Design is the New Global Currency

It used to be that great design cost the earth.

Leading design agencies positioned themselves as reassuringly expensive. Assured rip off more like.

That was before the Internet spawned over 210 Million Websites. Before one third of the US working population found itself in design related jobs. Before Apple. Pre Steve.

In this new digital democracy where innovation hits the Web fast design is everything and design services need be accessible to anyone. Now they are.

New style design agencies that Crowdsource quality designers from all over the world are changing the game. Efficiently matching the right design to the right brand. The best fit designer to the most relevant project. Online – lightning fast.

Building scalable design marketplaces delivering $500 logos to $1 Million corporate identity projects or campaign creatives. We app design to iPhone slick. Product look to fragrance feel. Because, in this world of ‘intangible’, social media, always on – first impressions are everything – lasting impressions survival. The visual revolution real.

Start-ups, individuals, corporates, banks, government agencies, sole traders, builders, merchants, butchers, bakers and candle stick makers each need brands, word of mouth, feel good, do good, marketing nouse.  Centre’d on design.

It’s the new global currency. Where’s yours?

Leading Crowdsourced Design Agency Expands

blur Designs, the leading, international Crowdsourced design agency is expanding now that it has nearly 1,000 top designers worldwide.

Check them at the all new blur-Designs.com. ‘Need a Designer?’

Where Aol. went wrong

Now we all know about Aol.’s demise from Warner Brothers and yes they had the right idea, a fresh start and a new brand. A brand that will put their past behind them and lead them into the future. However the execution of this process seems to have gone wayward.

I have a feeling that everything to do with this re-branding was rushed, as Wolff Olins has a great portfolio, though their visuals on this occasion look lazy and circa 1999. Old ideas and visuals for an old company, I’ve seen that goldfish before! Creating a brand is an art form that goes beyond the visual look of a brand, it needs to create brand experience or a brand image. Your brand’s identity should portray how you want your customers to perceive the band and everything that goes with it.

AOL’s Aol.’s new capital A & . (period) is also a branding minefield. For one it no longer reads as A-O-L it now looks/sounds more like “aole”. Why not use lowercase for the whole word aol. which really works, what’s their URL?

The logo works a little better in motion, but still where are the original next generation ideas? Perhaps they were in the pink horse!

This was Aol.’s chance to really recover from the position, not only their branding was in but also their company. Ok they got alot of press over the preview of their branding, but what happens when December 9th comes and goes and your left with sub-standard branding and no one is talking about you!

Out with the old, In with blur Designs

The worlds greatest designers are rarely found in large design agencies. They are often freelancers or independents. blur Designs is a new kind of design agency, located in London with designers spanning the globe. Born from crowdsourcing, it is shaking up the agency world with an unrivalled roster of talented and diverse designers.

With a crowd of over 600 freelance designers, tightly co-ordinated and organized over the Web, blur Designs is already the largest design agency in the world

Nike, Levis, Intel, Coca Cola, FIVE, BBC, Sony and Harrods are just some of the companies our designers have produced work for.

Traditional agencies get bogged down with the limited capabilities and resources that they have. At blur Designs we have an abundance of world beating, creative talent from graphic to product designers, so our creativity is almost limitless. Which guarantees our clients better value, greater choice and continuously fresh inputs for their design work.

blur Designs offering is quite simple: from world-class branding to websites that talk to your customers, not just brochure-wear, we’ll build a community around your web presence. Thought about adopting viral advertising, we have motion designers as well as producers and editors at your disposal.

blur Designs is the next generation design agency: fresh, ready and highly creative. So, out with the old and in with blur Designs.

Armchair on the World – Toshiba

And who said video wasn’t the future of the Web.

YouTube ads point to a future of viral video -- dismantling traditional network TV mechanisms. Watch.

Kellogg’s take branding to a whole new level

Kellogg’s have become so concerned about supermarket cereals that they are now using a laser to burn their brand into each individual corn flake!

Helen Lyons, lead food technologist at Kellogg’s, said: ‘In recent years there has been an increase in the number of own brands trying to capitalise on the popularity of Kellogg’s corn flakes. We want shoppers to be under absolutely no illusion that Kellogg’s does not make cereal for anyone else.’

Which ever way you look at, it’s genius although maybe a little off putting when sitting down for breakfast, not only brand your packaging brand your product.

iPhone or Aston Martin?

A recent survey by CoolBrands revealed that Apple’s iPhone is now more desirable than an Aston Martin! A closer look at the list tells the bigger story about Apple’s brand, they took 3 spots out of the top 5! Apples dominance is unsurprising – consumers are way too happy to queue for the latest gadget. What is surprising however is another survey by SuperBrands (same company as CoolBrands) which reveals that Microsoft are the top super brand, whilst Apple are down in 9th. But with cloud computing and applications on-line maybe we’ll see MacBooks on the list next year further boosting Apple’s position.

Whichever way you look at it Apple’s brand is their most prized asset, which proves that getting your brand right has to be a leading priority.

Rabia @ Shoreditch House

blur Designs traveled over to the trendy Shoreditch House last night to see their latest Human Brand project, Rabia. Here she is singing ‘Fronting’.

It was a great gig and the crowd loved her. blur Designs is onto the next stage of Rabia’s Human Brand, watch this space!

Sneak peak of Rabia’s Human Brand™

Rabia has come into see us about her Human Brand™, she loves it, do you?

Let us know what you think?

What does it say to you?

If you’re new to Rabia check out this video.

Please feel free to comment below, thanks and we’ll keep you updated on how Rabia’s human brand turns out.

Human Brands™ are everywhere

The Portobello film festival kicks off tonight at our Westbourne Studios! Big piece on Street art, got talking to sickboy a leading street artist from Bristol.

Turns out he was one of the first street artists to use a logo instead of a tag, known as the ‘Temple’ which can be seen on walls and wheelie bins worldwide. Human Brands has worked for sick boy, he is tipped as one of the street art movement’s most investable artists.

Human Brands

‘In this century human brands will become as powerful as any corporate brand’.

Artists, actors, singers, entrepreneurs, chefs and bloggers brands can become as valuable as any Walt Disney, Nike, News Corporation, Kellogg’s, Google, Microsoft or Amazon.

The power is shifting from distributor to creator. Middleman to artist.

David Beckham is better known than Manchester United, Ronaldo than Real, Federer than Wimbledon. Tom Cruise is bigger than any single film studio. JK Rowling larger than Penguin.

But what’s their Human Brand?

Whether you’re an emerging human brand or established celebrity the digital revolution allows you to spread your wings and monetize your identity more than ever before. blur Designs works with individuals to create a winning Human Brand™ designed for the digital universe (including logo), then rolls it out across a next gen, hub-and-spoke, Web and social media platform.

blur Marketing turns human brand into human fame. Going way beyond 15 minutes.

Walking to our Studio’s?

After a productive Friday morning, we decided to make a short film showing the route to our studios from Westbourne Tube Station. Which will also freshen up and make our contact page more interesting.

Spot anyone you know?

P Diddy on The Importance of Human Brands

P Diddy spoke with Mashable about his perspective on artists need to develop and control their personal brands on and offline – inc social media.

“Before, it was just at live shows, now you have to be able to do a great live show, you have to be able to do a great online interview, you need to have a great Facebook page, you have to have a great television performance,” he said.

Which is exactly what blur Designs is developing with a number of artists and musicians through its unique ‘Human Brands’ programme.

Another sentence, however, proves that Diddy is onto something that the record industry as a whole still largely ignores: “You have to understand how to be able to brand yourself,” he said. As a musician, today you can do more for your image and your fans through simple, freely available tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, than an army of spin doctors hired by record companies. Learning to leverage these tools, as proven by musicians such as Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, Amanda Palmers and others, will be a crucial part of every musician’s career, while record companies, in their current form, might become more or less irrelevant.”

b-uncut Merchandise store

blur Designs has started work on b-uncut’s Merchandise store. Wearable, drinkable, usable art!

blur Designs starts new Human Brand™

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blur Designs starts work on it’s next Human Brand™

blur Designs, cutting the crap

blur Group has recently launched blur Designs which is a design agency for business and human brands™.

blur Designs was architected to change the old stagnant design agency approach. ‘We’re cutting out the crap’, which enables us to give you outrageous value without compromising on quality. We’re crowdsourced, so we have a focussed, hand picked group of highly creative designers, ready and primed to work on your project.

Simplicity is the key and at blur Designs we like to keep everything stupidly simple with our 1 2 3 approach. 1.Brand 2.Web 3.Video. Developing and designing or re-designing your brand for the 21st Century digital era, implementing a social media ready hub Website with social page spokes and producing viral videos. At each step of the way we give you high end creativity at a ridiculous price. £2,000 is our set price for each step, that’s how we work, simple right? It gets even better than that because 1+2+3=£5,000 giving you our whole service at an even better price.

We think of blur Designs as the cappuccino bar of design agencies. Great products, fast service and transparent, value driven prices. To learn more about blur Designs and our bid to change the design agency world visit www.blur-designs.com.

And if you’re a highly creative designer – join our crowd here.

blur Designs launches shiny new website

blur Designs is starting to break the design agency world with it’s latest website, focusing on cutting the crap out of agencies.

blur Designs are a crowdsourced design agency changing the game combining outrageous value with breakthrough vision and pace. With our latest website we focus on our innovative 1,2,3 system which takes any company or human (yes Human Brands are the next big thing!) right through the design process from 1.Brand to 2.Web then finally onto 3.Video. All wrapped up with a simple price plan to suit all pockets, giving you ridiculous value for money whilst not scarificing the quality.

Check it out – blur Designs and let us know what you think.

blur Designs Prepares to Launch ‘Human Brands’

blur Designs is busy behind the scenes preparing to launch ‘Human Brands’. After all, why should us humans not design and develop our own brands? Surely branding is not the preserve of corporates alone. And in this new world of endless 15 minutes of fame and one hit wonders pumped through MySpace, Twitter or TechCrunch someone needs to worry about designing and developing lasting human brands for the next generation of more sustainable singers, sports pro’s, song writers, actors, artists, chefs, geek celebs and more.

blur Designs has been developing brand systems and design processes optimized for human brands to ensure that the next David Beckham or Eminem develop their brand and supporting digital strategies more effectively and earlier. Because it is more essential than ever that the next generation of ‘artists and celebrities’ maximize the impact and value of their brand equity through their career and beyond. No more ripping off the artists!

The Future of Fairtrade

The definition of Fairtrade is clear: “Fairtrade is a strategy for poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Its purpose is to create opportunities for producers and workers who have been economically disadvantaged or marginalized by the conventional trading system. If fair access to markets under better trade conditions would help them to overcome barriers to development, they can join Fairtrade.”

But we believe that the future of Faitrade goes beyond developing countries and includes many other kinds of workers; full time, freelance, part time and including artists, musicians, actors, writers, marketing consultants, designers and more. As a leader in Crowdsourcing we think that it can offer a better deal for most constituents of worker and knowledge producer – and a better contract, one not shackled by the constraints of permanent employ. For instance, b-uncut artists take a commission of 80% when their art is sold through the b-uncut Gallery, not the standard 50% offered by traditional gallery’s.

The Fairtrade movement has done a great deal for farmers and workers in the Third World. Its time to widen the initiative and improve the deal and conditions for all workers, be they creatives, artists, knowledge workers, factory employees or engineers. In the US, UK, France, Japan, Australia, Brazil, India or wherever. Crowdsourced together – unfettered and untethered. That is the future of Fairtrade.

The Future of Crowdsourcing – Small

Crowdsourcing has become an increasingly accepted term with examples bandied about such as Google using the analysis of Web links to crowdsource their search engine, Wikipedia crowdsourcing the planet to build the largest encyclopedia and Threadless crowdsourcing approaching a million people to design t-shirts. But what is the future of crowdsourcing? Well, we think it’s the power of small. We believe that small, niche, highly managed crowds organized in the right way will become virtual organizations. Why not build a marketing agency solely by crowdsourcing and remotely managing marketing professionals/consultants. Why not crowdsource writers and editors to build a next generation publishing company, artists to develop a new generation art market.

The key, we believe, is small, targeted, niche crowds attacking niche issues head on and repeatedly. There will always be a place for big crowds tackling one or two big problems – but this needs to be complemented with specialist crowds attacking specialist issues one after the other much as any agency, research centre or organization does today. The benefit of doing it with a managed crowd instead of legions of full time employees is lower cost, greater flexibility, a more international approach and the greater, larger collective intelligence. Indeed, it may be that the most successful, best managed, niche crowds will become the organization of tomorrow.

Kinetic Typography Video Production

Kinetic Typography or simply ‘moving text’ is an animation technique that brings together motion and type. The techniques history lies in film credits, the fore runner being Saul Bass in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959). Since then kinetic typography has become main stream within film industry.

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Kinetic Typography is shrewd, it sets itself upon the senses. The audience not only hears your message they also see it, double whammy!! Which then leads to endless opportunities. Such as Renault in South Africa have just launched a TV campaign using kinetic typography, which is modern & edgy yet still keeps within the confines of Renaults brand values. CourtTV (Now TruTV) in the US used the technique in their idents, which is some of the most impressive use of kinetic typography we have seen.

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At blur Designs we use kinetic typography to convey all blur Group’s messages, exploiting the versatility of kinetic typography. Each division of blur Group has a different message and with kinetic typography we can design videos using speech and vision to portray each individual message whilst keeping within the companies branding.

If your interested in using kinetic typography to promote your business contact blur Designs.

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To view all of blur Group videos please visit our You Tube Channel.

blur Designs

Design is rapidly moving from posters and toasters to include processes, systems, and organizations.

Design is the accelerator for the company car, the power train for sustainable profits.

Design drives innovation, innovation powers brand, brand builds loyalty, and loyalty sustains profits.

If you want long-term profits, don’t start with technology—start with design.

Start with blur Designs

Why blur Group is Important

As blur Group gets more of a following we increasingly get asked why what we are doing is important. It is both a fundamental and complex question to answer. I have spent the last ten years building large communities and marketplaces on the Web – consumer facing, business facing and some that mash both up. The thinking until now has been all about how you scale communities and marketplaces – how you reach critical mass. How you monetize the masses.

We believe that the new wave in community building is about the power of small – the beauty of boutique and about quality more than quantity. Our crowds (communities) are small, focused and valuable. We spend more time managing and filtering our communities than recruiting for them. And our recruitment is rifle shot, not scatter gun. Organic, not viral.

But then we have to, because blur Group is a leader in crowdsourcing – and crowdsourcing is all about monetizing the individual and combined outputs of the crowd. Not cashing in on the crowd itself – quite the opposite. We know that quality crowds equal quality outputs and we will only succeed through quality outputs, whether they come from artists or entrepreneurs or marketers. We work tirelessly with our crowds, supported by social media and community platforms, to help them earn a better living and make a bigger difference – whether they be dedicated, part time or freelance.

Some believe we have figured out how to scale services based businesses, others feel that we might have the secret to Web 2.0 marketplaces and some even think we are quietly and innocently changing the way business is done. Us, we just think we are blur, reinventing tomorrow, today.

Branding the bird

‘How important do you think branding your twitter profile is?’

This was the question asked of me at the latest blur’d Meetup. The answer is obvious, VERY IMPORTANT! Would you have a website or even a business card without your logo & branding applied to it? Of course not. Twitter should be seen as an extension of you or your company’s on-line presence, therefore the real question should be ‘Why isn’t your twitter profile branded?’

Though with this in mind, some thought needs to be applied. As with all branding exersizes if it’s not done right it will become null & void and could have a negative effect for you or your company’s brand. At blur Designs we not only come up with next generation ideas and designs, we’re a stickler for detail, some called it an OSD, but as Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe famously said “God is in the details”.

So has anyone out there got it right? Well you may be shocked to know, I’m still to come across a company’s twitter profile that ticks every box.  We could change Luwig’s quote to “God is in the pixels”, we all know about screen resolution but it seems that no one is thinking about this when it comes twitter.

However there is one that ticks every box and that is blur Designs twitter profile. Whatever the screen resolution the user will have the same experience, no images cutting of or dodgy backgrounds that don’t fit the screen, doing this will help strengthen your brands on-line presence.

blur Designs is helping clients better define and position themselves for tomorrow and twitter is tomorrow.

To view our design and to follow blur Designs click here

blur Designs Leading the Design-Driven Revolution

blur Designs is a leader in the Design-Driven Revolution. Below we try and encapsulate what we believe this new thinking is about.

‘Design is rapidly moving from posters and toasters to include processes, systems, and organizations. Design is the accelerator for the company car, the power train for sustainable profits. Design drives innovation, innovation powers brand, brand builds loyalty, and loyalty sustains profits. If you want long-term profits, don’t start with technology—start with design.

For businesses to bottle the kind of experiences that rivet minds and run away with hearts, not just one time but over and over, they’ll need to do more than hire designers. They’ll need to be designers. They’ll need to think like designers, feel like designers, work like designers. The narrow-gauge mindset of the past is insufficient for today’s wicked problems. We can no longer play the music as written. Instead, we have to invent a whole new scale.’

Are you design driven?