Sometime last year I was approached by Vasakronan, Swedens largest property brand with a property portfolio valued at SEK 80.3 billion. Being a market leader the felt their digital presence had to reflect that position. Their question: What do we do? As always I teamed up with Caroline Karlström and accepted the challenge to answer that question. In this project I took on the role as both head of strategy and concept as well as actually delivering the top level designs of the new Vasakronan that Britny later implemented and refined.

This is what we did. Parts of the new Vasakronan digital brand presence

The new Vasakronan.se runs WordPress!

Me and Caroline started the project with an analysis phase and analysed their existing presence, the traffic to their site, the content, the design and the site structure. We interviewed representatives from Vasakronan as well as their clients and potential prospects. We also performed an extensive technical analysis of their technical platform. Their brand presence online was running on Episerver, one of Swedens most common content management platforms and the front end was about three years old. It was classical site with tons of sections and also some flash content.

The old Vasakronan.se site.

On top of that the site was connected to their back end, partly built on Sharepoint. Already from start I felt that there was no need for this complex set up. If you also include the fact that Vasakronan intended to lead – not follow, then I also thought we needed to look at modern platforms such as WordPress.

Once we’ve passed the analysis phase, it was clear that there really was no need to run Vasakronan off Episerver. Instead we decided to give WordPress a try. WordPress would, beside the fact that the platform is free, give Vasakronan the ability to adapt to the world outside, fast! WordPress has got some 20000 developers devoted to making sure the platform is up to date. Future branding is all about making sure you stay on top technology instead of being dictated by technology due to the fact that you’re stuck in a slow developed platform. Vasakronans ambition moving forward is also to be a part of that community, meaning develop new plugins and functionalities that other brands can make good use of.

A new brand plattform needed to be digitalized.

Part from the fact that Vasakronan’s digital presence was a couple of years old another important fact was also that they we’re redesigning their brand language. Not their logo – but their tone of voice, their graphical expressions, colors and how they worked with images. This was a challenge.

Parts of the Vasakronan brand manual that we had to digitalize.

Their new brand language was classical yet bold, however it was clearly developed to be used offline. I’m personally a big fan of simplicity and there was something in that brand presentation we were handed that struck a chord inside me.

The new Vasakronan.se – on brand!

The challenge to bring this stuff online was something that made me smile. After some tweaking back and fourth I felt that I had nailed the graphical concept quite well. It was fresh, clean, usable and on brand.

Great content and simplicity is the new black.

Until now Vasakronan had been working quite a lot with SEM activities. However, their SEO presence was nothing to brag about. In order for this to change I developed a concept that was based on how blogs work. Basically, the content bloggers pushed ends up further down the site structure as more content is being pushed.

An example of how content from the first page is being pushed down in other sections

Considering the website analytic part of the project pointed in the direction few, if any visitors, were interesting surfing the Vasakronan website, instead people landed on one page, clicked one or two pages to get what they were there for and then left, I felt we needed to simplify everything – the site structure, the navigation, the amount of pages and way you search for new properties and of course also the design.

Simplicity was something we kept on striving for all through the project

Yet we also needed people to actually find Vasakronan. There’s of course tons of traffic ending up on Vasakronan via typed url’s or a search for Vasakronan. But there’s also a huge potential in attracting people through generic search. In order to establish a broader and better presence on Google we decided to make better use of Vasakronan’s customer magasine ‘En bättre värd’ (A better host).

Making sure content is spread over multiple platforms to do good for the brand.

On the old site this magazine was published once a month as a PDF. Fine, the PDF attracts Google spiders too – but the content is not very readable online. This magazine was packed with quality content that will do a great job when the spiders comes crawling. Said and done. We established a section called Inspiration & lägen (Inspiration and locations) where the magazine is now portioned in smaller bits over time – just like a blogger would publish it.

iPhone and iPads. What should you do?

If you ask around I think most agencies out there will tell you that you must have a site for mobiles and one for iPads and other tables. I beg to differ. My point of view is that the visitors you have will visit your brand from different devices but that doesn’t mean they’re interested in learning new ways to navigate depending on which device they use today.

People should not have to learn new navigations from one device to another.

This is why I, when I started to design the site, aimed to create a design that would work on your desktop computer, your laptop, iPad and ultimately the smartphone of your choice. Of course it’s important to make sure you’ve thought about mobile sites and apps too. I don’t think there’s ever a need for a specific app or mobile interface to browse the generic content on Vasakronan.se if it’s built and designed right.

Trying out how content could be swiped in potential future apps.

However I definitely think there’s a need for apps that gives landlords, tennants and other target groups the ultimate way to access information and nurture their relation with vasakronan. For these needs we of course designed extra proof of concepts to make sure we didn’t launch anything that could not be developed further.

Now it’s time to put the concept into action – we need more pro’s!

Brands like Vasakronan hire me to make change happen. My assignment usually includes a strategy phase, a concept phase and a visualisation phase. With a set of different tools such as strategic and technical analysis, problem definition, conceptual and creative develoment and prototyping I help brands, in this case Vasakronan, to establish a communication platform. It’s extremely important to deliver the conceptual and creative concepts without having to think about your own organisation – this is why I do not recommend having an agency that delivers both the concept and the implementation – it usually ends up being something that agency makes money off suggestion.

In this case me and Caroline together with different freelancers delivered a concept that focused on creating the best possible solution online for Vasakronan – now it was time to find the best fitted consultant that could take our concept and implement it. In order to find that consultant we, together with Vasakronan, selected five agencies. After having heard the agencies present themselves we also asked them to present how they were to implement the concept we had delivered for Vasakronan. Britny, Swedish kick ass web agency that I’d been working with before, delivered a fantastic presentation. It was clear that both their creative department and technical department understood why we’d chosen the solutions we had and how we intended them to be implemented.

The listing of properties – the concept brought all the way by Britny

Said and done – Britny and Vasakronan came to an agreement and they started working on the implementation of our project. From our side Caroline left the project and I stayed on board to secure that the concept we’d delivered would be treated right. It was also important to make sure the kept to our technical strategy when using WordPress as the content management system. We’d built in tons of strategical and graphical executions that only made sense if you’d built them into WordPress the right way. The team at Britny did a fantastic job when taking our concept further. They treated it with great care. I especially found it rewarding that their lead designer, Daniel Stridsberg and head of tech Fillip Wastman, embraced the design platform I had initiated and nurtured it well. Except for Daniel and Fillip the team consisted of Iyob Mesfin, Jonas Rogert and Jonas Eriksson all equally important.

The result?

Vasakronan has managed to revamp their online presence in a magnificant way. The new site is easier to use, we’ve taken away all second level menues we’ve could, the design is on brand and may I say so – ground braking in terms of sitting on top of a content management system, it’s like nothing else and differentiates Vasakronan from their competition and it works like a charm on any platform. Knowing what they’re up to behind the scenes I’m proud to say this is one of the projects I’m most pleased with during 2011! But then again – that’s what I think

Thank you Britny for sticking to our guns. Thank you Vasakronan for daring to be different!

Rock on!

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about SAAB. It obviously created some sort of attention since I almost had a new unique visitor record. Among the commenters were official SAAB representatives, positive even though I had quite a strong tone in my post. Another commenter, a bit surprising, was David Holecek, Interactive Marketing Manager at Volvo Cars. In his comment he wrote – “Sticking my neck out a bit, it would be interesting if you would do a similar exercise on our volvocars.com site (or rather volvocars.se, as we do not have all the shopping tools on our international site). We may be asking for a potentially harsh treatment , but feedback is always important.”

I was planning to do a video on the Volvo site as well, but due to kids at home I’ve not gotten the possibility to record something yet. It’s just to noisy! But, David, I decided to give you some feedback anyway.

I only walked through the XC60 part of the site since I’m more or less looking at buying exactly that kind of car right now. (Probably the new BWM X3, but I do like the XC60)

It’s sort of two-faced but here we go.

1. You’ve done your lesson when it comes to usability. Most things work the way they should part from minor things when I’ve already chosen a car and then have to re-choose it once I wanna testdrive for example. I like that I can have a PDF mailed with my built car.
2. The ‘closed’ interface forces me to navigate to much. Create less pages with more content instead. People don’t care about scrolling if they’ve come to the right place. Especially not in iPads and iPhones.
3. Drop the http://www.volvocars.com/se/all-cars/volvo-xc60/Pages/default.aspx link structure and implement a more SEO friendly structure and taxonomy.
4. I’d implement a lot more links between the sections. Such as moving people from the ‘What XC60 should I choose’ into the configuration tool for example.
5. It’s all built in Flash. That sucks from several known reasons.

How Volvo Cars look on the fastest growing internet platform in the world…not good.

And probably lots of more things. But…time…kids…

What if it looked like Apples website?

So, how should it look then? That’s of course a big thing to give feedback on and it would take some time, on the other hand, it’s sort of interesting to have a look at Apple, then swap all the content for Volvo Car content and see what happen. Hmm, why not try it? Said and done. I sat down for an hour and overlaid Apples Macbook Air section with XC60 content just to see what would happen. Here’s the result.

XC60 First page in an Apple Costume.

I’ve more or less just swapped content except for some copy that I quickly wrote to convey the right feeling. Don’t mind the top nav, it’s just there to get that Volvo feeling into the site. Click here to get the full view

Note. The design above is only produced for teaching purposes. Not to be used commercially

Volvo XC60 – The Design in an Apple Costume (excuse the mega long image)

By building the entire design experience, with designer videos, galleries and more, into one single page, you’ll award the visitor by letting him explore everything about the design without having to open new pages. You’ll also ensure that every link to the new Volvo XC60 design section delivers the exact same experience. You’ll have seconds to get people to stay, dont waste them on endles menus. Click here to get the full view.

Note. The design above is only produced for teaching purposes. Not to be used commercially

So, with that said (or designed…copied… in an hour). I think the Volvo Cars site features some sweet content and nice functionalites, but I’d repackage them into HTML5 based websites, lesser menu options and a bolder feeling to it. Obviously I’d spend more time than this to really work out how it should look in the future. Cars are beautiful objects made to be used by people so their sites should be too.

Thanks David for reaching out and I hope I’ve give you something to think about!

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you would know by now that I’m a big fan of sharing ideas and thoughts. Internets biggest contribution to a better world is exactly this – getting rid of protectionism and replacing it with sharing knowledge.

Together we can tear down the walls of monopoly built up by multinational companies more interested in giving money back to shareholders than actually building great things for the people. The open source culture is probably the best example of this with code like Android, MySQL, WordPress, Drupal, Linux but also real objects like the 3D printing Makerbot and Frankencamera 2.0 by Stanford to prove that it works. We’re living in exiting times!

Now that’s a sort of long introduction to this short link tip. But I felt I needed to remind you all to share your knowledge before sharing my knowledge about the Yahoo Design Stencils. This initiative by yahoo is yet another example of sharing. Yahoo has this section called All Design Patterns where you can find all their best practice thinking on usability and design for both mobiles and the online world. Then a couple of clicks away you’ll find all these great thoughts in downloadable templates for Photoshop, Omni Graffle, Visio and…yes you name it!

Two days ago I got the news that my application for a TEDx license was approved. My idea is to host an event for around 75 people in Viggbyholm, Täby where I live. The focus of the event will be visualization and how design shape our ideas about the future.

The event will be held in Täby, Sweden on 18th April.  18:00 – 22:00.

Now there’s three things you can do:

1. Apply for a ticket – because the seats are limited there will be a draw monday next week.
2. Suggest speakers – if you know someone that can speak 5-10 minutes on visualization, let me know.
3. Spread the word. Tweet this post or copy the url of the TEDxViggbyholm site and spread it in your network.

I‘ve spent some time this evening browsing my favorite packaging site The Dieline. That’s when I suddenly realized I should blog about packaging today.

When I speak about creativity and innovation and how it must be a part of every interaction (especially packaging) you have with your customers one of the most common replies I get is: “How can I make use of what you say in my business. We don’t have a sexy product”. Wrong question!

Today no one, no matter what kind of product you market, can overlook the fact that your customers lead a stressed life. People want to be entertained. We want drama. We want smiles. We want to feel. Everything is about entertainment and drama! Brand owners – inject emotion into your products or eject yourselves from your position!

The one question you should ask yourselves when it comes to packaging is: “Does my packaging make people smile”

Here are 10 brands that obviously have understood that you can make something out of anything.

1. Rellana Wool – Making Yarn Come Alive

This wonderful wool packaging concept called Wolly Heads was made by Ogilvy Frankfurt- It’s one of my absolute favorites. They’ve turned something very ordinary into something not so ordinary. This stuff makes me wanna learn how to knit stuff.

2. Clarence Court – I’d Rather Have Some Eggs

When you think of egg you think of…ehh…eggs. That’s until someone comes along and makes you think different. That’s exactly what UK based design agency Simmer makes you do with this wonderful concept for Clarence Court. One Goose, two Duck, two Pheasant and three Quail eggs. Makes you wanna make an omelette faster than you can say cheese huh?

3. Dumpling Dynasty Sewing Kit – I Can’t Resist It

You probably have a set stuffed away in a drawer somewhere at home – a sewing kit. Doesn’t ring any emotional bells in your belly huh? Well, then imagine when you walk around in the shop and then suddenly feast your eyes on this little beauty. Sewing Kit reinvented huh! Illustrator Fiona Hewitt knows how to kick ass obviously! ps. If you like it a lot. Then you can shop it here.

4. Pregnadel – I Wish I Was Pregnant!

Here’s a packaging concept by a design student named Sergii Llin that clearly shows you what it’s about. “The goal was to develop packaging that will be noticeable on the pharmacy shelf, self-illustrative, and have a bit of social message, kind of ‘Think before you do”

Extremely smart – a packaging that even acts socially responsible. To bad it’s not made for a real drug.

5. Prism London – I Can’t Believe My Eyes

There’s a design agency called Sabotage. It’s obvious why they’re called that cause when they get their hands on something they obviously destroy the competition with excellent pieces of packaging. This crystal-like eye case is no exception. It’ll crack the competition and make customers spend money they don’t have.

6. Bolt Barbers Shaving Cream – Getting A Shave Have Never Been Cooler Than This

Shaving cream. The pure sound of those two words make you wanna go to sleep. The section in which you find these products have looked the same the last 15 years. And then something happens. Perspective Branding decided to bring the cool to the cooling products. Simple yet smart and differentiated from the rest.

7. Perricone MD – The Kind Of Medication I Need

In the United States there’s a doctor called Perricone. He’s sort of guru dermatologist to the stars and his brand Perricone MD have enjoyed extensive media coverage on Oprah, PBS, Larry King and in Vanity Fair, Vogue and The New York Times. Well, when you see the packaging made by California based design agency Concrete you suddenly understand why.

8. Lemon Powder – It’s Not As Sour As It Sounds

Estudio Clara Ezcurra. You can almost hear that this agency create stuff that makes you go wow. Lemon Powder – Most design agencies wouldn’t touch that stuff. But these guys from Argentina turned makes it poke your eyes when you pass the product.

9. Ecolean Lightweight Packaging – Proud To Be A Swede

Wonderful! This new packaging concept called ‘Ecolean’ really blows my mind. It’s super thin. Minimum waste. Yet it’s stunningly beautiful. It makes people think environment. When you’ve consumed what’s inside you can throw away what left with a clear conscience. On top of all this it’s also a Swedish product. And since I’m from Sweden it makes me all warm inside. Here’s a video telling you more about the concept.

10. Bar Codes – It’s All In The Details

Last but not least. When you’re done revamping your packaging. Don’t stop there! There’s still room for more innovation. The bar codes for example – what can you do with them? If you lack imagination – give D-Barcode, the designers behinds these sweet set of japanese bar codes, a call.

Innovation is a strange thing. The best of innovations usually happens when someone takes something established from the world of culture and ads a twist or adapt it to future needs. Weiden & Kennedy’s great Honda COG pastiche on Peter Fischli & David Weiss’s art expression ‘The Way Things Go‘ is the perfect example on this.

So, when I performed my every day ‘link yoga’ this morning and did some soul stretching on Cool Hunting I suddenly found myself in love with a set of icons – Helveticons.

Max Larsson from Örebro, Sweden has created a set of icons, glyphs and symbols based on the Helvetica Bold typeface and the result is stunningly simplistic and…helveticified.

Hmm. Now I just gotta work out where I need those icons.

As I was browsing the ‘best of the week 63 on the Abduzeedo.com blog (abducted by design) I fell in love with this image showcasing how the Virgin logo has been stretched into different business areas.

Isn’t it cool when someone has created a logo so simplistic that it can be put into any context without loosing touch of it’s origin. Richard Branson is truly a mastermind when it comes to PR, marketing and entrepreneurship.

The Matsu’s wine triology, ‘El Pícaro’, ‘El Recio’ and ‘El Viejo’

Today on TheDieline I ran into the company ‘Vintae Luxury Wine Specialists’. Vintae is Spanish based company that specialize in top of the range and luxury wines.

Not only do they have a great wine portfolio. Together with Spanish agency Moruba, they’ve designed some wonderful bottles to stack in your cellar.

The Winery Arts collection revolves around the number 9, considered by many cultures as the supreme number of knowledge

When a company understands the value of differentiation, simplicity and creativity like Vintae, I can’t do anything but run to the wine shop and empty my savings account. This is the shit you wanna put on your table!

The other day I was happy to see that Per Torberger, former writer at Resume, one of Swedens leading media papers, had kick started his blog Pers Värld. Welcome back Per!

One of Per’s first post highlighted the ongoing Swedish discussion about the new 2009 Swedish European Presidency logo made by Bacon. Both Resume and Cap & Design, mainstream media and a lot of Swedish blogs have highlighted the news. Dagens Media, another Swedish media paper got an ongoing poll going where 83% thinks SEK 1.3 million is to much for the logo.

Per posted his thoughts in Swedish, and focused on replying to what most people seemed to comment about. Bear with me as I try to translate to you guys who don’t read Swedish.

(freely translated from Per’s blog)

1. ”Wow, SEK 1,3 million for a logo – how the hell can it cost so much!?”
2. ”No, it looks like Stockholm Opens (tennis tournament) old logo/other logo” or “It’s ugly”

Per didn’t seem to think that SEK 1.3 million for the new logo was to much. And mostly concluded that people who commented on the logo were focusing on the wrong things and not really understanding that design is first and foremost about differentiating a brand rather than decorating it.

I first made a short comment on Per’s blog where I said the following:

“It would have been really exciting if one had launched a competition for about 1000$ on 99designs.com, spend 10 hours on writing a good brief. After use up another 10 hours to Art Direct the contributions.

You would probably have seen 200-300 contributions of which 30-50 would have been good. Spend another 20 hours finetuning the work. The final check would then have been SEK 100-200 000 and crowdsourced. This would have been a cool case that in it’s turn would have generated more attention in both Sweden and abroad.

Is the logo ugly? – no point of view. Ugly can be good, beautiful can be bad in these cases.
Is it expensive? – No, not if you hire a traditional agency and use a traditional way of producing it.

Pling.”

After some bouncing back and forth Per asked for a real case. Right after his last comment yesterday, as sent from the gods came this:

To celebrate the launch of their new website and branding the splendid ever source of information Mashable launches a social design competition on 99designs where their visitors are briefed to ‘mash up’ the Mashable logo.

Mashable didn’t dare to re-do their real logo, or at least not yet. But they did launch a competition. When I started to write this post they had 15 logos uploaded. Now as I’m getting to the end of this post they’ve got 67! contributions and tons of conversation going on. 67 in just a couple of hours!

The competition goes on for another 2 weeks and I actually think we’ll see thousands rather than hundreds of contributions.

Rock on Mashable!

Let’s sum up:

Do I think the Swedish government spend to much for the new European Presidency 2009 logo?

Yes of course. But it’s not about the actual cost. It’s about the entire process!

To me, this is about integrated communication. Do not isolate your logo work as a separate activity. If someone would have thought different about the entire process of designing this new logo they would have done just what Per said in his post “helping the target group to choose that product in front of the competition”. (and saved SEK 1.1 million for other activities)

This is what innovative communication is all about. No single activity must be performed without gaining the overall objective. That means that everything we do should outlive budgets and on top of that generate a social buzz and PR.

This logo will not do that!

The Lamborghini Miura – A timeless car

What makes an object timeless? Why in some cases do we all end up liking something so much so it rises from being just another thing to instead becoming culture? Certain designs and certain objects has that little extra, they’re like an open fire – we can’t stop staring. And what’s even more strange is that often are these timeless objects simplistic, clean and not very complex in their structure. One would think we would grow tired of them but no, we grow more and more fond of them every year. One things for sure, it’s not about luck! 

Darth Vader – A timeless charachter

In order to create something timeless you’ve gotta set your goal right from the beginning. It has to be bolder, bigger, better, different from any goal that has been set up before. I call it Megagoals. Basically, you wanna be the best in the world.

Helvetica – A timeless font

Megagoals are set up by people and brands who strive to create something unique, something that will change their category, they don’t take no for an answer and their way of thinking is out of the box. On top of that they’ve got a strong sense that their idea is the right one, not matter what people say. Only by thinking like this can you change history and make your brand timeless.

The Concorde – A timeless aeroplane

If you wanna create timeless things – accept failure. Accept that you won’t always reach your goals, but the sheer fact of setting a goal 10 times higher than your competition will put you ahead of the pack and leave a mark that your grand children’s kids will tell people about.

The Eiffel tower – A timeless structure

So, think about your brand and your products. How can you create the next timeless object. The thing, the gadget, the icon and innovation that will define your brand for centuries to come?

Apple – A timeless brand

Whatever it is, make sure you aim to be 10 times better than the existing competition.

And hey, don’t come telling me that it’s a risk – that’s the price we pay for greatness!

That’s more or less the name of this ingenious new iPhone app that let’s you identify a font purely by taking a photo of it. I downloaded it and tried it – it’s a killer app! As often before it’s Miss Swissmiss that delivered the news about the Whatthefont app.

The British Royal Mail has released a set of stamps featuring British design classics. Great Britain is a wonderful country indeed. Don’t you agree?

Getting a post card with one of these ‘licked’ to it would definitely put a smile on my face for the rest of the day. Thanks SwissMiss for the find!