NEXTNESS

To keep up to date and make sure we’re sharing what’s now and what’s next, we follow a lot of blogs. Art, design and literature. Science, management and tech. And of course other agencies. (Take a look at our blogroll on our site’s sidebar if you’d like to see some of our favourites.) Recently, the agency blogs we’ve been loving all have one thing in common. BERG, More & Co and Made by Many: they all give us a glimpse into their process.

Design consultancy BERG have high profile clients like the BBC – but you might remember them for their Little Printer which generated a lot of buzz a few months ago. It’s hard to believe that such interesting work come from a relatively small office in London. On their blog they routinely detail what each member of their small team is working on, from complex UX projects to “Simon has just brought in bacon sandwiches for everyone,” in a weekly blog post they call Weeknotes.

Last month, CEO and Principal at BERG Matt Webb used Weeknotes to describe “a pretty heavy week, dealing with some of that kind of stuff where (a) the best person in the company to deal with it is me, and (b) it’s tiring to think about.”

Switching rapidly between conversations that delight me and mental work that grinds me down has its own particular effect: to be fully involved in each activity, the feelings appropriate to the other activity have to be contained or suspended for the moment, and it’s that continual packing/unpacking/repacking that creates a novel kind of tiredness, a kind that I can only describe as – I don’t know whether this word exists outside the UK – radgy.

He goes on to talk about not being sure whether something was bad… or he was just negative. It’s a fascinating read for all managers of innovative or creative work, which depends so much on motivation, energy and mood. Obviously they’re doing something right (in a huge write-up of them, the New York Times say they’re at the forefront of experiments in humanizing technology) so it’s both fascinating and educational to take a glimpse behind the scenes.

In Portland, creative studio More & Co maintain a blog called Notes.

Using a mix of analog and digital photograhy, mixtapes, sketches and illustrations, they take us behind the scenes in the office, their shared meals and drinks.

It’s astute marketing for their art direction and styling services; each post is so beautiful it looks like it could be in a magazine. They post outtakes from and teasers for upcoming work; their subscribers are excited to see what the talented team turn their hand to next.

Meanwhile, digital product and service design company Made by Many use their blog almost as a whiteboard,  taking readers behind the scenes of key decisions they make while creating their products and campaigns.

A perfect example of this is their new app, Picle. It all started back in May 2011 when a team member posted What would Instagram sound like? He experimented, and wrote,

…what I found looking back was that the photos seemed to take on a new dimension, they come to life, allowing you to remember and relive as if you were there, which the alternative, video, can sometimes overcomplicate. It’s the halfway point that allows you to document the best bits with the pro’s of each medium. Whether the journey works as an idea, I’m not sure, but as an addition to individual images, it could be interesting?

Now, a year later, their app Picle is gaining steam. A stylish and easy-to-use little app, it records the sounds that surround you as you take a still photograph. You can see it in action in this stream from the London cultural hub the Southbank Centre.

The team is still using the blog to tease out what next for Picle, turning it into a living example of the Lean product innovation approach before its launch at SXSW, and showing how they grew and evolved from the first minimum viable product.

And most recently,

It sounds rather existential, but by watching how people use Picle and feedback to us, we have had to ask some deeper questions than ‘How can we get more people using the app?’

With all behind-the-scenes blogs, it can be scary to let people in. Isn’t it giving away trade secrets? Doing work for free? Opening yourself up for mockery or copying or both?

On this, we like to quote Rhizome’s Joanne McNeil:

Revealing influences is the confidence of a true creative person: you can see where the ideas come from, because even with the same ingredients I know you can’t bake what I’m about to with it.

Long live the process blog.

If any STW Group companies want to use Nextness to take our readers behind the scenes of their next campaign or product, tweet us.

4 comments

1. There’s work and then there’s your life’s work.

This, apparently, is the note given to new Apple employees, via Smithery.

2. Ralphy?

Two cane toads sit on a road at night as a car approaches… AdWeek implores its readers to “weep for the toads.” We say, “weep for everyone who’s not Australian and doesn’t get the genius of this.” JWT Melbourne for Ford.

3. Unstoppable.

Made for the Canadian Paralympic Committee by BBDO Toronto, this ad was shot in one go as bad weather threatened to flood the set. We won’t give any more away, but after you’ve watched the clip, view the print ad. Chills. (H/T David Wolf.)

4. Speaking of chills and tear-jerkers.

UK department store John Lewis is the father of this kind of ad, so perfectly engineered to make you cry that even lawyers achieve it. (Via Almost Always Thinking.)

5. Sounds.

Cleverness in this ad for Lisbon Zoo; click to make it bigger. (Via creative criminals.)

6. Maurice Sendak on life and death.

The creator of iconic children’s books passed away yesterday aged 83.

7. Nike Live for London: a love letter to the Olympic city.

“… a celebration of the London set against the backdrop of the approaching summer. This is a portrait of London; its characters, its buildings, its youth, its sports, its energy, its history, and its future. This is a BIG UP to London. Shot over a 10 day period, the film is a personal snapshot of the four corners of the capital through the eyes of 15 inspiring young Londoners at a time of year when it captures the imagination of tennis fans all over the world.” Why does this feel so fresh?

8. Brittany Meyer.

Loving her whole look.

9. Word.

A truer tweet was never tweeted.

10. See above.

A Japanese tweeter’s pic of the supermoon: スーパームーンをキャッチしたワン！ #supermoon on Twitpic (Via jomc)

4 comments