Hive Health

A few months back I was fortunate enough to be invited to a talk by King’s Speech set Designer Eve Stewart. Curious as hell to know how an Oscar nominated set designer goes about her work, I showed up at The Billiard Room on 33 Portland Place on the afternoon of the 6th May.

To add extra spice, The Billiard Room was the actual location where the speech therapy sessions where filmed – atmospheric distressed wall and all. On a funny note, i have since heard it is also the site of alleged “sex parties” and so-called “porn discos”.

A really insightful talk followed. Eve opened up about her inspirations and how she achieved that really distinguished wall effect using a blow torch and a canvas of water paints. However, the thing which really resonated with me was her mention of going that bit further to infuse her craft with – I can’t recall how she put it – functional emotion. Once her sets were designed, Eve would create a note or scribble that the characters may once have used – a shopping list, a letter from loved one or a reminder note about some drinks they might be hosting. She would slip this quietly into the relevant actor’s pocket. When they chanced upon it later, the realism  would absorb them further into their role and make their surroundings feel even more genuine.

Finding new ways to stretch the effectiveness of her craft seems to be another art that Eve has mastered! I guess this explains her 2 Oscar nominations.

Bizarre bee related activity on Regent Street. With a swarm gathering around a traffic light and taking up 5 hours of beekeeper time to collect and box up.

Hilariously Twitter was alive with nonsense @bakerpictures said: “Not sure if it is a PR stunt or not. Or street theatre.” Demonstrating that people really believe that communications agencies are capable of everything. We were unable to visit the scene and report as we were training a colony of ants to spell out our name on a pavement in time for the Olympic ceremony. Live report care of Audioboo.

We headed to Taste of London yesterday evening with the lot of us and some good friends. Prior to hitting some lovely food and sampling the delights of Chapel Down’s sparkling (and a sneaky tasting of their delicious new beer care of Guy Tresnan) we wrapped up the quarter with an all agency meeting.

We review our progress and gather thoughts on where we are now. We covered people, forecasting, sources of growth, creative and group plans. It’s good to share where we are and for us to have an opportunity to answer questions and take some time with us all. We sit bang on target in terms of people, having delivered 418 hours worth of internal and external training to date, and financially our forecast and actuals are pretty much at one. The agency has produced some awesome work and the plans for service expansion over the next few years were received with interest by all.

We headed off to Regent Park, where despite Adams choice of Jumper, we held onto The Photo With A Celebrity crown for yet another year. Bagging Jay Rayner and Michel Roux Jnr. Trouncing Anna’s first year efforts with Atul Kochar.

Humans generated more data in 2010 than in the previous 5,000 years combined. Fact. Yes, indeed another fact for you to consume.

Every day, information is bombarding us from every angle – TV, newspapers, word of mouth and even something as archaic as the analogue radio in the kitchen or in the car. But as if this wasn’t enough, we hunt down even more and what better channel to use than the wondrous world of the internet. Reams of data at the touch of a finger. It also appears that we are better multi-taskers than we thought we were. 80% of Brits are simultaneous media users, using at least two different forms of media at the same time.

Information overload

Given the vastness of information being pumped out and absorbed each day, it is no wonder that frustration ensues. Given the sheer volume of data encircling us, how do we even know what is true? How can I possibly begin to understand where, in the vast spectrum of related information, this particular nugget sits?

For those of us in communications, this is our daily challenge. Distilling information and presenting it in an accurate way that will resonate with our audience. But to achieve this, we need to continually evolve approaches to presentation. Amidst the loud noise of the world’s information explosion, we are trying to seek new and interesting ways to engage the people we are talking too. But how will they hear us?

Context is king

The key challenge when considering information overload is context. Without context, information is meaningless. Data visualisation sets out to tackle this. By presenting data visually, not only can we apply relativity and context to the story but we can also compress vast amounts of information into a simple diagram, allowing fast assimilation and absorption of the facts. But importantly, this can inspire further questions and ultimately drive understanding.

The recent book, ‘Information is Beautiful’ by David McCandless has received widespread interest. Why? It allows us, the reader, to focus on the information that is important and allows us to look at connections and trends that you wouldn’t normally be able to see. In a talk last year, David spoke of his inspiration for the book which was born out of the desire to understand information in context. He spoke of the fact that all over the newspapers people talk about billions of pounds spent on military or in the recession or on superinjunctions. But what does this mean without context? By visually comparing to the investment or spend in other areas, he allows us to absorb meaningful information.

There are loads of great examples of data visualisation applied to all areas of life, from the amount of caffeine in your drink to why sitting down is killing you (which is unfortunate for those of us move from sitting at our desk to sitting in a meeting room to inevitably sitting in the pub or at home).

Data visualisation is without boundaries.  What I find truly fascinating about this approach is the fact that it interests me in things I didn’t even know I found interesting. That’s a pretty powerful communications tool.

Now if only I had been able to draw you a diagram to say all of that…

Some interesting sites:

1. TuneGlue – music visualisation service. Just type any artist or band into the search box and hit enter. A circle comes up representing that band. You can then expand from there, clicking on any new additions after each expansion to expand further
2. Newsmap – shows a visual representation of current headlines on Google News. It shows the relationships and patterns between different news stories across cultures and within different news segments.
3. Information is beautiful –  hours of reading, a tonne of information authored by David McCandless
4. Cool infographics – Extensive blog with vast selection of infographic/data visualisation displays. A whole host of topics

Sources: Cisco, UKPA, European Interactive Advertising Association