The Sartorialist creator and fashion blogger extraordinaire, Scott Schuman, is one of the newest faces of The Gap.

Shooting images of fashion inspiration on the streets of the world’s chicest cities and shooting from the hip with spot-on commentary, Schuman dominates the fashion blogging scene, reporting on trends for the common folk and the fashion elite.

With names like Bergdorf’s and Saks under his belt, Shuman’s shift to hawking the more mass-appeal Gap brand could represent the reality of the economic downturn for the catwalk set. But this time, he’s not behind the scenes styling or opining; he’s a subject of the fall ’08 advertising campaign.

From avant-garde fashion designers to underground DJs, The Gap has shifted its spokesperson focus from celebrities to cutting edge style makers. Is the khakis-and-tees crowd ready for a more fashion forward campaign with edgier, behind-the-scenes faces? Is the blogosphere even shopping at The Gap, or will this campaign miss the mark by leveraging these scarcely known (but widely read) names to a mainstream crowd? Only sales will tell.

Shuman may be one of the biggest influences in the fashion information super highway, but in the wake of competitor Zara taking the lead over the Gap as the world’s largest fashion retailer, the stakes are higher and the real question remains: can bloggers sell jeans?

AMC’s acclaimed TV series, “Madmen”, is an interesting comparison to today’s Ad agencies and Brand Consultants. If you’ve never seen the show, it’s set in 1960s New York and follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising. On the recent Episode 4, the execs of Sterling Cooper Advertising are preparing for a big pitch to American Airlines. I was struck by something that Don Draper, the lead creative exec, asked his team: “Did you design the menu yet? Did you pick out a china pattern?”. Really? I thought. Did Ad agencies get into those types of touchpoints? It seems that Sterling Cooper was selling more than just an ad campaign, and actually an immersive brand experience.

In the 1960’s, there were no “brand consultants”. As the market became more saturated in the 80’s & 90’s, more firms began to specialize in areas outside of advertising (identity, packaging, environments). This caused companies to divvy up their brand touchpoints and assign them to several different firms. Now we’re in a time where a holistic brand image is more valuable than ever. Perhaps Sterling Cooper’s integrated approach can teach us that blurring the lines between Advertising and Brand Experience is crucial to a Brand’s success.

It’s easy to be irked by what some are calling innovation these days. Just because it’s new, doesn’t make it innovative. For instance, is the latest automotive design particularly innovative? We’ve been re-noodling and re-dressing the same transportation model for over a century. Innovation should entail pioneering and the ability to fundamentally alter people’s perspective. Everything else seems to be reinvention, at best.

Real innovation is out there, however. Theo Jansen, a Dutch sculptor and engineer, comes to mind. Using genetic algorithms, Jansen has created a series of large-scale, animated sculptures which he releases into an environment, observing and analyzing their performance. The physical mechanics of his work are simple, intriguing and elegant, and the conceptual complexity behind the work is captivating. Jansen’s models for artificial life contradict everything that contemporary technology has worked toward and everything contemporary culture has envisioned for how an integrated society may look someday. Forget about Rosie the Jetsons’ maid-robot, and think herds of kinetic species roaming wild, deriving energy and direction from the natural environment.

I remember reading once that an orange, as it exists in nature, can be viewed as the ultimate product design; simple built-in packaging, surprisingly beautiful once unwrapped, and living in complete balance with its environment. No one has quite hit the orange benchmark in design, but Theo Jansen appears to be well on his way. And considering that he’s building intelligent creatures without a lick of silicon, anyone concerned about a future with limited energy resources should pay keen attention to what he’s doing and harness his learnings.

ttp://www.strandbeest.com
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/theo_jansen_creates_new_creatures.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcR7U2tuNoY

This is a great piece from our friend Jennifer van der Meer.

The Crowd Will Save Us: How the green movement taps participatory networks to drive innovation

The emergence of more user-centered-thinking has given designers an influence well beyond the old drafting table. Upstream in the product development process, designers can now leverage tools like ethnography and sophisticated needs analysis. When given the opportunity, these methods drive the whole development process towards more meaningful and commercially viable innovation. These user-centered methods are the precursor for solving the green problem.

We reached Continuum at 630pm (slightly behind schedule, in keeping with the IDDS style) and were delighted to find a huge array of food had been prepared for us. We were graciously received by all the Continuum staff and they even had the courtesy of providing name badges for those of us who had forgotten our IDDS versions! Continuum’s President, Gianfranco Zaccai, welcomed us with a short speech in which he stressed the importance of conferences such as IDDS for helping to foster new ideas and new ways of solving real life problems through design innovations. He pointed out that even though it was possible to send a man to the moon–using an almost unlimited amount of time and resources–the task of designing a simple, cheap, effective and implementable technology was in fact far more difficult and required far more innovation.

The participants and the Continuum employees then split into two groups, one of which went on a tour of the building, while the other listened to presentations given by IDDS participants. I was in the first group and we were treated to presentations from Mariela Molina, Bryce Butcher, Suprio Das and Bernard Kiwia. Mariela, of Universidad Rafael Landivar Guatemala and Bryce, of Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA), talked about two very different projects. Mariela told the group of the work she was doing on water purification through solar panels and then Bryce followed this with an interesting presentation on a latrine design project entitled “Eco Loo”. Bryce worked with fellow team members from the California Institute of Technology and her own college to attempt “to provide simple, efficient solutions to the latrine problem in developing countries”. Her team went on a field trip to Guatemala to discover more information and then developed a design that they believe could help to stop the spread of latrine caused disease. To find out more about Bryce’s project check out their website.

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On 15 January 2001, Wikipedia introduced the first online encyclopedia that could be edited by anyone, forever changing the way we seek expert information. While critics scoffed at Wiki’s accuracy and scope, Nature concluded in a recent study that it competes pretty darn well with the original pillar of accuracy, Encyclopedia Britannica.

An exciting development in this brave new wiki-world is the introduction this year of Green Wiki. It is certainly a welcome development in a thought-space where there are more questions than answers, and knowledge and experience are plentiful but diffuse. Here’s hoping that it will prove to be an equally able concentrator of all things green.