The acquired: the rising stars
All of the agencies listed — big and small — have very focused (mostly digital) offerings. They generally cover a very important but narrow set of needs within a client organisation. They sell design, not necessarily creativity.

The acquirers: the new sugar daddies?
These companies are either service businesses (in the tech space) or product businesses in their own right (again in tech). Up until recently this type of trade sale has been the preserve of the large media groups like WPP, Omnicom and IPG. There’s no reason why a management consultancy couldn’t find a way to deliver design well, despite there being no compelling example of this. I believe they could do it at least as well as the media groups. It’s worth remembering that these businesses are already doing design — it’s just that it’s not visual. Business and organisational design require system thinking as well as many other skills that are not necessarily well established in the creative industry.

As I see it, the narrative for fit is covered by two scenarios; shared clients, in order to cross and up-sell (Accenture + Fjord and Ecover + Method) or an in-house talent or skills gap that needs to be plugged quickly and efficiently (such as the Facebook acqui-hire of Instagram and Yahoo’s purchase of Tumblr).

Consultancies vs Media groups: Turf wars
Perhaps this heralds an interesting jostle between the WPP’s and the Accenture’s of this world. On the one hand we have businesses that claim to be able to help their clients sell. On the other hand are businesses that claim to help clients deliver. These large corporations need growth, they have shareholders to please after all, and therefore we may increasingly see them encroach into each other’s traditional territories. The theatre for this might well be the digital / tech / data space. Hence the ‘advertising is dead, it’s all about big-data’ stories we’re bombarded with. So it seems there are both strategic and economic reasons at play — one would expect nothing less from good in-house corporate strategy and M&A teams.

However, you get what you measure. The question is what do these buyers measure? Can they create the right goals, culture, space, team, vision for great design? Are they even aiming for great design? Time will tell but I have a hunch…

The client: bit part player?
Often the client seems to be a bystander in these moves rather than being considered in how these new business models help them. Every client we meet wants to make their brand and products great.  My view is that clients need more help connecting up activities rather than replacing one with the other. Being good at product, service and tech doesn’t necessarily help you do great storytelling and certainly the reverse is true (as often evidenced by the nonsensical product and service ideas born out of agency brainstorms). That’s why we talk about connecting brands to people and people to brands. What clients really need is a partner that can come up with stories and execute them for people. Concepts need to be brilliant and focused on helping the business, but without equally brilliant execution, they’re meaningless.

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Hey all, here’s this weeks roundup of tech, business and industry news from across the Moving World!

Yahoo-blr

Marissa Meyer is continuing her series of bold strategic moves to save Yahoo – this time with the purchase of Tumblr for $1.1bn, promising not to ‘screw it up”. The move follows her acquisition of Summly for $30m (the cynical amongst us saw a PR exercise to connect with young teenagers by making a millionaire out of a peer), and should allow Yahoo to connect younger audiences who are much more active on Tumblr (Twitter and Tumblr have been attracting teens in droves). Yahoo compared the deal to Facebook & Instagram and Google & YouTube, but whilst Meyer appears to be capable in shifting a traditional company towards a more fast-paced, young audience, lets not forget AOL & Bebo, and News Corp & Myspace…. The sale nets Tumblr’s 26 year old founder $240m

Meyer has also been sending Flickr to the gym, relaunching the platform with a clean content-focused design, and 1TB of free photo storage. With rumoured iOS 7 integration, it looks like it might be worth checking out over Picasa or iCloud. No word on ads yet, though.

Xbox

Microsoft has announced the new Xbox, pushing firmly to take over the living room entirely, with a design that looks more like a set-top-box than a console, built in cloud streaming, Skype and the ability to control it using your phone. Microsoft’s vision is that you will simple say “Xbox on” to activate your entire living room entertainment system.

The announcement did raise a few issues with voice activation as a concept, with Xbox owners being booted from the events live stream as their Kinects responded every time the announcer said “Xbox”. Issues aside, the new Kinect has our innovation heads whirring, with a new found ability to detect heart rate and muscle movement.

3Delicious

We knew MB Advent, our 3D chocolate printer project was onto something, as we learn of the news that NASA has invested $125,000 in 3D printing food technology – starting with chocolate but moving onto pizza (!). On the theme of a moving world feast, thank you to Jed Carter from Kingston for sending through his Gastroglitch project through, which explored thoughts around the digital availability of food.

You may have missed

Jolla take on the big manufacturers with a new phone for their Sailfish OS.

Are oversharing parents (‘sharents’) harming their their childrens privacy? (Thanks to @iamghettosmurf).

Fords standardised approach to manufacturing is in the past, step aside for modularity (thanks @H3INL).

Rando (the anti-social network photo sharing app from our friends at ustwo) is sharing 200,000 photos a day.

US airways are now the most hated service provider, coming in under even ISPs.

No more Airbnb in New York? Judge rules Airbnb apartment counts as unlicensed hotel.

Tesla just raised $1bn, and is making Audi’s PR department go all silly…

Human stem cells have been cloned for the first time.

Teens are tired of Facebook “drama”, finding solace on Twitter.

Jan Wenner names 22 year old son head of rollingstone.com, citing that “young people today are a lot more savvy than people were 40, 50 years ago”.

NASA and Google team up to make a quantum computer.

And is Google’s strength the freedom to fail? Something is working; as market cap reaches $300bn.

LOLS

You say Jif, I say Gif, Jif, Gif… lets just call the whole thing off. Apparently we’ve been saying it wrong all along.

The post Moving World Wednesday 20130522 appeared first on Moving Brands - an independent, global creative company.

Moving Brands is creating an interactive 3-dimensional music video for breakthrough band Duologue’s new single Machine Stop. The soon to be released web experience allows fans to take control of the band’s performance. The reactive teaser site for the single has just launched.

We were approached by Duologue’s management company Everybody’s to support the band in creating something unique and interactive, supporting the lyrics of Machine Stop, which deal with confused vision and lack of sight. We looked to alternative ways in which the band’s performance could be captured and distributed, allowing their fans unprecedented control in a medium which is conventionally a one-sided discourse. The resulting concept was to capture the scene as moving 3D data, using Kinect cameras and purpose-built software and hardware.

We invented an end-to-end system that would support the challenge of filming with a Kinect: from camera to data, from data to movie file, from movie file to player in browser. This technically complex process required custom-made Kinect rigs, 3D printed clamps, and management and mastery of over 1.5billion lines of raw data. Check out Duologue’s behind the scenes video of the shoot, which shows MB’ers Tim and Guy explaining this ambitious process!

The final ‘music video’ can be accessed in Google Chrome from the 10th of June. The musicians and renowned choreographer and performer Jean Abreu appear in the film, embodying the lyrics as powerful, mechanistic, data silhouettes. By dragging the scene with their mouse, visitors will be able to influence the angles and depth at which they view the film, switch between views of the dancer and band, and trigger special effects.

Look out for the launch of the single, and the full web experience, on June the 10th.

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 Hello everyone, here’s this weeks roundup of business, tech and creative news from across the Moving World! Many thanks to all who submitted links!

Free-D printing
The great 3D printing debate has escalated over the past few weeks, mainly focused on the open access to gun printing. The worlds first fully working 3D printed gun was created, with blueprints already even available for download. (though later this was taken down by the US government). Pirate bay style download sites such as Makerbot and DEFCAD are now being warned against as potential dangerous sources where dangerous materials could be shared – threatening their ethos to a free and open internet where information is available to all.

On the other side of the coin, Disney is offering a new service where you can buy a 3D printed version of yourself as a Stormtrooper, though I’d personally go for the “cast yourself in Carbonite” option…

Driving sales
Electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors creates first profit in a decade of existence, outselling luxury competition from the likes of the Mercedes S-class, Audi A8 and BMW 7-series. They have achieved this partly through a unique business model which includes focus on online sales, which has sparked controversy from third party car dealerships, with North Carolina threatening to ban the car due to “unfair competition”. Regardless of this, the Tesla success is set to continue with international distribution starting soon.

NASA
NASA migrates the ISS operating system from Windows to Linux as they needed an operating system that was ‘stable and reliable’. The ISS was also the setting to an unexpected music video this week as Commander Chris Hadfield recorded Space Oddity whilst onboard. Hadfield has done more for space education and awareness than anyone since the Apollo missions, with an impressive use of social media from space. 

The film of the logo and the logo for the films
Creative Review are running a story on a topic that’s very close to our hearts, the film of the logo. The article charts the rise of studios realising their work must exist in a digital world, with video becoming an “important part in the show and tell experience”. We were glad to see this article, being a studio of strong believers of living identities – but feel this is an aspect that must be thought about from the start of the creative process – rather than a pure show and tell style device.

After the film of the logo… the logo for the films comes from Pentagram, as 21st Century Fox reveal new logo to represent the media and entertainment areas of the business.

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED
Friend and MB client, Savile Row designer Patrick Grant unstitches Iron Man’s design evolution

Bill Gates reveals he wishes he had Steve Job’s sense of design

Welcome to the programmable world – Link thanks to @iamghettosmurf

AT&T drops Facebook Home as service gathers much criticism

Google’s Reportedly Launching A Music-Streaming Spotify Killer At I/O This Week

Edits to Wikipedia from around the world, visualised in real time

Not Daft Punk’s new look but a Eidos sense enhancer – Link thanks to Emanuel Zahariades (@Zahariades)

“Sorry Windows 8 was a bit rubbish” – says Microsoft…

Samsung’s 5G mobile claims played down by experts – Link thanks to @iamghettosmurf

Incredibly detailed drawing found on cup in car dealership, then posted to the net – Link thanks to Louis Dyke (@dykeyboy)

LOL
Bringing a whole new meaning to the term ‘Criminal Tagging’ – Instagram food pics lead to thieves arrest

The post Moving World Wednesday 20130515 appeared first on Moving Brands - an independent, global creative company.

Aloha Adobe

This week saw Adobe hold their annual MAX conference and the announcement of a number of product updates and business changes. The big news is that CS6 has now been superseded by ‘CC’ (Creative Cloud). It will no longer be possible to purchase stand-alone versions of the software, instead applications will be pay-to-use on a subscription based service of around £38 ($49) a month. (Thanks to MBs Nico for the tip). The main tangible benefit for consumers is that software will now be continuously updated (rather than released in yearly iterations with expensive upgrade cost), whilst Adobe will hope to move some people from piracy to subscription (like Spotify have managed with music consumption). YouTube are also said to be considering a subscription model.

Adobe also surprised the press by announcing a secret hardware project (click for video). “Mighty” is a pressure-sensitive pen for tablets, with a companion tool called “Napoleon” that works as a tool for drawing lines and arcs – like a digital draftsman tool. It’s an interesting move, and should help push creativity on mobile devices much further that existing tools have allowed, especially now that tablet devices are starting to be as capable as traditional devices like the Cintiq. (Thanks Jon H).

Here’s what you may have missed:

Is London’s silicon roundabout becoming a victim of its own success?

British childrens unauthorised app spending may be £30.9m a month,

LinkedIn is 10 years old today, and has changed how we work.

A short essay on the future of 3D printing.

Technology journalist Paul Miller finished his year without internet.

Spoti-whoops – Spotify’s online DRM was easily bypassable, allowing tracks to be downloaded.

Hackday team invent VR guillotine with surprising results

Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg has 3D printed faces from DNA found on the street

LOLS

Shakespeare, Henry VIII and friends given a 21st century, hipster makeover.

The post Moving World Wednesday 20130508 appeared first on Moving Brands - an independent, global creative company.

MB’s Darren at Kingston University – image thanks to Marcus Leis Allion

As planning for degree shows builds, and student’s portfolios take shape, MB London is opening the studio doors to meet with multi-disciplined design students from the UK, Germany and Spain.

First up this month we’ll welcome the students from Wurzberg’s University of Applied Sciences, hochschule wuerzburg-schweinfurt (FH|W-S). We’ll then meet with the third year Kingston students, as part of our regular alumni programme of tours and Q&A sessions.

And then at the end of May, we’ll host advertising, film and media students and professors from Pamplona’s Universidad de Navarra. This relationship developed after MB’s Mat was a keynote speaker at the El Sol Awards in Bilbao last year.

We’d love your help in making these sessions as inspiring and helpful as possible. If you’re a current student, or have recently graduated – what advice do you wish you had received? What do you wish you’d known about the working world?

The post Foot in the door appeared first on Moving Brands - an independent, global creative company.

http://www.happybirthday.com

Its (only) twenty years and a day since the first public webpage was hosted by CERN, a move that made the protocol license free and able to be used by all. CERN have made the website available again, a simple text based site explaining the ‘internets’ aim “to give universal access to a large universe of documents.” Despite the annoying-to-type double slashes that even Berner-Lee himself admitted was a mistake, the concept seems to have taken off…

With the internet now fundamentally embedded in most businesses and methods of communication, certain groups are looking to start archiving it. The SF based Internet Archive are beginning to save all websites and create authentic, non-curated snapshots of internet history – “We’re not Google. We’re a library.”

Careless whispers

Following the ‘digital witch hunt’ which followed on Reddit after the Boston bombings, credibility in accordance to digital news stories has been the focus of much attention this week. Trying to counteract this problem is Twitter tool ‘Retwact’ – which ‘tries to contain the damage (and shame) that comes along with spreading information that later turns out to be untrue.’

The News Machine is a fantastic project from Colors magazine on this theme. It comments on how easy it is for news stories to lose factual correctness through the many filters it is subject to. Tweets are sent through a convoluted (and beautifully analogue) process where a video turns into a radio signal, which is broadcast, then recorded, then reinterpreted, then printed… a process easier to understand in video.

Galler-E

A few moving world art projects have caught our eye this week, including playable game paintings and an interesting exhibition showcasing interactive medals that sing, when accessed through a smartphone.

You may have missed

Apple bond sale attracts wide response as CEO looks to appease shareholders

African Bus Routes Redrawn Using Cell-Phone Data (Link thanks to Mat)

IBM have been manipulating individual atoms to create the world’s smallest movie

First pictures taken with Google Glass are posted online, aloing with a video explaining how interation works

iOS goes flat, flat, flat.

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen on What’s Next for the World?

Blackberry CEO get press by saying tablets will be dead in 5 years

Gesture control comes to Photoshop

How does what you make stack up to everything ever done before… (link thanks to Mat)

What design thinking can do for social impact? Click the link for the entire pdf interview (link thanks to @mariakaram)

Data science of the Facebook World

What is P Commerce?

Interesting thoughts on simultaneous cross-media storytelling and charting new show Defiance (link thanks to Mat)

Interesting insight into the digital subscriptions for The New York Times

Simple and sweet animation on the future of search from Guardian Technology

If you spot any great examples of brands connecting with people, companies embracing innovation, or hear of breaking news in the tech, business and creative sectors, tweet us using #MWW. We’ll include the game-changers in next week’s Moving World Wednesday roundup.

The post Moving World Wednesday 20130501 appeared first on Moving Brands - an independent, global creative company.

MBSF’s brilliant Creative Director Aki will be taking part in a panel discussion at the upcoming ‘Women as Game Changers’ event, hosted by the Pacific Asian American Women Bay Area Coalition (PAAWBAC).

The event will bring together some of the Bay Area’s most influential politicians and business leaders, including keynote speaker U.S Senator Mazie Hirono and co-chairs Mayor Edwin Lee and First Lady Anita Lee.

The event takes place on Sunday 19th May, and tickets are available until the 3rd May on the PAAWBAC site.

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Hey all! Here’s this weeks roundup of startup news, internet going ons and links from across the Moving World

Startup news

The world of startups is receiving a lot of attention in today’s uncertain economy. MB outlines our work in helping startups to standout.

In New York there are plans to create campuses to nurture the startup community and in Australia Google is predicting the start of a tech boom.

The idea of transport sharing is spurring on a new generation of service tech, providing solutions to vehicle overpopulation, urban loneliness and even the future of getting around.

In health care, continuing innovation is changing the way we look at being a patient, operating healthcare as a business and building new ventures. And, as Twitter shuts down the mircopayment app Flattr there are far more aggressive alternatives ready to claim the twitter payment space: The orginal, Chirpy, turning tweets into transactions and the new Get this, linking purchasable items to current tv shows.

The limits of social crowdsourcing

A third of americans had heard about the boston bombings within 30 minutes, with the usual social media platforms delivering content first, and news outlets then taking that content to broadcast. As the news became saturated, online communities started to order pizzas for rescue workers and Twitter users started to matchmake people in need of transport.

However, not all technology was useful, facial recognition proved unhelpful, and thousands of people became armchair detectives, using online police scanners and photos, attempting to find the suspects through crowdsourcing. Ultimately this lead to the misidentification of innocent people, including a missing student whose family were bombarded by the media and subjected to abuse from the ensuing witchhunt. Whilst the internet and social platforms can, and did do a lot of good, it’s example of how an overconfident, self confirming internet ‘hive mind’ and an increasingly time-pressured media can become unproductive and accidentally cause harm to innocent people. 

█████ ███ ███████

Censorship of the web is becoming an increasingly reported issue, with many worrying about increasing control in time to come, whilst China officiates tighter internet controls and a survey from Wiggin how legal our online activity actually is. Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt is becoming increasingly vocal on the subject.

You may have missed:

MIT list their 10 breakthrough technologies for 2013

The New York Times lifts paywall on some content to increase readership

Some toddlers are requiring therapy for iPad addiction

Uniqlo is not a fashion company, but a technology one, it says.

Apple have unexpectedly had a fall in profits, twinned with a fall in share price

Twitter have released #Music, to help users discover new artists.

Schrödinger’s computer – What would life be like without the PC

The BBC are trialling a new interactive news format with video, infographics and external referencing

Sometimes people DO want to hear about the brand.

Google buys its own Summly, acquiring Wavii for £30m

Testing your motor-neurone skills to guess your age – http://kgajos.eecs.harvard.edu/ag/

LOLS

Go back to the future with these websites stuck in time

The post Moving World Wednesday 20130424 appeared first on Moving Brands - an independent, global creative company.

Ness 2.0 from Ness on Vimeo.

Ness 2.0 launched today in the iTunes store. Their biggest update yet, the redesigned interface instantly recommends restaurants based on the kinds of places you like, what you’re in the mood for, and where you are.

We’ve worked with Ness since 2010, in a partnership that resulted in a total rebrand, including naming, identity, messaging, web design and app store assets. With the launch of 2.0, we worked with founder Corey Rees and the team on the above launch film, showing in 60 seconds how simply and beautifully the app works (trust us, we’d need a lot more than 60 seconds to explain the tech behind it). The app was a Best of the App Store 2012 winner, and has over 4,000,000 ratings. Currently only available in the States, it’s left a studio of jealous MB Londoner’s sharing tales of disappointing lunchtime decisions.

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