A New Creative Direction

Technology is a glittering lure, but there’s the rare occasion when the public can be engaged beyond flash – if they have a sentimental bond with the product. These aren’t my words, they came from the pen of Matthew Weiner and the mouth of Don Draper (John Hamm), the Creative Director’s Creative Director and the star of AMC’s Mad Men.

Don is delivering his thoughts in a pitch to Kodak for their new slide carousel and it brings tears to my eyes every time I watch. On first viewing, I felt a sense of nostalgia for the precious moments with my children growing up. More recently, my thoughts have turned to the time I failed to spend with Olivia and Hattie, having left them in their formative years. I’ve been a poor father, but I’m working so very hard to change that.

It may sound contrived to say you must have something and lose it to truly appreciate it, from family and friends to money to freedom (a reality we’re all facing during the current global pandemic) – even job titles. I can’t help but think this isn’t simply part of our ‘fail fast’ startup mentality. It has always been true.

My somewhat nostalgic view of family also extends to the profession I love – design. This might seem at odds with my role as a ‘Futuroligist’ and all the technological interaction this brings, but my boundary-pushing has always had an extraordinary depth of respect for where origins lie.

My background combines Design, Technology and Innovation and all three should interlink to form the backbone of a contemporary Creative Director. However, Design should still be the primary focus, leading a team to creative excellence through an understanding of the tools at our disposal and the talented individuals within our sphere of influence.

We strive for future missions to Mars and beyond, fuelled by knowledge gleaned from historic human efforts to reach the surface of the moon. We design and manufacture beautiful cars, driven by decades of data taken from safety, handling and ergonomic experience. Steve Jobs gave us the future in the palms of our hands, not because he asked what people wanted but because he knew what they didn’t have. He had a greater understanding of his audience than they did of themselves and this came from observing previous human behaviour and applying this to the future – the present happened as a result.

How does this relate to Don Draper and the existence of the modern Creative Director? Last week, I took an exciting leap of faith and joined an incredible creative technology agency called Beep!, based in Poole, UK and Santa Clara, US. I had the pick of creative titles but elected to once again become a Creative Director – the Creative Director.

When I first watched the Mad Men Kodak pitch, Don became the creative hero I didn’t know I was looking for. That moment provided the approval I didn’t know I needed. It gave substance to four years of design education and decades building a professional portfolio.

To appreciate its impact, here’s the full script and the scene that breathes life into Matthew Weiner’s words:

“Technology is a glittering lure, but there’s the rare occasion when the public can be engaged beyond flash – if they have a sentimental bond with the product.”
“The most important thing in advertising is ‘NEW’. It creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion”
“There is also a deeper bond with the product… nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent”
“In Greek, nostalgia literally means pain from an old wound. It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone.”
“This device isn’t a space ship… it’s a time machine”
“It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called ‘The Wheel’, it’s called ‘The Carousel’. It lets us travel the way a child travels. Round and around and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.”

I may have something in my eye…

Artificial Intelligence, reality TV creatives and Account Execs won’t replace Designers – the world just needs to know it. The role of a Creative Director isn’t simply to say “make it bigger, make it red and move it to the left a bit”, it is to motivate, inspire and champion the very existence of design. Designers need to feel important – because they are. They also need to feel relevant and the popular opinion that “everyone’s a designer” is meaningless if there’s no distinction between a good one and a bad one.

My role as President Elect of the Chartered Society of Designers provides me with an enviable overview and understanding of the profession. It is in rude health as far as skills are concerned, but COVID has hit the job market for active design recruitment and many freelancers are also suffering hardship, slipping through the cracks without Government support.

Good news is out there. Some creative businesses are flourishing AND employing (Beep! is doing both) but this message is easily swamped by the sheer volume of negative media output. It’s more important than ever to keep telling the world about success wherever and whenever it happens.

Those of us that consider ourselves designers and technologists tell a great story about “designing the future” or “shaping the now”, but like Kodak in Don Draper’s pitch, we find ourselves creating products that capture a moment, platforms that share them or channels that allow us to comment on content. Their power lies in the very same nostalgia Don referenced.

The past, present and future all intertwine and so do our roles as creative leaders.

This is why I’m championing a direct approach that streamlines the complex and makes Creative Direction great again. Like the things we feel we’ve lost or even lost touch with, it is important to appreciate simplicity in order to cut through the white noise of contemporary life.

We’ve all had our fill of Ninjas, Gurus and Experts. And that once-simple org chart now features more layers than Photoshop. When you hit the dizzying heights of creative leadership, you discover quite a crowd at the summit. These are all existing job titles:

– Design Director

– Art Director

– Associate Creative Director

– Creative Director

– Senior Creative Director

– Group Creative Director

– Head of Design

– Executive Creative Director

– Global Executive Creative Director

– Chief Creative Officer

And I’ve probably missed a few!!

2020 may seem like the longest year on record, but more than ever… every second counts. Don Draper’s time machine offered a glimpse into what many people crave – the ability to design the future by combining an appreciation of the past and an effective grasp on the present.

The Creative Director is dead. Long live the Creative Director!

The Digital Design Imperative

When President John F Kennedy so famously uttered the words “ask not what the design industry can do for you, ask what you can do for the design industry”, how could he have known they would be even more relevant today. Or was that Neville Brody?

I’ve always been of the opinion that if bad Photoshopping and typography doesn’t make your blood boil then you shouldn’t be a designer. If you can sit on the tube opposite an ad featuring poorly-kerned letters or view a Frankenstein comp of a ‘lead character when young’ movie prop photo and still not twitch, you are creatively dead inside.

Slink away now if you’re unmoved by either example, or hang around and get motivated.

The role of designer has changed beyond all recognition since leaving college (it’s moved fast, I’m not THAT old). What’s graphic design then? Well it used to be relatively easy to define when ‘digital’ wasn’t in play. Brand design, brochures, editorial layouts, posters, flyers and packaging for starters.

That list still exists but most brochures are now interactive, from PDF’s to iBooks with websites either replicating or delivering the same. Great editorial layouts are still essential within tablet magazines and ebooks as the eye is arrested by the skilful juxtaposition of stunning images and intelligent typography. Posters work on various levels, from the 48-sheet variety now on many digital Jumbotrons and underground screens, to our ever-increasing screen sizes offering the scale previously reserved for printed posters. Flyers (unless from the local pizza deliver business) are emails, Facebook posts or Tweets. We’re a long way from losing packaging from our high streets and out of town stores, but the online marketplace offers many more virtually packaged download opportunities.

So, who cares? Things change, technology advances and forces us to move with it. That’s one take, leading to the sloppy Photoshop, branding and layouts that make me want to punch inanimate objects (or designers). This attitude can be brought on by creatives who don’t live and breathe design and clients who believe our computers do all the work for us.

Snap out of it and appreciate the incredible opportunities to not only design great visual experiences, but now bring them to life as incredible user experiences. The graphic design label got scrapped, welcome to the wonderful new world of design where the brief to create postage stamps became the task to build iconic icons or miniaturised album covers and book jackets, where the fight to be seen and remembered provides the ultimate pixel-pushing challenge.

Wearable technology and Smart TV will provide your new playgrounds so start thinking about future opportunities to make a design difference.

Knock down the mental barriers and apply great design thinking to everything you do. Don’t assign different standards to different work or clients – we live in a world where a local butcher can have as much global visibility as Wallmart. The world’s eyes are on your kerning, your cut-outs and your colour palette.

Originally published in Computer Arts magazine in 2013. Hasn't aged a bit!

VR48: Addressing VR’s Identity Crisis

You wait a whole year for a Virtual Reality endurance attempt, then three come along at once.

Derek Westerman spent 25 hours in a virtual room drawing with Tilt Brush, a 3D creative tool designed to allow the user to build VR sculptures. Result: He set a Guinness World Record, babbled incoherently and threw up in a bucket.

Next, Alejandro “AJ” Fragoso and Alex Christison spent 50 hours sat on a sofa, eating snacks and drinking Red Bull watching TV and movies on Oculus Rift headsets. Result: They too grabbed a record, suffered with indigestion and grew beards.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Guinness World Records and I have a long and happy association with them. However, Virtual Reality is saddled with an image problem, one of nauseating game-play and fellas mostly wasting their time. Sadly, these types of endurance records reinforce it.

If I sound less than impressed with these other attempts, it’s because I am. I spent 24 hours in VR last year (but that’s another story) and this year, as much as I wanted to tackle the official 48 hour VR record, GWR insisted we stay awake for the entire two day period and this ironically wasn’t realistic.

I joined forces with Sarah Jones, a senior media academic and 360º storyteller, to ‘live’ in Virtual Reality. This included eating, sleeping, running, fighting, driving, wing-walking, even getting a tattoo! Everything we tackled, we did so for a reason, not just because we could but to show the outside world that VR has a place in our lives and is there to complement it, rather than replace it.

We harvested meaningful data, relayed anecdotal feedback throughout our experience and 5 minutes per hour were reserved for dashes to the bathroom and 360º video diaries – not at the same time I hasten to add.

Amongst the more conventional VR experiences such as problem-solving, training, painting and gaming, we scheduled three extreme physical activities. Our first required us to drive go-karts around a purpose-built track, using the through-camera on a Samsung Gear VR to give us a video view of the surroundings. An interesting challenge when the vibration of the vehicle causes the camera feed to shake and blur, but a great illustration of driving on instinct and highlighting some genuinely useful user-cases for Augmented Reality headsets.

Race info, ghost competitors and screen entertainment for autonomous vehicles will all follow as a direct result of this kind of real-world testing.

Our second physical challenge required less movement but greater immersion. I was ready for my tattoo…

I haven't been under an inked needle before so this was my first taste of body art. I have to admit to being a less than enthusiastic volunteer but we were determined to discover if VR could successfully mitigate pain. The irritation needed to be sustained and relatively intense, so leg-waxing or nipple-piercing were out!

I chose Gunjack to keep my mind off the job in hand (or arm). This 3D space adventure requires a pretty low skill level, but quick reflexes and prolonged concentration.

I began the process with my headset up, allowing me an unimpeded view of my arm as the needle struck home – my baseline pain levels were set. If I were to describe this raw tattooing pain as a sustained maximum of 10, I felt the VR content and the subsequent cocktail of endorphins and adrenaline genuinely dropped the irritation to a 6 or 7. That result alone would have satisfied us but we were also wearing Apple Watches throughout VR48 to monitor heart rates. Mine peaked at 103BPM in the tattoo studio with a clear view of the procedure, dropping to 74BPM under immersion. That’s anecdotal feedback supported by real science.

Sarah and I returned some uniquely different results over the course of the two days and nowhere was that more evident than in our ultimate challenge – the wing walking finale.

Still wearing our VR headsets, we arrived at RFC Rendcomb Aerodrome at 10am, fresh from the journey from Coventry University to Cirencester in the back of a MINI Convertible – acclimatising ourselves to the freezing temperatures and buffeting we’d have to endure at 150mph when strapped to the top wing of a 75 year old aircraft.

With all our preparation, our additional webbing, straps and a bespoke balaclava weren’t enough to satisfy the experienced pilot or the Breitling Aerobatic team – we were told to hold onto the Gear VR headset with both hands for the entire flight. There would be no waving to the crowd mid loop.

We hoped to gain valuable insight into the effects of velocity and wind resistance on VR viewing. Could reality enhance the virtual experience and vice versa? To view this, we would again be seeing the real world through the Samsung headset’s built-in camera. Or would we?

I mentioned different experiences and mine took a turn for the worse when strapped to the wing, preparing to taxi to the far end of the airfield. “Please remove your phone and update the software”. Seriously? My Galaxy Note 4 had chosen this very moment to force a software update on me. I wasn’t asked politely if I would like to – just told it would happen or my phone was dead. With no adequate connection in the middle of a field, I was faced with a useless piece of technology.

Not willing to submit to the failings of the Internet of Things, I removed the phone and squinted through the headset lenses for the duration of the flight. Not all was lost, as I actually experienced this through the eyes of a partially-sighted individual. Chalk one up for the power of empathy, and a huge black mark for Samsung.

Sarah had no such problems as the team set up a wireless hot spot, updated the software and sent her off to view the entire flight as planned – with the valuable research recorded.

One of the surprise results of VR48 was our time spent in Knockout League, a boxing simulator for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Your opponent is a larger-than-life cartoon character but the gameplay feels every bit as real as time spent in the ring with an actual heavyweight. We found ourselves ducking and diving, with adrenaline levels and heart rates increasing as our (virtual) vision blurred from a flurry of head-shots.

If ever there was a case against stereotypical VR couch potatoes, virtual boxing was it. That and the go-karting. And the tattoo. And the wing walk.

So what were the side-effects? For an endurance attempt such as this, it can be difficult to differentiate between regular eyestrain and fatigue and that relating to being in a virtual environment. Sarah’s forehead was sore and her cheeks were temporarily marked. The bridge of my nose was bruised and my close-up vision is still slightly more blurred than before the event.

Other than that, we appear to be psychologically unaffected – even with our VR48 content planning requiring us to fall asleep and wake up in VR!

This medical research may come as a surprise to the public, brands and hardware multinationals alike as I’m pretty sure they all thought we’d be lucky to survive unscathed.

We received no support from any headset or mobile manufacturers as they believed we contravened all their health and safety advice, but these side effects are never talked about at the many global industry events and certainly not in the consumer press.

I hope we've gone some way to change the current perception of VR and to highlight its potential, rather than its shortcomings.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Huffington Post

Making Music at WWDC

If you’re looking for a comprehensive summary of everything covered in today’s WWDC keynote, move along now, there’s nothing to see here. If however you’re after a look behind the scenes of the Moscone memorandum and its impact on developers, brands and consumers over the next 12 months, you’re in the right place.

My day began at 3:15am when my alarm jolted me rudely into consciousness. As my jet-lagged brain took in the surroundings of my shabby-chic San Francisco hotel room, I checked the charge levels of my mobile devices. It was going to be a long day.

Armed with my 15” MacBook Pro, 11” MacBook Air, iPad Mini, iPhone 6, 42mm Apple Watch and a bag full of battery chargers, I made the ten minute cold, dark and lonely cab ride to the Moscone Centre. It was keynote day and to ensure a decent seat I had to begin my queuing ‘experience’ at 4am.

I’m no stranger to the iQueue. In 2010 I stood outside the 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York waiting a mere 12 hours for the launch of the iPad. We were 6th and 7th in line, behind representatives of the four corners of the world… and a guy in a deckchair that waits in ALL the lines. He’s not a developer so isn’t at WWDC.

You’d think 4am would be early enough, right? Not a chance. I began writing this crouched on the floor round the back of the Moscone West Convention Centre, next to the bins. This international globe-trotting ain’t as glamorous as you think. Assuming you think it’s glamorous of course.

To cut a long and rather tedious story short, the Moscone Center doors opened at 7am and the iQueue was directed like a shuffling chain-gang to the inner hall where our next 3 hour wait began.

Through a combination of running, elbowing and misdirection I found a seat in the front row of the ‘non-VIP’ enclosure with a good view of Tim Cook’s kick-off. He took to the stage to deliver the usual stats about global eyeballs and fingertips on iOS and OS X and positive words about Apple Watch.

Others will have summarised word-for-word the minutia of the keynote. As mentioned, I don't intend to do this so here are my top 5 announcements.

Watch Kit 2.0

Apple set the standard for Apple Watch apps early on. We were restricted to a limited feature set, using official Watch Kit designated GUI (Graphical User Interface) and restricted access to the sensors on the watch itself. We made the most of this with our Porsche Car Connect app, launched on Day 1. You can read more about that [here].

This tight control wasn’t out of character for Apple (the original iPhone didn’t even have an App Store at launch) and the idea was to keep the focus firmly on the hardware and its OS, rather than take the Android Wear approach and encourage a free for all.

At WWDC, the development door has been pushed open a little and we now have access to sensors and buttons not previously in our armoury, making the watch a much more interesting proposition when pushing creative barriers, if not breaking them all down just yet.

Consumers will appreciate the new photo watch faces and customisable content but I’m still waiting for full watch faces to make the device truly personal or an easy win for brands.

Apple Music

Hands up if you love iTunes… anyone? Bueller? Yep, it’s been a necessary evil since day one. Poor search (that still applies to the App Store and iBooks Store), cranky UI and little or no encouragement to actually access all your music, movies and books.

Apple wants all that to change with the introduction of Apple Music and Beats1. With the focus firmly on streamed music and playlists or shows curated by humans rather than algorithms, Apple have proved they are probably the only organisation capable of combining all the essential content, features and platforms to deliver an end-to-end music service.

That doesn’t mean everything they offer from the start will be the best but by placing it all in one place, they certainly make it easier. The music labels should also be happy with Apple Music as it offers them a higher profile for both new and established artists and brings music, video and more to an audience likely to pay for both a streaming service and downloadable tracks.

So, farewell to cranky old iTunes on our desktops? No, I'm afraid we'll have to suffer that for a while longer, until the new UI and user experience filters down from Apple Music. It's a shame this isn't a replacement, just an improvement to music discovery, not its storage once purchased.

Apple Music is available soon in the US, UK and Australia and on Android by the end of the year. The first three months access will be free then $9.99 a month. I think the Tide may have just gone out for Jay Z…

Apple News

It will probably be referred to as ‘News’ but whatever it’s called, it looks like a potential Flipboard killer. Having worked with publishers, Apple revealed its digital magazine platform, providing a customisable feed with live interactive content.

The proof will be in the simplicity of integration with online content and how this will be monetised when News looks as good as a regular digital magazine. Publishers or bloggers can now sign up to use ‘News Publisher’ and get their hands on the tools required. Watch this space…

Car Play

Greater integration and wireless connectivity and now Apple Music. All cars should offer both iOS and Android integration as standard in the next few years, adding functionality both in and out of the car so we’re ticking boxes here.

Clearly our Porsche Car Connect app is the perfect example of this but the challenge remains for designers, developers and marketers to make the brand experience as seamless as possible with both technical, lifestyle and service information living in digital harmony within the app ecosystem.

Apple TV 2.0

Only joking, it didn’t make an appearance because Apple hadn’t joined all the dots – hardware, software (including apps) and the big one… content. The content is there, it’s just the issues that remain, such as localisation, advertising and subscription models.

This hasn’t been an easy business for Apple as the direct download and rental models are far less complicated than streaming. Whilst Apple has been trying to own the end-to-end experience, the market has moved on around them with major players such as NetFlix and Amazon making substantial gains. Apple TV is still poised to make the next step very soon…

The two main headlines this year were Apple Watch OS2 and Apple Music. The rest provided interesting updates but nothing to change the world, unless you aim to use these tools to do it yourself.

WWDC is an Apple Event so naturally we all have iPhones and MacBooks of one shape or size. I’m comfortable with this as it’s the right (and in our collective opinion) the best kit for the job. I’m less at ease with the fact we all have Apple Watches. I’ve always worn a watch 1. to tell the time and 2. because I actually like wearing one - as a personal statement. It’s not very personal when everyone has the same thing.

I’ve ordered my personalised strap from Casetify to alleviate some design anxiety but I’m still not happy to run with the crowd. I’ll feature that strap later this week in my new Dawn of The DumbWatch article, alongside the Olio Model One and metal Cogito Classic.

I’m also surrounded by developers wearing the official WWDC15 fleece. I have mine on under a jacket as it feels a little like a school uniform. That and it was freezing next to the bins!