are countless examples of what amounts to social media hijacking efforts, or when brands get the tone wrong and go too far trying to force their way into the conversation instead of  supporting it.

Also worth considering – if companies (posting blog or social media updates, or alerting profile pictures) have felt this strongly about a topic before, why not broadcast it sooner? If you stand for something, why wait until there’s a populist movement and little fear of criticism… oh.

There’s the crux of the matter. If you wait until there’s a bandwagon going in the right direction, you run the risk of coming across as patronising.

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Sugar we’re goin’ down

Office life isn’t always sweets, cake and ice-creams…

Actually, it sometimes is. And as the new documentary, Sugar (think Super Size Me, but with sugar) points out, that’s not great.

That’s why Marc, Sohaib and Laura decided to embark on an experiment. To cut down on the amount of refined sugar they have each week.

Marc’s known for his discipline, he’s healthy and goes to the gym several times a week. Laura is also health-conscious, but (self-admittedly) always tempted by sweets. Sohaib is… the office sweet-tooth fiend. If you need a sugar fix, you drop by his desk.

We’ve tried fitness trackers, but thought this could also be “fun.” The first week is all about reducing the level of sugar they have, so only diet-soft drinks, no sweets, no pastries, no chocolate spread…

Keep checking back to see how the guys are getting on, and what they’re missing out on.

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Ground breaking designs of the year

Today we feature a guest post from the lovely Cen, an integral part of our amazing design team.

Recently I visited the Design Museum in London, which is showcasing an exhibition of 76 groundbreaking designs of 2015. The exhilarating and extraordinary designs included fields such as futuristic architecture, digital, fashion, graphics, product and transport.

As consumers, we heavily rely on the constant development of technology to improve our daily lives. But, in a world increasingly subject to climate change, sustainable inventions have become more important every day.

Two things particularly caught my eye.

Harvard University has developed a way to research drugs using computer chips to replicate the functions of vital human organs. This experimental technology is designed to replace testing on humans or animals, which is expensive and often ethically challenged.

Human organs on chips

Human Organs-on-Chips

Designer: Donald Ingber and Dan Dongeun Huh

http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpage/293

 

ocean clean up

The ocean clean up – the largest Cleanup

Designer: Boyan Slat

http://www.theoceancleanup.com/

The Ocean Cleanup is a campaign to rid the sea of plastic waste, using a 40km network of floating barriers. The design doesn’t endanger wildlife and is surprisingly affordable. Most impressively, the project was designed by a 20 year old inventor, Boyan Slat. Fantastic design for an incredibly worthy goal.

 

I love design because it answers a lot of problems, while inspiring you. Design has enabled mass manufacturing, but it can also change people’s lives. It reflects innovation and can respond to its era, provoking and challenging the world to evolve faster through futuristic conceptions.

Design has the ability to solve issues, and in the process generate beautiful aesthetic creations that are revolutionising the world.

Just as importantly, design is fun and creates interesting contrasts between many concepts. From a designer’s point of view, I couldn’t imagine a world without amusing creations and expressive concepts that develop our environment.

I highly recommend visiting the great futuristic designs of the year, as one day we will be viewing this as a foundation of art history.