King Fahd's Fountain - projection onto spray, nice!

An place few non-muslims visit is Jeddah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. With visas reserved for business trips only it’s someway off  the tourist path. So on returning from a recent trip to the Cityscape Expo, by invitation of our design partners Jeddah based, Blueprint Communciations – one feels that a unusual and rare cultural experience has been had.

True to our British traditions, no blog entry would be complete without an observation on the weather – put simply, it’s extremely hot! (and in Jeddah, humid due to coastal location). With the mercury topping out at about 39c during the stay its easy to see why everything is air conditioned and you simply don’t walk – and we were lucky – Riyadh was experiencing 46c…

The Old Town - Al Balad

One highlight (aside from the expo) was a fascinating evening trip into the old city  – Al Balad – to have dig around in the  the old market. As Blueprint CEO Rakan Tarabzoni explained to me the old buildings (some up to of a couple of centuries old) are suffering from a lack of preservation. There’s a plan to regenerate the area, so the hope is that alongside the new, the old will be preserved and restored as a cultural and historical marker.

Having teamed up with Jeddah’s principle property marketing agency, we spent two productive days at the property expo introducing our wayfinding and signage design services to end clients, architects and engineers. We’ll be looking forward to returning to progress discussions on a number of projects under Rakan’s expert guidance.

The Kingdom’s property market, whilst not unaffected by the global shenannigans, is nevertheless still in relatively good shape. An new mortgage system will be introduced, possibly later in the year, which will open up the residential housing market to help facilitate the demand that currently exists for about 2 milion new homes. Projected spend will be about $180billion by 2015 in order to build enough homes and, one assumes, the associated infrastructure to meet this demand. No surprise, therefore, that there are some significant projects in various stages of the development pipeline.

For South Korean design studio Zero Per Zero’s first exhibition in the UK, Kemistry Gallery presents new versions of their well-known City Railway System series, including LED display panels, hand-drawn maps, paintings, and acrylic pieces.

A strong graphical style is applied across all solutions providing an international language that can be transferred from city to city. Although similar in style, each map is unique taking inspiration from well-known characteristics of the city. My personal favourite was Seoul, the curved lines are accentuated to represent Tae-Geuk mark of the national flag of Korea, which is a refreshing change to the all too familiar linear systems we are used to. A well thought out and beautifully executed series of work.

www.zeroperzero.com

Currently displaying at the Parfitt Gallery, Croydon, friend and ex-tutor, Craig Burston and composer, Joe Evans have collaborated to create an audio-visual installation. Burston’s visual triptych offers a record of lost or discarded gloves via photographs taken with ubiquitous camera phone, unspoken verbal textural descriptions and an informational colour field, in reference to the dominant colours with each photograph. Positioned so that it is impossible to view all three depictions at once, the viewer is asked to engage with the interdependent, calling at once upon immediate thoughts, memories and unspoken descriptions. Darren.

www.parfittgallery.croydon.ac.uk

Name generation could hardly be more important than when it’s going to be for life as anyone called Richard Head might tell you. Get it right and, well your sorted – get it wrong and you may find the playgound not such a fun environment. And so it was that Air was commissioned to carry out a name generation programme for newborn Baby x.

Background
Born on 10.3.2010, weighing 7.75lbs Baby x needed a name to carry it through his three score years and ten. As a boy it was clear than a masculine name would be preferable. His USP seemed to be about peer to peer communication with a particularly loud patch experienced typically between 9pm and midnight. So any soft gentle names wouldn’t sit well. Holding company, Tash&Al have committed to invest heavily in food and nappies for Baby X so his future looks secure for the time being. Other Tash&Al sub-brands Tom and Oliver occupy their own clearly defined brand space so clear positioning would be needed – yet he should still be recognisable as having come from the same family.

Solution
Air tested many names alongside the client body. One of the favorites Al Jr III was considered a front runner for some time. However, when tested in a consultation meeting with the major family shareholders was met with the ‘over my dead body’ response. True to form Air set about the task using tried and tested multi-lingual and cultural name generation techniques. Profiling workshops with client group and wider organisation stakeholders were conducted and then a quantitative study was carried out on the shortlist of names with a select sample of client body organisation lynchpins.

Result
The parent organisation were thrilled with the final recommendation of Edward – with the future abbreviation of Eddie considered to be likely. The oportunities for further evolution were clear with Ed, Ned, Ted all seen as potential brand refresh exercises. The name was seen to support Baby X’s values of Hungry, Loud, Intelligent, Creative, Athletic and Charming, (we’ll we can all hope). The name clearly differentiates Baby x from the fraternal sub-brands, yet the retention of the parent organisations surname ensures all the brand equity benefits of an endorsed nomenclature system. The end result is that this name helps to capture a distinct market space which will allow Eddie to asset strip the parent organisation slowly  over time, in an effective and efficient manner.

It was also the name the mother came up with – so that worked well!

Once again Air attended MIPIM, the global property expo in Cannes, France. For those that met members of the Air team – thanks for your time and we look forward to continuing those conversations.

The exhibition was again way down on numbers from the heights experienced in 2006/7, but those folk in attendance are working hard to keep the development wheels turning, in what has been an extraordinarily difficult year of trading. However, there are signs of projects starting to move and money flowing back into the beleaguered sector.

It’s clear that we are not alone in being optimistic about the near to mid term future and it’s also clear that when the chips are down we continue to see that it pays to be highly specialised in your field of work.

See you at MAPIC…

Ora theme park

We’re delighted to have been appointed to design the wayfinding signing and environmental graphics for Ora, an exiting new mixed-use development in Istanbul comprising of hotels, theme park, 6,500 seat arena, conference facilities and 60,000 sqm designer outlet centre. Scheduled to open Autumn 2010.

Spectacular car chases, an intense hostage crisis, wild animals rampaging through the city and even more” describe Logorama, a 16-minute animated short made up of more than 2,500 logos and mascots which took creators a year and a half to collect. Written and directed by H5 (François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain), Logorama recently won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.

http://vimeo.com/10149605

Jonny recently celebrated 10 years at Air. Congratulations Jonny, here’s to another 10!

Bird of prey - Doha Airport

So there I was at the departure gate at Doha Airport and sitting next to me was this gentleman with a rather magnificent Falcon sitting in his lap (Perrigrene?). Dodgy photo as for obvious reasons I didn’t want to upset him or his precious cargo.

Turns out this is not uncommon during falconry season. Fly about the region and your immediate companion may not be a person but a proud bird of prey. Falconry in the Gulf is big business, and during the hunting season the birds of prey are treated with great care. Not surprisingly, as the best birds can cost thousands of dollars.

Wouldn’t see that on the London Tube!