Category: Technology

Viral Marketing

Virtual Supermarket — Wait No More

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Up until now QR code technology has seemed more gimmicky than practical. Holding your smart phone up against a QR matrix on a magazine page or a storefront window to reveal the secondary message feels like a bothersome extra step that quickly grows tiresome.

But here’s a QR use that promises real convenience and time-savings. Tesco Homeplus in South Korea opened virtual supermarkets in subway stations, permitting commuters to use their smart phones to make grocery purchases. Designed by Cheil ad agency in Seoul, wall-size displays along the passenger waiting platform simulate the experience of shopping in a real supermarket, showing images and prices of a broad range of frequently needed products. Shoppers merely have to scan the QR code of any product they want to purchase to add it to their online shopping cart. The transaction is all completed online and the purchased items are delivered straight to shoppers’ homes.

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Global Trends

Anti-Forgery Passport Design

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Over the next few years, it is likely that many countries will be redesigning their travel passports. The purpose isn’t to make them more attractive, which certainly they can use, but to deter increasingly more sophisticated and dangerous counterfeiters.

Along with hi-res micro images, encrypted biometric information, hidden data chips and other security devices, passports are being issued with different full-color images on every page. They aren’t just any kind of image, but ones using microprinting, holograms, fluorescent dyes, thermochromatic inks, ornamental patterns made with a geometric lathe, intaglio, watermarks, and magnetic inks, among other techniques. All this is for public safety, but since nations are investing millions of dollars anyway, it would be nice if they gave some thought to the aesthetic quality of the new design while they are at it. Like currency and postage stamps, passports can be used to communicate the beauty, style and uniqueness of the issuing country.

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Susainability

If You Could Ride on a Plant

By Delphine Hirasuna |

YeZ, this is just a concept car, but consider the possibilities. Developed by Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) in partnership with General Motors and Volkswagen, YeZ, which means “leaf” in Mandarin, not only absorbs carbon dioxide and water molecules from the atmosphere, it exhales oxygen. Through solar panels on its roof and wind turbines in its wheels, YeZ generates energy that it stores in its lithium ion batteries. YeZ is like a mechanized photosynthesis process. It is still a concept and only seats two, and no one has said how fast it can go, but consider the possibilities.

Printing Techniques

Laser Print Your Latte

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Laser printers can work on virtually any substrate these days, including stenciling a design onto the foam of your latte. Even though the technology has been around for a few years now, probably it hasn’t become widespread for two reasons. One, the process is relatively slow, which wouldn’t work in a high-volume coffee house. Two, professional baristas who take pride in drawing leaf patterns, swans, smiley faces and swirls on the foam would probably take offense if an automated machine one-upped them by drawing Mocha Lisas and Macchiato Mondrians. The relentless march of technology, however, says that barista artistry may someday be replaced by a robotic arm. The way it works is that precise dots of caramel food coloring are dropped onto the foam dot-by-dot to draw logos, brand taglines, web addresses, holiday greetings, and even very detailed pictures. This doesn’t require unique talent, just a latte art machine. The thought of seeing a marketing pitch imprinted on my latte isn’t very appealing. Still, when placing your latte order, prepare to someday specify caf, decaf; foam, low foam; printed or unprinted.

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Advertising

Point, Click, Shop

By Delphine Hirasuna |

From Gizmodo comes this report of how the façade of an entire building in a Tokyo shopping district has been covered in a pattern of QR codes that can be read by smart phones. The N Building AR project by Teradadesign and Qosmo lets passersby view the QR code on their cell phone to enable the display of all kinds of information, including store offerings and interactive ads. It will even allow users to download coupons and make reservations. This is an intriguing concept, but it may meet consumer resistance. Without in-your-face advertising, it may be hard to draw the attention of people who don’t want to be bother holding their cell phones up at QR patterns on a building to see what they have to say. Still, like many other inventions that were initially discounted as futuristic fantasy, QR codes as a communication device should be ignored at your own peril. In recent years we have seen too many “safe” communication design/marketing professions disappear for lack of demand. If QR advertisements on buildings and billboards catch on, who will that affect, how will it change our jobs, and how do we get ahead of the trend rather than be trampled by it?