Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Titled after the portuguese word for feather, the ‘PLUMA’ track bike lives up to its namesake with a lightweight body and elegant shape. designed by Nuno Teixeira industrial design, the ‘PLUMA’ concept was dreamt up back in 2010, and after one year in production the first prototype is ready to hit the track. With a carbon sandwich and AIREX R63.80 PCV foam frame, the pluma bike sports a curvy physique to help air flow along the bike’s body.

The streamlined bicycle aims to be feather soft as well as feather light, reducing the number of exposed moving parts and tubes to prevent injury to the rider in case of a fall. with a PRO track carbon disk rear wheel to minimize drag, and a PRO 5 spoke carbon track wheel at the front, the curvy ride carries no unnecessary weight. like the majority of professional velodrome track bikes, PLUMA is a fixed-gear model, and comes without breaks. Nuno Teixeira industrial design’s elegant bicycle has been taken from render to reality by constellation composite, specialists in turning concept transport designs into working physical pieces....

Less is a bore, as Robert Venturi once said.

Minimalism has held a tight grip on the modern design industry for the past decade. We embraced the Apple aesthetic, extolled the logic of Helvetica, and worshiped at the church of Dieter Rams. It served its purpose, most recently, as a correctional to the excesses of the 1990s. But lately, as dispatches from Milan Design Week have shown, asceticism has given way to audacity.

Every April, hundreds of thousands of people trek to Milan for its trendsetting design week, which ultimately influences the furniture, accessories, and textiles that make their way into homes, offices, hotels, restaurants, and virtually every other interior. This year the artistic influences ranged from ’30s art deco to ’70s eclecticism. Designers and manufacturers experimented with digital fabrication–like 3D knitting–and rediscovered artisanal craft techniques, like lacquering, metal casting, and jacquard weaving.

But one thing was consistent: They’re embracing luxurious materials and textures, testing ambitious silhouettes, and piling on the details to yield products and furnishings that are visually enticing and emotionally evocative.In other words, minimalism is dead; maximalism has arrived....

One of the most fun things to do in design is swirling the latest color trends into your work. Color is a fascinating topic, and even a generator that understands color theory has recently been invented. Because they mean different things, companies also actively use color in their brand designs to encourage feelings and behaviors from customers. However, in different cultures, color theory isn’t all black-and-white. 

In this delightful infographic, SilverDoor describes color associations of different cultures, adding contrast to the way you think. Telling a person from another part of the world that you’re “feeling blue” may mean something entirely different to them. Is your favorite color offensive to another culture? Find out in the infographic below....

People are overexposed to so much stuff today that the concept of simplicity stands out as elegant, refined, and enviable.

In web design, too, the concept of simplicity is enjoying a resurgence. People spend more time interacting with devices and online, so they increasingly crave an experience that is psychologically comfortable (intuitive) and visually calming or straightforward. Simplicity has never been so popular or so difficult to attain as it is today....

Until now, the risk of slightly stained teeth has been just a small price to pay for the satisfaction and energy boost that coffee brings. However, London-based startup CLR CFF claim to have created the world’s first ‘colorless coffee’—the pair of words itself almost an oxymoron. brewed with high quality arabica coffee beans and pure water, the disconcerting drink promises a ‘fresh, aromatic taste and flavor’ that does not require sugar or milk.

Made with a ‘never before used’ coffee brewing method, the brew comes without the dark brown color of the coffee as we know it , and consequently does not yellow your tooth enamel.

CLR CFF promises that the energy-boosting beverage does not contain preservatives, artificial flavors, stabilizers, sugar or any other sweeteners. the startup—founded by slovakian brothers david and adam nagy—came about after the pair struggled with teeth stains brought about by a caffeine-infused lifestyle. After finding nothing on the market that filled the gap left by coffee without staining their teeth, the duo set out to create a drink brewed with the same arabica beans, that wouldn’t have such a negative effect on their smiles..

There will always be times in the day when you are in desperate need of a caffeine boost, yet no where near the closest café. and for these times, mokase have comprised the answer to your caffeine-deprived prayers, in the shape of a phone case that converts your smartphone into an on-the-go espresso maker. using a simple system of a disposable insert which houses the coffee, and an app that heats it up on demand, the mokase pours out an espresso made by your smartphone.

On setting out to develop a product to brew coffee whilst out and about, Luigi Carfora and clemente biondo of ‘smart k’ had the idea of incorporating it into a gadget already carried around every day—the smartphone. the duo successfully designed a case that measures less than 1cm in thickness,  is completely waterproof and insulates the coffee when brewed. through a side slit in the mokase, the ‘mokaromi’ cartridge is inserted. the coffee—sealed within a vacuum on the inside of the cartridge—is freed when inserted into the phone, as the ‘spout’ breaks the membrane of the vacuum allowing the drink to exit....

Josh Tetrick was standing in a Dollar Tree in Oakland, California, when he asked a customer which brand of mayo was best. The woman pointed to a gleaming white jar of Kraft.But Tetrick asked, “What about the Just Mayo?”–the flagship product of his company Hampton Creek–which sat nearby.

“She said, ‘No, that’s the private-label brand at the Dollar Tree,’” Tetrick recounts. In other words, Just Mayo’s craft paper label–a label that had first been X-Acto-knifed, one at a time, for its initial appearance on shelves at Whole Foods–it didn’t register as some Brooklyn-inspired, vegan artisanal good to this bargain shopper in Oakland. It looked like the generic stuff sold by a budget retailer.

“That was an important learning for me,” says Tetrick. “It shows how important context is in design.” And it cemented a hunch, that Hampton Creek, with the lofty, sometimes controversial goal of bringing sustainable, transparent, healthier processed foods to the mainstream consumer, simply didn’t make sense where many low-income and middle-class consumers were shopping: Walmart and Dollar Tree....

One of the most important skills you can learn as a designer is how to choose type. This is because text is one of the primary ways designers can communicate with users. Typography can make or break a design.

There’s a beauty and complexity to typography. Some people devote their entire careers to type. Thankfully, their work is well documented, so we have tons of online resources for typography.

This article is designed to serve as a starting point for helping you learn how to choose type for your designs. It will encourage you to explore fonts and font combinations beyond those you’re familiar with....

2017 is the year we return to the organic roots and we will see a return to the natural. In terms of colors, the start has been given by Pantone (as every year, in fact), who has crowned the color for 2017 as Greenery, based on it’s meaning of new beginning, freshness and environmentalism. Manifesting as a “fresh and zesty yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring”, Greenery envelops the notion of breathing, reinvigorating and appreciating the great outdoors.

That said, let’s take a closer look at the graphic design trends that define 2017. Most of them influence both print and web design, but some of them are just for the web....