Hive Health

We are ready to go now. We have had enough of Wardour Street. She has been good to us – vivacious, wild and at times a little weird.

Our new office was completed yesterday bar snagging, the annoying complexities of bringing the ‘internet’ across from the other side of Piccadilly  to Oxendon street and the worktops being refitted on the bar (my mistake).

It’s been a project I have held close to my heart.  Jas and Ian have kept a healthy distance, either in text book delegation or just scared to get embroiled in midnight discussions on rubber floors, iroko, oil painted car bonnets, fabricated steel and suitable adhesives for false glass eyes. I have been working with wonderful contractors in Spruce and working day to day hand in hammer with Wayne, our excellent project manager  who has dealt with me with the patience and understanding I can only hope to achieve with my clients. It has been a full-on 4 week build. Not just as we have been ploughing to get in as early as possible, but the enforced budget, has made me search high and low for the interesting and cool without spanking it all down at Vitra, which isn’t really ever going to be our style. Anyone who knows us, will know that we like a deal, and the chance for a huge treasure hunt is too good an opportunity to pass up.

The driving force behind this obsession with materials, space and interior design has been the brief. A few months ago we did a hackathon, which has influenced the very nature of  a huge number of elements of the office. Alongside this templated ride, sits the weight of having nearly 60 of the best waiting politely for their new home.

We kick off with our first monday in a few weeks, until then the lid is tight on this baby. Visits strictly limited. All that research into the concept of the modern office, space as facilitative collaborator, relational aethetics, and a penchant for school laboroatory worktops has culminated in 7000 square foot of what I hope one and all will consider blinding.

We have a a new phrase that popping up all over the place. Its as much a summary as a mantra. ‘Hand it over proud’. Whether ‘it’ be a brief for a mailer or a piece of copy it’s got to be you-right. Hand on heart I am pretty comfortable that Haymarket House, 1 Oxendon Street fits in with this. I cannot wait to hand it over. Nervous, expectant of everyones views, but proud nevertheless.

The picture above is where it all started. In the ‘research’ phase way back in June. In a freezing shed in Hatfield I discovered a job lot of salvage  iroko lab worktop from a local school. Four schools later, calls and trips to Merseyside, Hertford and Enfield and a little bit of folded here and there. We had gathered 30 square meters and enough of this most soulful of materials to start making some furniture and get the backbone of our new office.

When we kick open the doors I will  flickr a stack of photos for you. Wayne described  the space this week ‘an office with Soul’. By far the best complement I think I have had for a while. I hope that if you fancy it, pop in or come along to the tea party we are having once we are in an settled and everyone has got to grips with the quooker.

There’s no doubt that good design can make a real difference to everyday life. It can make life easier and generally more pleasant…but it can also have the opposite effect.

After World War II, London was in dire need of reconstruction and large numbers of people needed homes. The solution? A concept first seen in Roman times…high-rise living accommodation. And so, the first UK high-rise was built in Holborn in 1949.

High-rise tower blocks were designed to provide large quantities of accommodation while creating communities. They were surrounded by open recreational spaces to give a feeling of space and allow residents to socialise. The reality however, was somewhat different for many. Moving people into tower blocks meant breaking up established communities, and along with the loss of community spirit came feelings of isolation and social problems. The open recreational spaces were often uninviting and unused, and in some cases became crime hotspots. The design of these homes had a profound effect on individuals and communities.

So, if design was the cause of the problem, then good design has to be the cure. High-rises are becoming a thing of the past; mostly being knocked down and replaced with smaller, low-rise housing. In addition, design of social housing is becoming creative and innovative; some is eco-friendly, while some is just beautiful…designed to help bring back a sense of pride and community and improve quality of life and taking steps towards eradicating problems from the past.

Design also affects the working environment, and everyone here at Hive is excited to see the design of our new office. Having seen the bare bones of the place not so long ago, and contributed ideas towards design and use of the huge open space, it will be interesting to see the end product…somewhere inviting, comfortable and inspirational!

You’ve probably seen it hundreds of times and you almost definitely have one somewhere in your closet but have you ever taken the time to really appreciate it?  The Woolmark logo, designed in 1963 is considered by many as the greatest logo of all time. Seemingly inspired by a skein of wool, the Woolmark was the winning design of a global competition to create a graphic identity for wool. Organised by the International Wool Secretariat, now called Australian Wool Innovation (AWI), the Woolmark is credited to an Italian designer called Francesco Saroglia.

There is almost no information on who Francesco Saroglia is and to date no one has been able to find any other examples of his work. Although he’s mentioned by numerous sources as the designer of the Woolmark, the Alliance Graphique International (AGI) attributes the logo design to Franco Grignani (1908-1999). The site suggests that he entered the competition under a pseudonym because he was a member of the jury charged with selecting the winning design. Another theory that has been put forward is that the logo was submitted by another of the panel’s judges – Spiriti.

It’s thought that Grignani was approached by Spiriti, an owner of an Italian advertising agency, and asked to design the Woolmark logo several months before the competition. Shortly afterwards, Grignani was invited to be on the judging panel only for him to see the very work he’d submitted to Spiriti months before entered by an unknown designer called Saroglia.  The story goes that he was so embarrassed that his work had been stolen that he decided to conceal the fact that it was his design. When the other jury members chose it as the winning logo, he tried to overturn the decision but in the end it was his logo that was chosen.

Years later in an exhibition on his work he displayed a sketch from his diary with nine possible Woolmark designs that he’d given to Spiriti, and which had been entered into the IWS logo competition.  Furthermore Grignani’s previous work shows that he was clearly interested in Op Art and played extensively with arrangements of black and white stripes.

The Woolmark is a timeless icon, beautiful in its simplicity. It looks clear and neat when it’s shrunk right down to fit on a label and powerful when enlarged on a billboard; most importantly it’s a great graphical mystery. And that makes it my favourite logo.

Well and truly in and loving my design evening class. It’s pushing the tactical planning aspect of my day job load. Each week sees a dozen of us run through designed experiences, discuss them to death and work on a brief together prior to a presenting it back. The ‘design’ approach is really driving an improvement in how I develop ideas tactically. It’s encouraging me to have a much more open minded approach to what spaces I have permission for my brands to work in.

We covered Maslow last week and an adapted model for assessing engagement in scientific events that is used all over the place including our very own Science Museum. Dead relevant to us? I think so. It made me think of the countless advisory boards, co-creation sessions and events we have run and attended. I am pretty sure that these can retrospectively be placed along this scale, and their success measured accordingly.

Given this I am going to give this a bash proactively, and use it to assess the plan for a client event, and see whether it helps us as much as it does the museum bofs.