jkr, a London-based creative agency, published an anthology book of their Design Gazette blog encompassing design, marketing and how they intertwine with today’s culture. The book’s name is “the blue lady’s new look and other curiosities” and they have kindly gifted me a copy so I wanted to share my thoughts on this good book which is not only very interesting if you’re in the field, it is, as most good things are, entertaining and even fun to read.
I would title this post “Design and Marketing in the boneless age” as the chapter where the explanation of the boneless concept is was the most striking. We do, however, find other questions and answers to more daily mundane issues, such as “Can bad taste make good branding?”, “How do you brand bad news?”, “Sex sells. But can it brand?”, or even “Do we need celebrity designers?”.
The book is very thoughtful, exploring not only the issues related to branding or design, such as how trustable a company must be or how logos or graphics work to enhance a brand, but also going into the issues of sustainability and how responsible for their acts companies must be in the chapter “Doing the right thing”. Maybe that’s the chapter I enjoyed most, next to “Nuts and bolts”, a chapter dedicated to graphic/industrial design and its own concerns, such as the computer software that creates advertising without any human aid.
All in all, the book is thought provoking and you’ll really enjoy it, jkr did a very good job on this one. Each topic is presented in one page (this is great for our 140 characters society), with many case studies and a very careful and polished writing.
You can order the blue lady’s new look and other curiosities from Amazon.
