Zaha Hadid

Wow!

Abu Dhabi Performing Arts Center designed by Zaha Hadid.

Sales Force Insight

As we've recently discussed here, we've been working on the design of our packaging to make our products a lot more gift-worthy than they are right now (sorry to our loyal and patient existing customers!). However, even after we start giving out better looking gift bags there will always be an inevitable problem: since we can't forecast all the sizes of all our future products, it's likely that we'll always have off-size products. These products will either be too small (it looks ridiculous whenever you give an item that's far smaller than the gift bag it's in) or too big relative to our standard-sized packaging.

One of our sales people - Juvy from our Eastwood store - proposed a great solution today: invest in gift wrapping paper. It takes care of any possible off-sizes and it's actually cheaper on a per unit basis than gift bags. To avoid the heavy cost of printing our own glossy paper wrap, she proposed picking a nice clean standard design and use sticker seals to brand the package instead. Simple and brilliant.

This just goes to show how much it pays to listen to your ground troops who have the most intimate contact with your customers.

Coffee With Avellana & Associates

Advertising agency Avellana & Associates had a very refreshing presentation this morning on how they wanted to push our brand. The driving theme behind their proposed campaign was to make people aware of our "feel-good" company principles and values.

What we find really exciting is their ambition to not just make it known that we provide the most huggable toys in the city, but also for us to actually make a feel-good impact on our increasingly overworked, overbuzzed and overcaffeinated culture.

It's also gonna be a good thing for this blog if we push through with them because then there's gonna be a ton of cool stuff to write about.

So right now our fingers are anxiously crossed on how much it's all gonna cost (*ahem!* we know they're reading this).

Grad Ball Tour Update

We're excited to have the illustration services of Karla Lim for our Grad Ball Tour material.

Here's a sample of her previous work.

We can't wait to see how she brings our ideas to life.

Fashion Forward

Our parent company runs clothing brands so you could say that fashion gave birth to us.

In the future, we might return to our roots.

What would It's Cool garments look like? It would have the playful tone of Narumiya and the sporty innovation of Y-3 (a collaboration between Yohji Yamamoto and Adidas).

Images taken from Sample by Phaidon Press.

*Sorry for the poor quality of the images. We wanted to scan these pages from the book, but the book was too big.

Grad Ball Tour Update

We've started some work on promotional material for Pink's Grad Ball Tour. Here's an excerpt of an email we sent to a designer:

1. for the tarp, i'm thinking we just keep it cute and basic. see the attached picture titled "Cool Kids." my idea is we replicate this shot in illustration/animated form using the character (maybe a "boy" version of the character can wear a neck tie and a "girl" version can wear a corsage?) or a boy/girl couple that's drawn the same way. then we add just a little visual cue to "personalize" it per school. so for the masquerade, they'll have masks in hand for example. then we put the following quote next to the image:

"and cool kids...they belong together." - Karen O

then finally our logo on the lower right corner.

2. for the table stands, i'm thinking we can do "no awkward silences" signs. like a "no smoking" sign but for awkward silences =) so we just do a nice color illustration of the character or a boy/girl couple with blank stares (refer to attached image "Awkward Silence") on their faces. then once again, visual cue to "personalize" it. then we enclose the image inside a red circle that's crossed with a diagonal line just like the one in the "no smoking" sign. then put the text "no awkward silences" at the bottom of the image. and of course again, the logo =)

what do you think?

Going on Tour With Pink

For this month of March we're hitching a ride on Pink Magazine's Grad Ball Tour. We're going to be contributing to the souvenir gift bags of the following schools:

1. De La Salle Zobel
2. Immaculate Conception Academy
3. Miriam High School
4. Chang Kai Shek

Definitely hope we can do our part in making these nights a bit more memorable for everyone.