The AppLounge is the first digital store of its kind, where the best of bricks and mortar and online retail have been converged. As part of the London Design Festival, The AppLounge encourages the public to discover and sample new mobile and tablet applications and digital content, including eBooks, eMags, and useful online services. Sourced from creative agencies around the world, many of the apps are matched with accessories and fashion items to fit with individual lifestyle tastes. The idea being to make digital retail feel more like lifestyle shopping. It’s the Apple store one step on. And ultimately aims to answer the challenges bricks and mortar stores face as ecommerce reshapes the retail experience and consumer behaviour. The AppLounge creator Alexander Grünsteidl (who was also behind Digital Wellbeing Labs) says, ‘We are witnessing a transformation in business models for retailers which is opening up possibilities for convergent retail. This space is designed to encourage customers to slow down, have a drink, and sample a variety of applications and accessories on display.’

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Lots of brands try to associate themselves with the arts but it doesn’t often come off as a genuine, seamless fit (think BP and wildlife photography?!). The big corporate contribution to this year’s festival comes from Audi. What’s interesting about it from a brand point of view is that they’ve managed to pull off making it a public spectacle and use it to bring meaning to their brand ethos. Created by techie designers Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram, their project Outrace allows the you to take control of eight industrial robots on loan from Audi’s production line. Visitors to Trafalgar square, or people anywhere in the world, can book a slot to interact with the installation via a Twitter-like mechanic at outrace.org. By attaching light heads onto synchronized mechanical tentacles that are equipped with LED technology from the Audi R15 race car (winner of this year’s LeMans 24h), the installation ingeniously allows users to trace light messages into the air in real time. As users write their messages, each unique light trace is recorded and uploaded to the web via HD cameras. Science fiction author Bruce Stirling has described the process as ‘Light-painting’. Explaining how they move he says, ‘They are fluid, brush like inscriptions written on the very air of London.’ Whether this was a marketing exercise by Audi or genuine involvement from their design, it is a smart expression of the Audi brand ethos and strapline ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ (progress through technology).

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The fusion of design with full-blown gastronomic experiences has been a common theme from a number of exhibitors at this year’s London Design Festival. Hel Yes! took place in the a middle of warehouse in the Londonnewcastle space, and is one of those exhibitions. A pop-up restaurant and exhibition, it was conceived by Helsinki restaurateur Antto Melasniemi and designers Mia Wallenius and Klaus Haapaniemi. The team aim to explore a number of conceptual themes inspired by Nordic culture around food and design, such as ‘can furniture be made from trees thinned out from the forest?’ and ‘can a restaurant gather ingredients straight from the forest?’ Similarly, situated just around the corner with more of a local take, contemporary furniture designers Established and Sons have hijacked The Wenlock Arms pub, which sits opposite their studio. Having renamed it ‘The Established and Sons’, this East London boozer has been serving visitors fine ales, proper pub grub whilst showcasing the studio’s best in contemporary furniture. Of course whilst design and food have always gone hand in hand both exhibits have managed blur the lines between the two. Furthermore, both reflect the needs amongst today’s culturally conscious audience for rich, diverse and one off cultural experiences.

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Thanks to Neil Bennett (http://neilbennett.posterous.com/) for this issue. As well as geeking out on design, Neil is spending most of his time planning an immersive theatre experience, watch the Mother website for details soon.

One of the festival’s most anticipated features this year was the Anti Design Festival (ADF), directed Neville Brody. A reaction to the commercialized main festival, the ADF aimed to shift the focus from bums-on-seats to brain food, and from taste and style to experiment and risk. So whilst the main festival was a celebration of design, this was all about the embrace of failure as a viable way forward. One of our favourite bits of the ADF was Microplex, the world’s smallest cinema (5 seats) which showed a series of weird and wonky films. Which was then only to be outdone the Picoplex, a one-person cinema in a ‘portable hood’ (like those big dryers you get at the hairdressers grannies sit under). We really like the idea of a commercial festival embracing its underbelly. If only London Fashion Week did something like this some buyers might actually turn up.

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‘Upcycling’ and social responsibility were two themes for a project called It’s Got Legs. Devised in association with the charity Trinity Homeless Project, the aim was to give creative opportunities to the homeless through a series of design workshops to upcycle furniture which would otherwise gone to landfill. So art that does social and environmental good at the same time. The result, a series of beautiful deckchairs, was to be exhibited and sold to raise money for the charity. Sadly, this event was pulled at the last minute. But we liked the concept so much we wanted to write about it anyway (it’s planned to run next year). Surprisingly, for a design festival which has 200+ events, for us there seemed to be a real lack of socially-led design initiatives, something we’d love to see more of at the next festival.

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Thanks to Bruno Frankel (his real name) for this issue. Once, after hearing a particularly funny joke, Bruno’s laugh shattered a wine glass.

It’s great finding that perfect item in your favourite store, however most of us have been lured online by the supposed ‘convenience’ of online shopping. By ‘convenience’, all they mean is you can buy stuff while hung-over sitting in your underwear. The biggest problem with online clothes shopping is that you can never be certain how the purchase is going to look on. Online retailers are starting to adopt augmented reality to overcome this issue. One technology we came across has interestingly been developed by ad agency Zugara. It allows you to virtually try clothes on and share the image with friends on Facebook if you want a second opinion. Magazines are also using this technology to turn their fashion pages into virtual dressing-rooms, such as teen mag Seventeen. It’s good for advertisers and fun for readers alike. This use of augmented reality feels natural and of its time whilst genuinely improving the customer experience

Burberry is rolling out a global, state-of-the-digital-art ‘Retail Theatre’ in its stores, where the normally excluded, non-fashionista punter will be invited to see its London Fashion Week show live-streamed and buy it instantly on a special Burberry iPad app. While there is an obvious element of showmanship to the whole thing, there are also some very practical business strategies sitting at the heart of Burberry’s digital endeavor. For the best part of a decade, the high street has looked to the catwalk for ‘the next big thing’. They’ve copied it, produced it quicker, sold it cheap, and become the first place consumers go to find the latest looks. Clearly, this is not only infuriating to the major designer labels but can affect their bottom line. Burberry’s Retail Theatre is just one of the steps designer brands are taking to fight back. Its ‘runway to reality’ production model outwits the high street. We expect to see the luxury market behave more competitively with the high street, fuelled by the recession and it’s uptake of digital, which has been slow to start. But there is more than one way to play the game, so as well as a speeding up we will also see a slowing down of the luxury market. The success of timeless brands like Burberry, Hermès and Chanel right now, is a sign that consumers are looking for something more lasting and crafted.

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Shopping is great. Spending money feels amazing – synapses spark into life, endorphins and dopamine pump around the brain. That is, apart from one precise moment. That moment when the cashier wrenches the wad of notes from your fist and you watch them disappear. The moment when you take a deep breath before typing in your pin number and handing back the card machine as swiftly as possible, as if it might explode. That’s the moment your brain screams, “don’t do it!!!”. That’s the moment that banks and credit card companies have been trying to do away with. And, worryingly, they’ve sussed it. Contactless cards are now in full circulation (I received mine this week). I can now move from the shops, via a restaurant, to the pub without ever handing over any cash or typing in that secret number. Just ambling around snapping stuff up without any ‘real’ transaction taking place. Sure ‘life flows’, but so does my cash. Straight down the drain and into your pockets, you sly buggers.
There’s a lot to be said for seamless experiences but in our fast-paced, fluid world, we sometimes need moments to pause and reflect. In a world where mindless borrowing has taken us to the brink of economic meltdown, you can’t help but think that those responsible should be creating more moments for people to stop and think about what they are doing – themselves included, not less.

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