Helsinki, the capital of Finland, has taken it's green initiatives to a new level by installing 8 talking bins. 2 million Euros are spent every year on cleaning up the public spaces there, but this scheme aims to encourage locals and tourists to can their littering habits.

Topics of discussion range from politics and religion to comedy and culture. Both the public and the council have hailed them as a great success.

Design Tribe loves anyone who's doing their bit for the environment. I wonder if they do a bilingual version?

Labels: environment, green, tourism

June 22nd to 28th is National Recycle Week, and they've done a thorough job at taking their campaign online with a multitude of nicely branded facebook applications and features on their website allowing users to publicise the event.

This year, the theme for Recycle Week is "let's waste less..." encouraging all of us to try something new in an effort to go greener and cut back on the waste we all produce.

Labels: branding, environment, pledge, recycle, social networking, web 2.0

Google look like they might be moving into law enforcement after two Dutch men who robbed a 14-year-old of cash and a cellphone last September, were arrested after their victim identified them on a photo on an online mapping service.

"Police managed to track down the men, twins aged 24, thanks to Google Street View" said Groningen police.

Their victim contacted investigators after he found a photo online taken moments before the robbery.

"As the faces were unrecognisable, Dutch police made contact with Google in the US, and received the original photograph by mail in June. An investigator immediately recognised one of the suspects," said the statement.

One of the two subsequently confessed.

Perhaps it's not a Web 2.0 invasion of privacy after all?!

Labels: Google, photography, street view, web 2.0

New research suggests that email marketing in the US will reach $2 billion by 2014. This isn't exactly in line with research from JupiterRearch earlier this year, which suggested $2.1 billion in 2012, but it's looking good for the industry nonetheless.

This new research comes from Forrester Research, who says that falling CPMs (cost per thousands), higher ROI (return on investment) and growing consumer use of social email accounts will all contribute to the use of email by direct marketing professionals. The firm says that in five years consumers will opt-in to receive over 9,000 email marketing messages annually.

Forrester's research cites the following as key growth areas for shaping the future of email marketing:

- Retention email - email that recipients have blessed with their permission - will continue to replace paper communications and will make up the largest share of marketing messages. Retention emails will account for more than a one-third of all marketing messages in consumers' inboxes by 2014, representing increased competition for marketers.

- While the bulk of the market will continue to deploy email marketing on a self-service basis, the growing complexity associated with data integration and new tactics to increase relevancy will drive healthy growth in use of email service providers.

- Spending on opt-in ad-sponsored or ad-supported newsletters will double over the next five years as traditional print publishers face falling circulation and ad revenue.

Social media has brought an interesting new element into the world of email marketing. This element brings with it both opportunities and challenges. "The use of email in social networks will be one of the biggest challenges for direct marketers," says Forrester Research Vice President and Principal Analyst David Daniels. "Over the next five years, marketers must bridge the gap between social and traditional inboxes with social sharing tools."

Labels: campaigns, email, emarketing, flaming arrow, marketing, online, promotion, research

Labels: bike, skill, video

Google's latest special logo re-jig is for the 25th anniversary of Tetris on June 6th. Google must think they can't ignore the birthday of one of the most iconic video game brands of all time (it even hold's nine world records.)



It's a little depressing to think I'm two years older than this gaming classic!

If you don't know what all the fuss is about - read the Wiki entry for Tetris here.

Labels: branding, classic, game, logo, old school, tetris

As we're delighted to be working with Keep Wales Tidy at the moment, and we love branding of all shapes and sizes, we were interested to see the new Keep Britain Tidy brand as designed by Brand Catalyst.

The brand has been designed with flexibility in mind - the new 'Keep It Tidy' philosophy allows for usage in campaigns on a regional and local scale e.g. 'Cardiff -Keep It Tidy' and 'Your Park - Keep It Tidy'.

It's not often that an opportunity to utilise the spelling and formation of words results in such a simple but effective message.



Design Week's full write up can be found here.

Labels: branding, campaign, design, graphic communication, logo

E3 - the video games industry's flagship event - is currently underway in Los Angeles and has resulted in something of a bombshell from Microsoft.

Since the doldrum years of the late nineties and early naughties when everything Sony touched seemed to turn to gold, Microsoft have been making consistent and significant improvements to the XBox 360 and XBox Live to keep them at the forefront of video game technology.

Their latest announcement could change the entertainment world as we know it.

Project Natal is a motion sensing camera system that detects player body movement. No control pad necessary! Players can score goals by kicking a virtual football or throw knockout punches with their bare fists.

It also responds to voice commands, directions, and changes in tone of voice.

The industry is certainly doing it's best to dispel the myth that video games are for couch potatoes.

You simply HAVE to check out this video!



Or read more about the product here.

Labels: 360, controller, interact, joystick, natal, xbox