With the rise of the craft beer brigade and a more health conscious public reducing their alcohol consumption, mainstream lager brands have struggled to make themselves heard over the last decade.

In Amstel’s case, the Amsterdam-based brand has been one of the world’s most recognisable names in beer for almost 150 years but, from a branding perspective, it has suffered from many of the same problems as competitors such as Carlsberg in recent years.

With Amstel’s 115 markets requiring various different iterations of the brand to tie in with local needs, this approach had resulted in a visual identity that was incoherent and inconsistent.

The company brought in Elmwood’s London team to create a new global brand framework with multiple assets, so that local markets could chooose how to create their own expressions of the Amstel identity.

Elmwood began by digging into brand’s archives, focusing on its distinctive red-and-white split roundel and dialing up the shape and colour. The team then created two logo options for markets to use across their local communications.

The consultancy also created a series of illustrations focusing on the brewing process, including the Amstel River and bridge and the founders’ signatures.

The new branding began rolling out globally in April, the idea being that local markets around the world would be able to choose which assets and stories to celebrate in their own marketing.

Amstel’s new identity may not pack as much of a punch as the raft of creative craft beer brands we’re used to seeing these days, but it does pull off the tricky feat of being flexible enough to work on supermarket shelves around the world.

elmwood.com

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Students from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation (KADK) are sharing projects that aim to create a healthier, more sustainable and democratic society as part of their VDF school show.

They were created as part of the school’s graduate programmes in Architecture and Design, which are focused on addressing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a means of considering “how we should design and build in the future”.

The 10 projects showcased below were selected from a pool of 280 students and include a modular timber school, bacteria-dyed textiles and a “hydroponic cultural landscape”.

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation

University: The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation
Course: MA Architecture and MA Design

KADK Graduation 2020 – Solutions to the major challenges of our time:

“Climate. Health. Democracy. Sustainability. 280 MA Architecture and MA Design graduates have addressed a number of the challenges we face as a global community today. How do we ensure a sustainable cooling of our cities and how can we use carbon-neutral building materials? Or how can design solutions help accelerate a better recovery for the benefit of each individual and society in general?

“The curriculum at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture Design and Conservation (KADK) is rooted in research, practice and artistic development. For the past four years, KADK has added a strategic focus on the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). We believe that the SDGs can inspire our students to consider how we should design and build in the future, using a holistic perspective to provide new, original and necessary global solutions to these pressing concerns.

“Their projects demonstrate how architecture, design and conservation can create visions, new knowledge and solutions to complex problems in compelling and attractive designs. Future generations of architects and designers – like those we educate at KADK – must be capable of releasing this vast potential.”

The Green Structure of Copenhagen by Agnes Josefin Hekla, MA Architecture

“What would Copenhagen look like if the city had to be self-sufficient in terms of its food supply? This project creates solutions for a scenario in which the city is forced to feed itself, due to changed global conditions caused by changing climate and food shortages.

“A hydroponic cultural landscape is established across the city’s rooftops, between blocks of flats, across car parks and railway beds for raising vegetables in water without soil. Besides supplying the city with vegetables and collecting large volumes of precipitation, the urban landscape is ideal for movement, recreation and working together to grow vegetables.”

Studio: CITAstudio – Computation in Architecture, Institute of Architecture and Technology
Tutor: Paul Nicholas
Press contact: Inge.Henningsen@kadk.dk or hbay@kadk.dk

Healing Product Design in a Neonatal Context by Alexandra Rendtorff and Amalie Gielov, MA Design

“This chair was developed for parents who are caring for a premature baby and for bringing the infant out of its incubator. The chair is designed so a parent can give the infant the protection it needs against lights and sounds. The infant is provided with security, heat and moisture by lying against the parent’s skin, enabling it to relax more easily when it receives painful treatments.

“The design is inspired by nature and uses wood and fabric in red hues to remind the infant of its first sensory impressions in the womb. The product was developed in dialogue with staff at Rigshospitalet hospital in Copenhagen.”

Studio: Strategic Design and Entrepreneurship
Tutor: Karina Mose
Press contact: Inge.Henningsen@kadk.dk or hbay@kadk.dk

The Organic System by Anna Cecilie Nicolaysen and Julie Hvid Petersen, MA Architecture

“The Organic System is based on wooden structures and blocks of straw, which is a traditional building material. The straw components are replaceable and the structure is built according to the principle of Design for Disassembly. The components are built into the load-bearing structure and serve as cladding, building envelope and insulation.

“The project contains an ancillary cultural hall and 225 youth housing units. It challenges the regulations that currently prohibit large-scale wooden structures, whose sensory and aesthetic features and low carbon emissions are otherwise desirable urban qualities.”

Studio: Settlement, Ecology & Tectonics
Tutors: Morten Vedelsbøl and Nee Rentz-Petersen
Press contact: Inge.Henningsen@kadk.dk or hbay@kadk.dk

Must Move by Christel Witthøft Cortz, MA Design

“We spend most of our time both at work and at home sitting down – usually in the same position. This can be a source of great discomfort for the neck, shoulders and back.

“This project takes the ways in which children navigate the rooms and furniture of a home as its starting point, to examine how the furniture we normally use for relaxation can inspire adults to be more active. The sofa is transformed into a chaise longue and an armchair is turned into a sphere, inviting the user to assume a variety of seated positions.”

Studio: Furniture & Object
Tutor: Grethe Weber
Press contact: Inge.Henningsen@kadk.dk or hbay@kadk.dk

Timber Architecture & Circular Design by Maja Olsson, MA Architecture

“As teaching methods and educational technologies change over time, there is a need to continuously adapt a school’s physical spaces. That is the starting point for this design for a school for students with impaired hearing, which is based on the Design for Disassembly principle.

“The project utilises highly visible, easily replaceable elements in the building to make it adaptable to changing times and users. The predominant material is cross-laminated timber. The project is based on a collaborative effort with the municipality of Hässleholm, which endeavours to reduce its carbon footprint whenever it develops its urban areas.”

Studio: Strategic Design and Entrepreneurship
Tutor: Nicholas Thomas Lee
Press contact: Inge.Henningsen@kadk.dk or hbay@kadk.dk

Bacterial Dye – the Pigment of the Future by Monica Louise Hartvigsen, MA Design

“This project showcases how bacteria can be used to dye textiles using a method that results in rich, bright colours that fully correspond to the synthetic colours we are familiar with today. The only difference is that this method is better for the environment as it needs little water and does not rely on toxic chemicals.

“The project demonstrates that it is possible to create beautiful dyes and woven textures for the furniture and textile industries using bacteria. The technique was developed at the laboratories of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and I have subsequently collaborated with the Danish company Gabriel Textile. The method can be upscaled for industrial production.”

Studio: Furniture & Object
Tutor: Grethe Weber
Press contact: Inge.Henningsen@kadk.dk or hbay@kadk.dk

Re-entwined by Ida Andrea Plouborg Lorentzen, MA Design

“How can the fashion industry become sustainable? The Re-entwined project turns the fashion industry’s logic on its head and makes use of recycled materials, discarded clothes from second-hand shops and textiles from family and friends.

“They are collaged together to form new articles of clothing, with individual components used as aesthetic focal points to give each garment a unique history. This includes multiple lines of buttons that allow the garment to be made bigger or smaller over time, or providing an optional piece of fabric that can be added on to change the garment’s expression and extend its designed life.”

Studio: Fashion Design
Tutor: Bettina Bakdal
Press contact: Inge.Henningsen@kadk.dk or hbay@kadk.dk

Cleanliness 202X by Julie Obel Elkjær, MA Design

“The Covid-19 pandemic has made Cleanliness202X more topical than ever. The product is designed to be a multifunctional tower capable of cleaning the home or workplace using several different methods, all the way down to a molecular level.

“The top section comprises a UV-C light and a dehumidifier, which kill bacteria and lower the ambient humidity. The middle section can purify the air of contaminants using HEPA filters and the bottom section serves as both a robotic vacuum cleaner and a docking station.

“The product is the first of its kind to combine these functions and radically tackle challenges such as pandemics, higher relative humidity due to climate change and particulate contamination in our cities.”

Studio: Industrial Design
Tutor: Karina Mose
Press contact: Inge.Henningsen@kadk.dk or hbay@kadk.dk

Democratising Influence by Emil Fromberg and Frederik Østerberg, MA Architecture

“The European Quarter in Brussels houses the most powerful institutions of the European Union alongside a large number of lobbying organisations that aim to exert influence on EU policymaking and is often referred to as the Brussels Bubble. The Democratising Influence project rethinks the architecture of the quarter and offers a new vision for how it can host a more transparent, participatory European democracy.

“This includes a consultation theatre for lobbyism, an exhibition of opinions, local and public spaces for assemblies, a public consultation quarter and a visible sign of lobbyists’ presence on the facades of the buildings.”

Studio: Political Architecture – Critical Sustainability
Tutor: Runa Johannessen
Website: democratizinginfluence.eu
Press contact: Inge.Henningsen@kadk.dk or hbay@kadk.dk

Bio-scaffolds for Urban Greening by Ruxandra Stefania Chiujdea, MA Architecture

“The climate crisis is making cities hotter and rising temperatures are notably measurable in narrow streets. This creates a need to cool buildings sustainably. Bio-scaffolds for Urban Greening hopes to offer a solution by drawing nature into the city.

“The project makes use of digital technologies and 3D printing to create site-specific bio-scaffolding made of recycled and natural materials. This provides an elegant growth medium for plants on the facade of apartment buildings and keeps heat away from the facades. Residents can help plant the vertical garden and tend it during the summer season until the garden wilts and releases its grip on the wall when winter comes.”

Studio: CITAstudio – Computation in Architecture
Tutor: Paul Nicholas
Press contact: Inge.Henningsen@kadk.dk or hbay@kadk.dk

Virtual Design Festival’s student and schools initiative offers a simple and affordable platform for student and graduate groups to present their work during the coronavirus pandemic. Click here for more details.

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Google‘s sister company Loon is deploying a fleet of 35 solar-powered balloons that will provide internet service across more remote areas of Kenya by floating on stratospheric winds.

This is Loon’s first non-emergency, commercial internet service. Previously the company provided emergency-only internet access in response to disasters such as the 2017 Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the 2019 earthquake in Peru.

Loon – a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc and one of Google’s “moonshot” projects – is using a fleet of what will eventually be more than 35 balloons to provide a 4G wireless broadband service to Telkom Kenya subscribers across the country.

The firm began deployment on Tuesday 7 July 2020 and will continue to add balloons to achieve its target fleet size in the next few weeks, in order to offer a more consistent internet availability.

The service will span nearly 31,000 square miles across western and central parts of Kenya, including its capital, Nairobi, and the areas of Iten, Eldoret, Baringo, Nakuru, Kakamega, Kisumu, Kisii, Bomet, Kericho and Narok.

Made from sheets of polyethylene and each measuring the size of a tennis court, the flight vehicles are sent 11 miles into the air using twin, 90-foot-tall automated machines.

Once in the air, they are in constant motion on the edge of space, hovering on stratospheric winds, where they send internet signals to ground stations and personal devices.

Monitored via software controlled on the ground, the balloons are directed by machine-learning algorithms that have developed their own complex navigational movements.

The balloons are billed by the company as a more cost-effective way of expanding phone companies’ coverage in certain areas, instead of laying cables or building cell towers.

Loon CEO Alastair Westgarth said that the company has been testing its Kenyan service balloons for the past few months and has connected over 35,000 users to the internet.

This includes providing an uplink speed of 4.74 megabits per second (Mpbs), a downlink speed of 18.9 Mbps, and latency of 19 milliseconds. Loon has also tested various services such as voice and video calls, email, texting and web browsing.

“Nearly 3.8 billion people, or about half of humanity, don’t have access to the internet, and many more lack what we would consider meaningful access,” said Westgarth.

“This has proven a tough problem to solve,” he continued. “Despite efforts by many, we’ve seen a dramatic slowdown in the growth of internet access in the last few years, from 19 per cent in 2007 to less than six per cent in 2018.”

“And all of this is happening as the demand for connectivity is growing exponentially – and not just from people, but also from the internet-connected things that those people increasingly rely upon.”

As Westgarth explains, Loom doesn’t want to replace existing ground and space-based connective technologies like cell towers, fibre optic and satellites, but rather it aims to add a “third layer” to “the connectivity ecosystem” to make internet services more accessible.

“From here, we can leverage the strengths of both existing layers – the lower latency of a connection from the ground and the expanded coverage area of a connection from space – to connect more people, places and things worldwide,” he said.

“What we’re seeing in Kenya today is the laying of the foundation for a third layer of connectivity,” Westgarth continued.

“It was a long time in the making, and there is still a lot of work to be done to establish this new layer of connectivity. But today we’re seeing the possibility of what the future can hold if we succeed.”

PriestmanGoode also designed a high-altitude balloon that would float around the stratosphere, but for a different purpose.

If realised, the pressurised capsule and balloon, called Neptune, would take space tourists on a six-hour journey to the edge of space.

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The votes are in! It’s time to announce the winners of the 2020 Core77 Design Awards Community Choice prize.

One grand prize winner and 17 category winners have been chosen by the Core77 audience as their favorite awarded design projects of 2020, with the grand prize winner taking home a special prize of $500 cash.

And the 2020 Community Choice winners are…

Grand Prize Winner: Kissa Kahani

The grand prize winner of this year’s Community Choice is Kissa Kahani. The project is a Design Education Initiative Runner-Up in this year’s awards, created by Ci3 at the University of Chicago, Ramya Ramakrishnan Design, and StratComm Consulting. Designed in response to the lack of sex education available to youth in India, Kissa Kahani, which translates to “anecdotes and stories,” is a uniquely designed, evidence-based intervention that provides information about sexual and reproductive health to Indian adolescents through storytelling, multimedia, and innovative research.

Congratulations to Ci3 at the University of Chicago, Ramya Ramakrishnan Design, and StratComm Consulting for their win and a job well done!

2020 Community Choice Category Winners:

The minute the pandemic hit, it became very obvious that a lot of media companies had put a lot of effort into their studio camera setups, but as soon as their journalists and hosts began working from home, the production quality took an absolute beating. Suddenly Jimmy Fallon and Conan O’Brien started looking weird on their iPhone cameras, and the flaws in using AirPods to record audio versus using studio-grade microphones became painfully apparent. While it’s just common sense that nobody can afford a studio-grade camera setup for their home, it doesn’t make sense that they have to rely on their smartphone camera either. The Podcam concept was designed to fill that gap, with a device that’s as small and affordable as a regular smartphone, but as proficient and capable as a studio cam.

Targeted towards the growing podcasting and vlogging movement, the Podcam concept comes in a compact avatar with a telescopic stand for height-adjustment. Its soft, friendly design hopes to eliminate any fear of being ‘in front of a camera’ as the vertically aligned lenses look less like eyes staring at you and more like any other object. Wide-angle and Ultra wide-angle lenses help you seamlessly switch your setup based on the number of guests you have on your show, so everyone is always in frame, and two beam-forming microphones built into the Porcam help clearly capture voices while drowning out any background noise. The Podcam’s soft form comes machined entirely from recycled aluminum, and its single-button recording interface makes it very easy to operate (you could alternatively use Podcam’s app to control recording too). The Podcam comes with an in-built battery, although the USB-C port on its base allows you to charge the camera while in use too. Threading for the Podcam’s stand on the side makes it very easy to unscrew the camera setup and carry along from room to room, while its single-pole stand can easily be used as a selfie stick should you choose… and if branding is really important to you, there’s a nice blank canvas on the opposite side of the threading hole to engrave your podcast’s logo on!

Designer: Joseph Burrell