Karacters Klog

We are very fortunate to have an office in a centralized location. There are often interesting things around town that are within close proximity of us. With the weather being absolutely perfect, our team took the opportunity for two inspiring excursions in the past week.

Our first trip was a visit to the downtown Costco. Yeah, you read it right, it was Costco. The big warehouse retailer is known for their overwhelming variety of merchandise. Everything is stacked in an orderly fashion yet without any proper shelving system. Their consumers also shop with a different mindset. With few of our clients’ products are sold at Costco, we’ve each made visits there to research before but never as team. This trip sparkled some insightful branding hierarchy discussions and observations on designs that avoid drowning in a sea of merchandises. Definitely lots of pointers to keep in mind for our upcoming packaging projects.

The day after we visited the Douglas Coupland x Roots pop-up store in Gastown. The short-term rental space showcased not only the merchandises of their collaboratively-themed “Canada Goes Electric” but also some of the artist’s works for the project.

From the Vancouver Sun:

The store itself is worth a visit. It’s in a century-old brick building with a high ceiling, a 2,000 sq. ft. space that seems more like an art gallery than a retail outlet. Which was the idea.

“It’s part of the aethetic of the pop-up,” said Coupland. “You walk in and you’re not really sure if it’s a gallery or retail. How would you conflate those two words together…gallery plus retail equals greallery.”

Or gretail.

Read more: http://tinyurl.com/2ddxacw

Pop-up stores have become a new phenomenon. Other than creating buzz, it’s an opportunity for a brand to interact with the consumers on the street level. Method’s pop-up store in New York is another great example.

photo: vancouver sun

We occasionally take the opportunity to shamelessly promote the creative people we collaborate with, especially when they do good things as well as producing good work.

Chris Haughton is one of those people. An illustrator originally from Ireland, he relocated to London a few years ago, but ended up in Nepal which is where he is for now. He recently wrote and illustrated a children’s book, and regularly contributes illustrations to The Guardian newspaper in the UK.

As well as his illustrations, one of the things that sets Chris apart is his commitment to the Fair Trade movement, which has partly manifested itself through his extensive work for People Tree; this is what got him into in Time Magazine’s DESIGN 100 list a couple of years ago. (Click here to find out more about Fair Trade.)

We can’t wait to show you the work we collaborated on – keep checking back here. Keep scrolling for some examples of Chris’ previous work, or visit vegetablefriedrice.com

Photo: Magnum Photographers

As we all get ready for a very exciting final, check out the global reach of football in these great shots by Magnum Photographers.

While most of the world conveys their love of the football (I’m not English but I sit next to two, so I better not call it “soccer”) through cheering and the occasional cursing, seventeen internationally acclaimed artists expressed theirs in a very different way. The Official Art Poster project of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, little known to many football fans, gathers six South African and eleven international artists to create iconic images of ‘the beautiful game’. The results are works of art that are diversified in style and expression.

These are only a select few. The complete collection of Art Posters and information of each artist can be viewed here. Below are a couple honourable mentions from the first ever FIFA World Cup Official Art Poster project from the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

You can’t escape the fact that the World Cup is on at the moment (note: this Klogger is English, and therefore refusing to call it soccer). Having seen the shirts of the 32 national teams on display, we think that in the typography competition there is a clear winner. The Netherlands’ numbers are by far the best. It remains to be seen whether that helps them go all the way in South Africa.

The typeface has been recreated by someone clearly very enthusiastic about shirts past and present; see below (more at http://www.switchimageproject.com/).

Picture: Ryu Voelkel

Now on its ninth edition, The Cheaper Show has become a firm fixture on the Vancouver calendar. With its popularity growing massively each year, the show stepped up a gear this time around and expanded into a new(ish) venue for Saturday’s spectacular.

The show has a straightforward concept; two hundred artists are selected from submissions to show two pieces of work each, at a flat price of $200 each. The show is open for one night only, from 6pm to midnight. It seemed to be a pretty successful night, with what seemed like half the city passing through the doors (and Tweeting about it). Though the standard of work is varied, it opens up the opportunity to own original art to a lot more people than usual and plenty were taking advantage.

Now using a larger area in the old Storyeum building (now the W2 Storyeum), the show exploited the huge Gastown space to full effect eliminating, to some extent, the massive line-ups of the past, and installing a forty foot long temporary bar to ensure the crowds were well-oiled all evening. Even actor Jack Black turned up to absorb the atmosphere for a while.

When this Klogger left the venue at closing time, not all the art had sold (around 40 or so pieces remained). Three after-parties around the city were also taking care of any revelers wanting to continue their evenings (one of which, featured DDB favourite, Babe Rainbow).

The whole thing reminds me of past visits to the London Affordable Art Fair, founded at the end of the 90s. That one has since expanded into more than one show a year in London and spread its wings to appear in nine other cities around the world. Who’s to say The Cheaper Show couldn’t follow suit?

We were once again in attendance at the latest Pecha Kucha Night in Vancouver yesterday. Our local edition of the global event goes from strength to strength with each event selling out in advance, and yesterday was no exception. Last night saw it move to an even larger venue – city icon, the Queen Elizabeth Theatre – to accommodate the 2,000+ people who’d come to see a special edition PKN on the subject of sustainability.

Pecha Kucha Vancouver: Special Edition is ‘Walk the Talk, Green Your City’ in partnership with the City of Vancouver and UBC for Vancouver’s ‘Greenest City 2020 Conversation’.

It will feature 14 local instigators that are on stage with 20 slides x 20 seconds to deliver inspiration and insight on the broad topic of sustainability and Vancouver’s ambition to be the greenest city by 2020.

As usual, the thirteen speakers provided a mind-numbing amount of inspiration and more highlights than we could possibly cover in one post. Head over to the site to see the list of speakers and their presentations.

There is much excitement here at Karacters on the eve of the 2010 FIFA world cup. Dylan is hastily putting together a pool with some sketchy rules that no one seems to understand. And two Brits are still claiming it’s Football not Soccer and preparing to explain the rules of the game (guess the Canadians do that each year the Stanley Cup starts up).

On a more design related note, I couldn’t resist getting one of the Adidas JABULANI official match balls. Thermally moulded 3D panels and aero groves make this the most tech advanced and accurate ball to date. The 11 colours represent the 11 players on each team, the 11 official languages of South Africa and the 11 South African communities. But check out the Telstar, the first world cup ball Adidas produced for Mexico in 1970. Classic.

Let the footy tourney begin.

Tuesday night saw our second appearance at the CAPIC annual portfolio speed review.

Run a bit like speed dating except you were looking at photographers portfolios and talking about F-stops and lovely light. Consisting of five minute review periods it was a great opportunity for local talent to meet and get feedback, and for art directors and designers to see a bunch of talent all under one roof.

Thanks to CAPIC, who did a great job of organising this and for all the art directors and designers who gave their time.

Our friends at BC PavCo, with whom we’ve been working closely on the branding  of the BC Place facelift, invited us to catch a rare and breathtaking overhead perspective of the roof deflation.  I witnessed the never-before seen view of the Vancouver Eastside beyond the iconic roofless stadium.

Amidst a collection of TV crews, photographers, and countless political and notable VIP, our camera snapped away for the brief 40-minute episode during which the gigantic marshmallow-like inflated roof of BC’s most recognizable landmark slowly said goodbye to its faithful. Our favourite time-lapse video can be seen here.  Despite the unavoidable sentiment of bereavement for the familiar piece of architecture, an excited buzz overwhelmed the crowd for the new spectacular project that lies ahead (personified best by the construction crew entertaining photographers with muscleman poses from the rim of the structure hundreds of feet away).