A New standard of electronic book

A beautiful new Book has raised the bar for the rapidly evolving publishing industry. Naturally it is an electronic book, but one that blurs the line between movies and books in a most beautiful way. The book, or actually the app is called ‘The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore‘.

Here’s the movie trailer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The movie, available on the iTunes store, is a beautifully animated tail of a character who loses everything in a storm, even his colour. And through books finds the verve to enjoy life and complete his own story. The movie and app are the brain child of William Joyce, Pixar old boy, illustrator and animator. Who with his team at Moonbot have produced what is sure to redefine the standards ebooks are judged in what has become a gold rush to publish in the new electronic frontier.

Here’s the App trailer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What really sticks out for my though is not the technology, or even the creative and qualitative level the thing has been produced at. But rather the story, and as simple as it is, the way the essence of the story actually comes to life in the App. It’s a magical book about magical books. Brilliant! Some may dismiss it as just a fancy pop up book, and maybe it is, but if it is, it’s the best pop up book ever published. For a commercial effort that would be enough but I think this goes further, William Joyce, has wrapped his love of books, experiences of Hurricane Katrina, and a simple story of redemption into what I would class as an outstanding brand experience.

As with any communication, whether it is a book or a brand, you must identify with the subject, find it believable, and enjoy the experience. Morris Lessmore does all this and more. Check it out in the iPad App Store. If you don’t have an iPad at least check out the short.

Derek Carroll
Director of Design

I had another post in mind for today about how a mega brand is created, but then I saw these videos on Fast Company and that took a back seat. The videos combine two of my favourite things: travel and type. They are told with a visual richness that gave me flashbacks to my last trip to Europe, re-awoke my wanderlust and fired a desire to learn French that teachers never could.

These beauties were created for language learning company EF by cinematographer Niklas Johansson and designer/art director Albin Holmqvist. Niklas’s cinematography brings to life the adventure and excitement of travel, while Albin’s beautiful type frames it with the joy of a new language in a way that is bigger than the offer. It’s what all great brands do, they don’t just push there own offer, but rather, position themselves as champions for an ideal. As a brand communications these tick so many boxes for a company whose brand essence must be based in the joy of language and the confidence of education. While the visual style is very current and the cast are all pretty young things there is an emotional charge that is ageless.

Just watching these you’ll pick up a few phrases that’ll help on your next holiday and might be your first steps to speaking another language. They are a joy to behold and I challenge anyone to watch them and not dream about ordering a romantic dinner in a new language.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Derek Carroll
Director of Design is planning his next holiday

Give us a call if you’d like to talk about brand or just what a difference good type can make

A Truly Deeply Brand Identity Case Study
A few years back Deakin University came to us for help to re-launch their student union association. New legislation was changing the landscape of student unions and DUSA understood they needed to create a new relevance to the student body on their multiple campuses. DUSA is a student organisation which is run by students of Deakin University, for students of Deakin University. DUSA members study off campus and on, and include undergraduates, postgraduates and international students. What DUSA needed was a brand identity that would help position the organisation in a way that connected with the students. As student union membership became optional for the first time, DUSA found themselves competing against brands and other interests for the students loyalty.

We ran a series of brand definition workshops with the DUSA CEO, Communication and Marketing teams, key DUSA staff and of course a bunch of the student representatives. We defined DUSA’s brand essence as

‘Creating a vibrant and connected university community’.

A New Brand Name for a New Era
When you go about creating a new brand for an existing organsation, all existing brand properties need to be considered against the defining essence and values. So it was with DUSA’s name. The process that defined DUSA’s brand proposition, essence and values also considered the development of a new brand name for the student union. Of all the things we do in brand, developing new names is the most complex. Names are held close to the heart of customers, staff and business owners alike. Getting agreement on a new name can be a lengthy and painful process for all involved, and trademarking can extend the pain further. With DUSA we led a process that ran surprisingly smoothly. We had a client with a real appetite for change in order to meet the challenges of the new landscape they found themselves in. We established a new name that reflected the values of the brand and its desired personality moving forward and spoke with a brand voice that connected with their student audience. The new name was also selected for the opportunities it provided for a unique visual brand image that could cut-through on campus and resonate with the students.

The new selected name was:

4U

Because DUSA didn’t have the ability or opportunity to educate their market on why they had changed their name and brand. They went through a transition period were they called themselves:

DUSA4U

A New Brand Identity for 4U
To support the transitional communication strategy we designed a transitional version of the brand mark for appropriate and first point of contact communication. The transition brand mark had a life of 6-12 months as determined by pick-up and acceptance of the new visual identity.

The design approach we took for the 4U brand identity system was unconventional. The visual language of corporate brand identity is typically structured and formal. The approach we took with the 4U brand identity adopted a non-traditional approach that intentionally broke the rules of corporate identity. We took our lead for the brand identity design from the culture of surf and street brands which approach their image with a loose, irreverent mind-set, often changing the look of their identity from season to season. This shifting style approach gave the 4U brand identity design a real relevance to the student audience and intentionally shifted the brand away from a sense of university ownership to one of student ownership.

We designed a core brand mark for 4U that was so distinctive that as format, form, colour and texture shifted, the brand mark could always be clearly identified.

Another advantage of having a brandmark that is so versatile is that it also can run-with and adapt to changing trends. An example of what we had in mind was placing the DUSA4U brandmark on a Tim Biskup sketchel.

A part of the the promotion and introduction of DUSA to the students, we created DUSA Ambassadors who would wear DUSA4U branded t-shirts. It was critical from day one of the brand identity change-over for DUSA to have brand ambassadors who would fly the flag for the DUSA4U brand. The ambassadors gave the newly developed DUSA brand a face and personality to pass-on DUSA’s messages to the students.

If you’d like to find out more about this project, or how we could define and create a distinctive brand for you and your organisation, why not give us a call.

Tim Wood
Design Creative

Branding a place or a region is no different to product or service branding – you have to own something that is distinctive and compelling to your target market. However, when it comes to regional branding there is an added complication. You have to balance the competing needs of a diverse set of stakeholders because the people and businesses that make up the region simply do not always see the world through the same lens. Different mental models, different types and sizes of businesses, different levels of self interest and all that before one even layers in the different egos at play.  A lot of stakeholders and lot of emotion makes for interesting branding.

With such a diverse range of stakeholders, the developers of regional brands need to adopt a strategic and pragmatic approach. For a start there needs to be recognition that not all stakeholders will be of equal value in building a world famous regional brand, that the 80:20 rule is well and truly alive. Certainly the team we worked with on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia understood this point. Led by the regional Development Board, the regional branding process started with identifying those businesses that were considered mission critical to being on-board. Clearly your preference is to have everyone on board, but it can also be a very liberating feeling if instead you identify the 20% of stakeholders who will give you 80% of the bang, you can then immediately narrow your focus. And of course the law of attraction always works, enlist the shakers and movers and others will want to jump on board anyway. Once you have the right people involved there is a need to explore what makes up the region, what makes it a special place. Is it nature’s gifts, is it food producers, is it the unique experiences on offer, is it wine, is it a combination.

When we worked with the Eyre Peninsula there was no shortage of platforms that we could create a brand around, but we know that brands that wish to be a little of everything will eventually amount to a lot of nothing. We steered some deep and meaningful conversations and we landed on a very powerful proposition. Eyre Peninsula has seafood to kill for and it has a rugged pristine environment producing it. They could ‘own’ seafood and they could leverage the rich storytelling that their entrepreneurial and adventurous fishermen live and breathe everyday. But there was also a lot of other food related businesses that were not seafood centric. Grain and lamb producers, olive growers, wineries and
much more, all great examples of excellent produce, but not unique to many other regions in Australia. They did not provide a strong enough point of differentiation.

What was required was a regional brand positioning expression that claimed ownership of seafood and at the same time provided a positive halo effect over the other food and tourism enterprises of the region. The solution came in the form of the following positioning line.’Australia’s Seafood Frontier’. By making it Australia’s Seafood Frontier the Eyre Peninsula claimed ownership of seafood in Australia and at the same time the word Frontier conjured up a feeling of wild, untamed and pristine
- all very positive attributes for the other food and tourism businesses in the region.

We then created a brand book (see example below) that articulated the regional brand values that
those responsible for delivering an on-brand experience, day-in and day-out, would have to live.
The brand values, essence and supporting narrative become a critical rallying point for aligning all
key stakeholders.

If you get the chance visit the Eyre Peninsula and experience Australia’s Seafood Frontier first
hand, you will not only have an amazing time, but you will get to fully appreciate the power of creating
a regional brand around something you can own!

Peter Singline
Brand Scientist