Hasta La Ideas

Made with only a needle and some carded wool, Kiyoshi Mino’s large and small felt animals are delightful sculptures of farmstead companions. The colorful ducks, pigs and sparrows are born from a time-consuming process that boils down to a ball of wool and significant dexterity in needle felting, a…

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Dezeen promotion: Dutch tile company Mosa has launched three ranges of ceramic wall tiles that use graduated colour, contrasting textures and embossed surfaces to modulate light falling across a wall.

Above: tiles from the Blend range
Top: tiles from the Change range

The tile collection includes the Blend, Lines and Change ranges, each including a variety of designs that can be arranged in any combination.

Above: tiles from the Lines range

Blend tiles come in a number of sizes and subtle colour variations that form a glossy mosaic when mixed and matched.

Above: tiles from the Change range

A selection of asymmetric reliefs create faint shadows across any surface tiled with the Lines range.

Above: tiles from the Lines range

Each Change tile has a shiny and matte section divided at an angle so reflections differ depending on their orientation.

Above: tiles from the Lines range

The tiles are available in a range of sizes and natural colours. For a full list of options and more information visit the Mosa tiles website.

Above: tiles from the Change range

See all our stories about tiles »

Above: tiles from the Lines range

Here is some more information from Mosa:

Mosa Murals by Mosa

Customise it! Introducing Mosa Murals, the new, easy way to design a ceramic wall.

Above: tiles from the Lines range

Royal Mosa presents Mosa Murals, a brand new and inspiring way to design ceramic tile walls. The Mosa Murals collection, a fresh addition to the Mosa family, offers a wide selection of tiles that can be composed to create the bespoke mural of your choice, highlighting individuality and creative thinking. The online Mosa Murals Generator and Library help explore the product’s large variety of choices that will lead to a one-off, beautiful pattern, tailor-made to each architectural design’s needs.

Above: tiles from the Change range

Every Mosa Murals wall can be unique. An infinite number of combinations lead to unlimited patterns, with a result that is as subtle or as expressive as the creator wishes. Using the power of imagination and the digital tools available, a Mosa Murals feature wall is easy to create, bringing fun and artistry to tile design.

Above: tiles from the Blend range

Providing a valuable tool for architects and designers, Mosa Murals products are durable, efficient and playful and as always, carry the undisputable Mosa stamp of innovation and aesthetic quality. Available in enough different sizes, colour tones, relief forms and gloss gradations to create a tile plan as symmetric or as quirky and free-spirited as desirable, Mosa Murals is a serious customisation instrument that celebrates the joy of design.

Above: tiles from the Lines range

Launched in November 2012, the collection comprises three ranges: Blend, Lines and Change. Blend is designed for a harmonious result of colour tones, sizes and gloss gradations; Lines revolves around the subtle variation of asymmetric reliefs, playing with light and shadow; and Change concentrates on the level of the tiles’ glazing. In full accord to the company’s core values, Mosa Murals is Cradle to Cradle Silver certified and meets current sustainable construction standards.

Above: tiles from the Lines range

Part of the global architectural palette for millennia, the tile is a timeless design element and the specialty of Dutch manufacturer Royal Mosa. The Maastricht-based company supplies tiles internationally. Yet, placing function, design and sustainability at its heart, Royal Mosa has been consistently presenting products that emphasise innovation and quality, paying rare attention to detail and thriving in excellent personalised customer care.

Above: tiles from the Change range

www.mosa.nl

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Advertising Week Europe is in full swing, having decamped to London for the first time this year after nine in New York.

Billed as the world’s premier gathering of marketing and communications leaders, the four-day festival has advertising and media big wigs such as Sir Martin Sorrell, Maurice Lévy and Havas’ David Jones topping the bill. The schedule is impressively packed, with leadership breakfasts and talks on subjects such as ‘What TV can learn from online’, ‘ The power of personalisation’ and ‘Creativity in a connected world’.

Judging by the couple of sessions we dropped in on, the festival certainly seemed well attended, although the snugness of venue BAFTA’s staircases might have heightened that impression.

What those panel discussions also highlighted, however, was the perennial challenge of such congregations to provide genuine a-ha moments.

Take the Metro Masterclass: the Art of Storytelling, which promised insight into storytelling “as a magnet to attract hearts, minds and ultimately wallets of consumers”. It had the collective creative might of Mark Boyd, co-founder of Gravity Road, Paul Lavoie, chairman and co-founder of Taxi, George Prest, VP executive creative director at R/GA London, Satin Reid, board director at Carat, and Seb Royce, founder of Glue, as well as comedian Richard Herring and Colin Kennedy, assistant editor at Metro newspaper.

They noted that we lived in “the age of the death of bullshit”, brands these days were “behaving rather than telling”, “execution – not content – is king”, advertisers should stop coming up with excuses like branded content, but think of the real competition – the likes of Pixar. Success was not so much about “storytelling” but “story creation”, said Royce; and media organisations should think of themselves as content partners, not just in terms of being a platform for branded content, said Kennedy.

All in all, it provided a neat summary of current thinking on content in multichannel advertising. But what does this all actually mean in terms of creative idea and execution? Where are the current campaigns that push those general ideas about storytelling further and deliver that sought-after engagement, participation and return on investment? What exactly do those lofty notions on advertising content look like in practice at Carat, Glue, R/GA London et al, now and in the future?

They mentioned some examples, such as Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic space jump last year with Red Bull, or Duracell’s campaign to help those affected by hurricane Sandy by rolling out mobile charging stations in lower Manhattan.

But aren’t those examples essentially just PR stunts rather than innovative brand storytelling?

Another example was Bombay Sapphires’ Imagination Series which partnered with Oscar-winning screen writer Geoffrey Fletcher. He wrote a script without any direction, and members of the general public were challenged to create any film they wanted from it, with the winner to be screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. This was an example of brands empowering people to tell their stories, said Boyd. But how does Bombay benefit in real terms? Will it sell more bottles of its gin as a result?

There have been a slew of tie-ups between brands and award-winning film-makers recently – Gael García Bernal’s Canana production company created two short films for Chivas, for example, while Jaguar is heavily trailing its short film with Golden Globe-winning actor Damian Lewis.

First part of Canana’s short film series for Chivas.

Trailer for Jaguar F-Type’s shortfilm with Damian Lewis.

But aren’t these just a bit of film-making whimsy, something to feed the publicity machine?

Prest said his personal litmus test was, if a story is not going to improve the existence of human beings around the world, don’t tell it – but which brand can truly claim that?

It is certainly a topic that should be taken by the scruff of the neck and shaken about a bit more until it coughs up some convincing answers.

CR in print
The March issue of CR magazine celebrates 150 years of the London Underground. In it we introduce a new book by Mark Ovenden, which is the first study of all aspects of the tube’s design evolution; we ask Harry Beck authority, Ken Garland, what he makes of a new tube map concept by Mark Noad; we investigate the enduring appeal of Edward Johnston’s eponymous typeface; Michael Evamy reports on the design story of world-famous roundel; we look at the London Transport Museum’s new exhibition of 150 key posters from its archive; we explore the rich history of platform art, and also the Underground’s communications and advertising, past and present. Plus, we talk to London Transport Museum’s head of trading about TfL’s approach to brand licensing and merchandising. In Crit, Rick Poynor reviews Branding Terror, a book about terrorist logos, while Paul Belford looks at how a 1980 ad managed to do away with everything bar a product demo. Finally, Daniel Benneworth-Grey reflects on the merits on working home alone. Buy your copy here.

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878, or buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.

Crowd Supply is Kickstarter for product designers. That’s an overly simplistic description and a disservice to what Crowd Supply has accomplished at launch, but it’s the best way to explain what it is. When you dig past the surface, into what a crowdfunding site developed specifically for product designers could mean, the differences become exciting.

The site launched this morning with nine projects and three read-to-ship products, ranging the gamut from an iPhone case with a built-in hand crank charger to a cyclocross bike to a dog collar with a built-in leash that I am admittedly thinking of Backing for my own dog.

About two weeks ago, I spoke via Skype with Crowd Supply’s CEO, Lou Doctor. He was coming from Crowd Supply’s headquarters in Portland and had the familiar look of someone under the gun getting ready to launch a product—happy and sleep deprived. Doctor, like the five other employees at Crowd Supply , comes with a background in engineering that has veered into business, entrepreneurship and running project teams.

I came away from our discussion thinking that Doctor and his team have smartly thought through the experience of running a crowdfunded product design project while simultaneously creating a better experience for Backers.

Let’s start with how Crowd Supply is the same as Kickstarter. All of the big design issues that Kickstarter solved are kept in place. Projects are pitched by Creators. They have funding goals and deadlines. If they meet or exceed their goal by the deadline, they get funded. If they miss their goal, they don’t get funded. Project pages mimic Kickstarter’s familiar layout: Video and funding goal at the top, description and backing tiers below. Creators retain all ownership of their projects and give Crowd Supply 5% of their fundraising total.

Beyond these fundamentals, Crowd Supply has built a platform specifically tailored for product design and manufacturing. They’ve done a bunch of little things right, but I want to focus on three key areas that I think makes them meaningfully different from Kickstarter.

1. Mentorship
This has the potential to be a real game changer: Crowd Supply is staffed by product development veterans who will advise Creators throughout the course of their projects.

When Creators send their projects to be reviewed, Crowd Supply’s team vets them, looking for potential pitfalls in their plans. The feedback could come in the form of, “This will be more expensive that you are thinking, you need to raise your funding goal,” or “Have you thought of adding an engineer to your team? Here is someone that could help,” or “Have you thought through your production plan yet?” If proposals aren’t up to snuff, Creators are given feedback on how to improve their project or rejected.

This is such a great feature, not only for Creators but for Backers too. For any Creator manufacturing solo for the first, or even the second or third time, asking questions like these before launch can be the difference between success and failure. Backers can feel assured that someone with expertise has vetted the project and deemed the Creator worthy of launching a project.

Once Creators are allowed through that gate, Crowd Supply’s staff offers support for the duration of the project, offering advice and even providing their own fulfillment services.

I love this approach to helping Creators, because it solves a major issue of not only crowdfunding but launching products in general. The team shares their learnings of fundamental knowledge of what it takes to launch something. We’re not talking about IP issues, it’s basic stuff like finding a factory or figuring out how to do fulfillment. It’s one of those things you can only really learn by doing, but man wouldn’t it be nice to have an Obi-Wan there to show you the ways of the force.

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The global citizens at LA’s Apolis have teamed up with J. Crew to produce a men’s boardshort in two limited colorways. The design takes a hint from California surfers of the 1960s, with a classic single pocket construction and broad horizontal stripe. For the fabric, Apolis founders Raan and…

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