smoking..hot

A lot of people smoke here, despite big prices of the cigarettes and the interdiction to smoke in closed spaces. Here is a nice machine selling your drug. The first 2 are some round boxes with something to chew containing nicotine.

And another nice thing here is you pay with the card everywhere. And they ask you to pass it to the reading side. Here you do it all by yourself:

Branded fabric

The city of Stockholm has all of the chairs in all the trains a pattern that it was custom designed. It's actually a blue background with symbolic buildings and other specific touristic points. I like very much the idea.

Socializing McDonalds

I went (by mistake/chance) to a Mc here in Stockholm and i noticed this huge tables where a lot of people can stay and chat. I'm not used to see in a Mc so much social space. Usually everyone has it's own chair and the tables are for 2, 4, and i don't know if bigger. Check out how big they are and how this changes the way people interact. Actually i think is the other way around. Because of cultural differences, they designed the tables to respond to a predominant need here.



And the lights were different, and everything was made much more personal, not so much American fast food type.

Milk, juice and tea packiging

Just enjoy it:

Romania did it again

Thank you for not letting us up. I don't know which is worst: the fact that they don't care, the fact that they search for it on iStock, that the actual symbol cost 250$ and the campaign was 900k, or the harsh really of the inexpressive, actually totally ugly logo.

The new brand is this:


inspired by this:



And used in a lot of other contexts:
http://changetransport.com/
http://www.realitatea.net/frunza-din-logo-ul-romaniei-a-aparut-si-intr-o-campanie-a-oltchim-din-2009_725671.html

You can read the rest here: http://www.piticu.ro/

And all this happens one year after the last "rebranding": "Romania, the land of choice".
We can actually do this every year. Any PR is a good PR for a dead country, right?
Next year i would like to be something about the fish shape and the fact that we try to keep up with the smell.

Cheers

Prima bere, primul conflict.
Pe post de noroc sta un cuvant atat de familiar noua. Ceva care seamana cu "skol". La inceput am crezut ca numele berii a fost imprumutat din cuvantul suedez "noroc". La o simpla traducere cuvantul "skol" inseamna "scoala" (in suedeza), dar se citeste skuul. Insa cuvantul "skål" care se citeste scol inseamna intr-adevar "noroc" sau "cheers", in functie de compania pe care o aveti.

self shoping device

After becoming a member of this chain supermarket, you get a member card and you can start self shopping.

So you pass your card through the machine and you'll get a device that you take in and you scan all you products as you put them in your basket. At the exit nobody checks your bag, you just pay what is on your machine.

Great, ei?



more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_checkout

branding SPORT

Today i took a walk on the coast near Nynäshamn city. This is a small fishermen city with 13000 inhabitants and great surroundings. Rock and sea. Take a look:






The strange thing about this trip was seeing some devices out in the woods specially designed for working out. And they had different groups of muscles. And they were functional. Take a look:





What more do you need? It's a very convincing invitation. Go run, hike, walk, bike, stretch. It's a statement of what it should be.

Nynäshamn, the city of ducks

I know it's confusing, but i can prove it.
First of all you'll see this huge statues with ducks. But their not very nice:(



And they are all over the place



And you have to watch after them

But it's all inspired by life:




I stick to my opinion that every city has its animal symbol. In Stuttgart you'll find rabbits, in Bucharest you'll find dogs and in my home town, Brasov, you'll find bears. Keep you posted as i explore more.

Coke

You know Coke is everywhere. Hey, don't worry, it wasn't my first option when i got here, it just surprised me. (here goes very well with beer, and that's exactly what i had)
Coming back to the surprise part, here is how it happen. Having a beer on the harbor of Nynashamn in the middle of the night I notice an umbrella with a slogan including "break". I instantly thought of Kitty Kat. But it was something else. It was a Coca Cola umbrella with the slogan "refresh your break". For me personally it doesn't make any sense. Maybe breaks are very important here. But the actually surprising thing is that the umbrellas were black. You can even tell that from the picture. What do you say about that?

cronological

First it was the fight. In order to get to Stockholm I had a stop in Milan and then headed to Sweden. Both planes i flew were Lufthansa.
The thing that strike me was that on both planes the fight attendants were two women and a man.

Do you have any idea how this can affect your perception? It’s a lot more comforting to get safety instructions from a man. I wonder if this is the company policy and if this is the explanation for it.

What's with a new blog?

1 610 11.0 As you can imagine from the name it's about a particular outside world related with products designed by humans. Products in a very general sense of the term.
Its all about brand perception, about the silent message they send us. This is suppose to be a personal blog because subjectivity is its main function. Please don’t expect the truth, but do expect the impression. It’s all about feeling, view, intuition and closeness. That’s why we count on words, because they mean something, and that’s why we draw because it speaks to us more the anything else. This is an attempt to read that.

This blog started in a very key moment in my life. I just started a month trip in Scandinavian countries.
It's more like a comparison trip, a first impression journal and a case study.
Enjoy