Week 22 — 12 November 2021

And so with this year (what a year!) hurtling towards completion, it's good to take stock of what the hell just happened! From a graphic design perspective, as in most walks of life, the game and the rules were seriously disrupted. This piece from the ever-informative Creative Boom shows some of the surprisingly radical design trends it has inspired and which look set to continue into '22. Expect to see Maximalism, 90's Nostalgia and Eco-aesthetics coming to a campaign near you soon!

Marketing genius or financial suicide? You decide! ➜

Have you seen the queues snaking out of Pret lately?! Their new ‘Your Pret Barista’ subscription service lets punters (read students) buy up to five drinks a day for a £20 monthly fee. That’s up to a headache-inducing 150 caffeinated drinks per month! It covers all barista-made drinks and if the queues are anything to go by, it's a stone-cold crowd pleaser. It's brilliant marketing, but is it good business? Well, it's probably not making money, yet, but: it is affordably capturing market share. It's creating a new recurring revenue model. It's nurturing loyalty and it's getting (new) customers into their stores – where they'll no doubt make other impromptu purchases. It's just, in a realm (read shop) where everything else is so ‘hand crafted’ and er pricey, you can palpably sense the conflict at the heart of the brand. Volume v's value. Quality v's quantity. Profit v's product. We watch on, intrigued.

This beer smells (and does) good ➜

And for our third example of post-pandemic inspired marketing ingenuity, step forward Paname Brewing Company. These cunning French craft beer makers, with the help of their Parisian agency L’Associé, have created a new series of beers specifically designed for people suffering with anosmia. That's nose-blind to you and I. An ongoing loss of smell is a common condition for post Covid sufferers, so the team set about imagining, making and marketing their most aromatic beers to date and, in the process, helped drinkers who’d lost their olfactory sensitivity, due to the virus, become reacquainted with those fantastic fruity, beery fragrances they'd otherwise still be missing. Calling the new range Beer Therapy, this is the love the world needs right now.

Step into the metaverse, in cozy slippers! ➜

Let's leave the past behind and step boldy into the future. Or rather, let's leave reality behind and step blithely into the metaverse. This interesting piece from Design Week looks at some recent high profile tech product patents and gives some great insight as to how wearables will likely soften the hard divide between our (shrinking) natural and (expanding) digital ecosystems. It seems technical advancements applied to everyday wearables, such as footwear and jewellery will become the gateway for many to start making more frequent forays into the metaverse.