News & Views Category

If you’re passing through Selfridges London check out the fantastic retail design pop up space for Puma. Behind the genius pop up space are D4R, and renowned painter Kehinde Wiley who together have bought a splash of African colour and magic to men’s department.

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FT-86 G sports concept

Toyota are to give their brand a new image with the launch of some exciting new cars.

With the thanks to a new boss Toyota have got their performance mojo back.

Currently the cars are only a concept however they have produced a whole range branded the G Sports range.

The car also features in the up and coming Gran Tourismo 5 game for the Playstation 3.

For now the G Sports brand is set to be a Japan only enterprise but if it proves to be successful I’m sure that they will look to bring the series to the UK. Watch this space!

A group of design and media students from a Wrexham University have won an ‘Apprentice’ style competition.

The five students from Wrexham’s Glyndwr University joined the challenge to design the bottle and packaging, pitch the brand and also suggest the flavour of the new bear.

The winning team would then see their beer manufactured by Scottish brewers Brewdog and then sold around the University.

All entrants had to record their pitch onto dvd to be judged by founder and chief executive of Brewdog, James Watt.

Mark Scott, Michelle Roberts, Qingyun Hu, Yz Wez and Phillip Chan won the challenge and now look forward to seeing the results of their hard work.

They are set to launch the new beer at their spring ball in March.

If the designed beer prooves to be successful, it could even have a limited run as a guest ale in pubs around the Wrexham area.

After the recent news of Tiger Woods’ infidelity, large brands Gillette and Accenture have decided to drop their advertising opportunities with the golfer.

This follows another recent incident with a celebrity who currently featured alongside Tiger Woods for the Gillette brand. Theirry Henry’s recent handball incident left people wondering if the star would be dropped from the campaign however, after that incident, Gillette stood by Henry.

On the other hand Nike have decided to stand by the golfer and have announced that they see it as a minor blip in his careern and that they expect him to further his career in the near future and all of this will be forgotten.

Last week he announced that he would be taking a break from the sporting action to concentrate on his marriage but recent reports suggest that the golfer’s wife is set to file for divorce.

To add fuel to the fire Athletic wear brand Puma, large competitiors to the Nike brand,  is contemplating signing Tiger Woods’ wife Elin Nordegren as spokesperson for its new Swedish-inspired clothing line called Tretorn

Can an incident like this really ruin a brand’s image?

Back in December 2008, Dell set a target to reduce their packaging volume by 10% , equating to nearly 20m pounds of material.

They have also set a target to increase the amount of recycled packaging by 40% and increase the amount of recyclable material in packaging by 75%, all by 2012.
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It’s an interesting proposition; with waves of booklovers migrating to the use of electronic readers and buying e-books (waterstones.com sells approximately 30 e-books per hour from its stock of 15,000 titles) – will it mean both a demise in traditional tactile bookselling and an onslaught of inventive store displays to compete with Amazon, their online foe?

Despite the hit the bookselling market has already taken from Sony’s Reader product, Amazon will be launching their own version of the e-reader, the Kindle internationally this month, finally allowing UK users to purchase the wireless wonder than can download books in less than a minute via 3G technology. Launched to the US in late 2007, it is estimated that there will be over a million users of the Kindle by the end of 2009.

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Design4retail are always interested in looking at different ways in which companies brand their products.

Kellogg’s latest idea caught design4retail’s eye after they are said to be branding their cereal in ways that we would never have imagined.

They are looking to use a laser to display their brand clearly across each and every cornflake that the put in their Cornflakes box.

A limited number of boxes filled with their laser branded cereal will be put into production before they decide whether or not to brand some cereal pieces in every box.

Kellogg’s have embarked on this project to further emphasise the fact that they do not produce cereal for any other brand.

This includes the cheaper supermarket brands that have been keen to package their cereals in boxes with many similarities.

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Exciting times are afoot as we discover that UK traders will soon be banned from displaying cigarettes in shops in the government’s latest bid to reduce the number of under-age smokers.

In a true battle of the wills, one of the country’s leading QCs Lord Pannick  advised the government to inform the European Commission before passing any laws that would prohibit the display of cigarettes in stores.

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Sportswear companies adidas and Puma, founded by brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler during World War II, have ended their 60 year feud by playing a football game in their hometown of Herzogenaurach in Bavaria, Germany.

The brothers began designing sport shoes together in their mother’s washroom in the 20’s before falling out and forming rival firms, splitting not only the family but the entire town.

The teams were a mix of adidas and Puma employees and the final score was 7 – 5.