Rapha Cycle Club
A good piece about the Rapha Cycle Club café from Noisy Decent Graphics.
Also worth looking at his flickr group of the café. The Rapha website’s not too shabby either and a nice video on Monocle.
These days there’s no reason not to have a shop, a pop up shop, a twitter, a facebook page, a van, go to festivals, write a book, a photo essay, a magazine, have a loyalty card, a website, a microsite, a tumblr, a flavors.me, print a t-shirt the list goes on. Brands that market themselves as authentic and have an idea win. Those that buy off the shelf and stick their logo on, fail.
Update: just came across another piece about Rapha here on everydaylife.style loads more to explore on there too.
Brands on Twitter
Doesn’t seem much real life interaction between customers and brands via Twitter over here (UK). Over there (US) of course it’s done better.
More on The Escape Pod’s blog.
Originally spotted on Brandflakes for Breakfast
The Mid-Century Modernist
We really like this redesign of The Mid-Century Modernist, especially how the gallery is done, pulling in and displaying ebay auctions. All done in WordPress.
Originally spotted (I think) from Erik Spiekermann’s twitter.
The Future of Retail by PSFK
You can flick through the Future of Retail or get a download here.
Well worth a look.
New New York Subway Map
From the New York Times a look at a new version of the NY Subway map. Interesting to look at the older versions although I have to agree with Erik Spiekermann, “Maps that use diagonal type are designed by amateurs”.
The full thing on the NY Times.
As always there’s an alternative, the Kick Map
Made up
Just spotted made.com, a new furniture website and to make it even better for a new visitor there’s a pop up money off voucher. Nice idea.
Originally spotted (and more info) on the very fine Design Milk.
New Greggs Prototype Store
Just put up a post about the new Greggs Prototype store. It’s a move on for Greggs, fundamentally still the value proposition but in a more contemporary store.
One of the key features is the lighting scheme which uses 100% LED lighting and is the first store in Europe to do so. This halves the energy consumption for the lighting.
More info and pictures on our main website.
Logorama by H5
Often there seems a backlash against the quantity, and the quality, of design and brands that encroach into our daily lives. Logorama is a short film by H5, a French designers and filmmakers that takes a looks at this brand overload.
Links:
Logorama essay by Adrian Shaughnessy
Logorama slideshow by Adrian Shaughnessy
Stills and interview with Francois Alaux and Hervé de Crécy of H5
Tis the season to pop up your shop
Found on the Cool Hunting blog this pop up Holiday shop, ‘Stop Shop’ in New York by Areaware.
Read the full story with more pictures here.
Also worth a visit for pop up inspiration is Cool Hunting’s whole pop up retail category.
Square away
A new way of accepting payments for retailers of all sizes devised by a team including Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame. An interesting use of the audio jack makes me wonder how soon before you can ‘bump’ your cash from phone to phone?
More on the Square website and follow them on twitter @Square could be interesting.
