Saint Blog

Next to our esteemed creative directors desk is a framed illustration, put together by our very good friend Ronzo. This illustration is the first in a series of prints that we’re asking our illustrators to visualise, in their take on a month at Saint.

The print takes in the main themes of June, the World Cup, the iPhone 4 launch, great work by Mini and a bunch of exciting awards for Saint.

Big up and gangster hi-5′s to Ronzo, and look out for the next print to appear next month.

Back in January  when most of the country was digging their way out of snow, a few of us were pitching  hard for a little known Swedish cider brand called Kopparberg. Well a month  on, we eventually saw off four agencies to win the whole  business.

Three months after that, our endless hard work has led to us  finding a great new band who are on the verge of being signed (The Joy Formidable)  a great little cinema ad shot by Partizan, a music promo, posters, press,  warehouse parties, The Kopparberg Klash, a great tie up with VICE magazine,  a website, social media strategy… the list goes  on.

The ‘Find Kopparberg’ campaign is all about discovery, of great new music, secret places, and interesting people, and of course… beautifully fruity cider.

To discover it for yourself visit: www.findkopparberg.com

To keep an eye out for upcoming Kopparberg Klash events celebrating the best emerging talent in film, fashion, music, and photography as well as loads more amazing underground tip off’s follow @findkopparberg on Twitter.

Finally, take a look at the breathtaking cinema ad that we created for the campaign featuring The Joy Formidable:

We hope you enjoy it.

Clay Shirky has released a new book called ‘Cognitive Surplus’ in which he argues for the possibilities of a better world through making use of the surplus of human cognition available globally, via our modern connected environment.

I’m still to read it, but this 15 minute talk from a couple of years back sets the scene nicely.

I love the thought of always asking ‘Where is the Mouse?’

Following on from the new technology theme, I just came across this which I think is lovely. A concept by lTP graduate Adam Lassy, he utilises Ikea furniture with robotics to create furniture with awareness.

From his site: “A conceptual study of dynamic and responsive environments, using Ikea as the structural platform. I have modified an Ikea Lack table and an Urban chair to create mobile, wireless robots that can dynamically reconfigure interior space in response to people”.

Ikea Robotics - Animals from adam lassy on Vimeo.

How aware will the inanimate objects in our home become? For example, I have a table and chairs in the corner of my lounge that we get out whenever people come around for dinner. What if it was aware enough to do it itself whenever the number of people in the house was greater than 2 and the cooker was on?

Or my girlfriends dream, objects that tidy themselves away…

Last night a small delegation from Saint London attended a discussion at London’s Southbank on the weighty subject of Future Technologies. The speakers involved in the debate were:

- Sir Tim Berners-Lee , inventor of the World Wide Web and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
- Stephen Fry, writer, broadcaster and technophile
- Professor Dame Wendy Hall, leading computer scientist at University of Southampton
- Bill Thompson, technology critic and commentator on digital culture
- Jim Haseloff, expert in Synthetic Biology at the University of Cambridge

The session was lively and challenging and covered a broad spread of subjects, from the worrying advent of a digital underclass to the longer term effects of the meshing of man and machine. There were two main things that stuck in my head personally from the night though that I’ll expand on.

Firstly, Stephen Fry talked effortlessly about the ridiculousness of even trying to predict what technology will appear, or more specifically the pointlessness of predicting how people will end up using the technology made available to them. Would the inventor of the piston ever have imagined that out of that technology the car would be produced, swathes of tarmac would cover the world in the form of motorways, that one way systems and congestion charges would be commonplace in cities, or that Top Gear would be so very popular on the tele. We guess not.

And I think that this is a very important point for all of us working ‘in digital’. Technology is set free by the people who play with it, to use Mr Fry’s terminology, all technology in the end becomes ‘human shaped’. Are we prepared to develop future technologies in such a way as not to dictate its usage (Apple), but to encourage its development by the people who use it (Google)? Are brands ready to understand that people will not always use what they make for them in the ways in which they intend? If they do then they’re half way there.

The second area that fascinated me last night was Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s reference to the technology that he’d like to see in the future. He made reference to the potential of technology to make the world a smaller place, to break down borders, to help maintain Democracy, and even to improve Democracy and make it more…er….Democratic.

We’ve seen many examples of people taking to the web in protest, to join forces to engender a change in the real world, using the web as the starting point. But from an anthropological perspective, what does this smaller world mean for us long term, how likely is it to affect the way that we exist as people? Will it change us as human beings knowing that language is no longer a barrier (Google Translator), that location no longer makes face to face conversations prohibitive (Chat Routlette, iPhone 4) and that there is never any piece of information we can’t lay our hands on within seconds? Or will our innate humanness, evolved over thousands of years, remain intact and our behaviours rigidly in place?

I can’t help but come over all flower powery when I think about a future world with more and more access to information and fewer and fewer barriers to disseminating it. Future technological developments will I believe be judged on how well they facilitate deeper involvement between people, a greater communal understanding across the globe, and the moment that happens will truly be the moment that the machines have taken over the world, a moment when rather than us improving the technology, the technology improves us. And for brands this means transparency, an opportunity to be whiter than white, to come clean about production practises and work ethics. An opportunity for them to adapt to this new, connected, digitally empathetic society with positive products and relevant brand utility, and as a by product become better than ever.

Right now we have the opportunity to jump online and be paired with a random stranger anywhere in the world which to me is an epic, epic opportunity for humanity.

Yet people still want to get their meat and two veg out. Shame really.

Nike have challenged a bunch of designers to challenge the function of their shoes.

Below is W+K’s effort…

Check the site for more information – Nike 78

The Internet of Things is a fascinating concept. The idea that all the data that we’re collecting and generating online, having a real world impact in our day to day lives, and vice versa.

IBM created this short video by way of an explanation earlier in the year:

Just came across a blog by Dutch agency Boorieland regarding Meta Products, the development of ideas for physical products that utilise the web for their data. There’s something fantastically exciting about the opportunities surrounding this matrixing of complex services.

Nokia have embarked on an ambitious project to seek input from users on the form of their newest handset. Over a 2 month period, they are asking users for thoughts on features and functions for their next generation handsets.

“This is an exercise in collaboration sprinkled with some future thinking!”

See details here