Yes, tomorrow we are undercover to install a revolutionary communication piece for a worldwide brand. Shame that we cant tell you about it except its a world first, its supports the brand message, its both a tech and a materials solution and it looks beautiful. Just checking … nothing given away there.

A truly exciting ‘crystal maze’ style event for bankers to engage with their own brand, understand customer insight and employee insight into their own organsation. Exciting and different!

ING event, Brussels with Designhouse

Swarm teamed up with brand designer Peter Dobie and his Designhouse team to create a stunning Brand Experience for the top 120 management council at the Dutch Bank ING. The brief was simple – design a stunning interactive journey for the bankers to be taken out of their comfort zone and engage with the brand and its projected view to employees and customers.

The challenges came from everywhere including the challenge of satisfying the 120 top people in a bank who have probably seen everything?! How do you include the Dutch brand value ‘orange’? How to include all of the senses? How to fit everything into a real life bank and bank vault in a historical part of Brussells.

Peter created the concept and we delivered the whole event in 2 weeks despite it being in Brussells. A great team effort from Ray and Richard.

Being honest, it was great fun. I would have liked to include a few clever nuances from the world of gamification but time was against the team. Client feedback was overwhelming so I must grumble!!

On a Friday afternoon earlier this year the staff at O2/Telefónica’s head office in Slough started to leave the office for a sunny weekend with their friends and families. They may have noticed a few people in Hi Viz jackets but that would have been normal for a weekend of maintenance and cleaning. But this wasn’t just a normal weekend. Lifting equipment, protective surfaces, scissor lifts, one ton of stainless steel and  a state of the art LED screen and a central control system were all being delivered. At 8am on the Saturday morning a team of eight engineers arrived and at midnight on the Sunday they left. And on the Monday morning at 7am the people at O2/Telefónica had a new installation in their atrium. And this film shows you how we did it.

Swarm designed and produced this state of the art digital sculpture at O2’s new headquarters building in Slough. The brief was for an iconic installation which would communicate the O2 brand to everyone who passed through the building. Meeting the creative brief was only half the project solving the technical challenges took many twists and turns.

Using a unique rubber LED tile it was possible to make a screen which could be viewed from all corners of the atrium. Content is run through a standard LED navigator which pixel matches the imagery to the LEDs. The O2 ribbon has a 1230 x 64 resolution but any resolution is possible. The supporting structure was meticulously designed to ensure the LED pitch remained constant at 10mm.

Manufactured from mild steel, rolled plate was formed around a matrix of interlocked ribs creating a very rigid shape to which the tiles could be attached using rare earth magnets. This construction method allowed for minimum external support and facilitated the fixing of the internal power and data distribution system to each tile. Power and data are fed through the base of the unit and daisy changed along the full length to all 152 tiles. Airflow is managed through the enclosed plennum via the hollowed out ribs.

Finally the ribbon was finished with a mirror polished stainless steel which reflects the surrounding atrium. The ribbon plays any digital content which is frequently updated by O2’s marketing team to reflect new marketing initiatives.

Swarm specialise in raising brand and product awareness through interactive and passive installations. LED screens are just one of the many technologies we use to fulfil our clients needs.

Telefónica UK, which operates the O2 commercial brand in the UK, has installed a state of the art digital sculpture at their new headquarters building in Slough. The Digital Ribbon,  which we designed and built, is a unique representation of O2‘s brand values.

Stretching over 12 metres the ribbon of screens ascends out of the atrium floor, twisting and turning as it winds its way across the reception area like a digital streamer. The polished exterior surface reflects the surrounding environment and the unique LED screens communicate the latest campaigns, strategies and real time information.

Art and engineering come together in the beautiful slender ribbon design which is packed with the latest LED technology. Flexible tiles make up the screen which displays full colour video and graphics at a resolution of 1230 X 64. Achieving the shape in itself was a technical feat. To make the Ribbon effortlessly flow around the space it had to be precisely engineered to ensure it had structural integrity with the minimum of supports. Swarm’s designers and engineers worked meticulously to achieve this. The result is stainless steel ribs which are laser cut, rolled and then assembled as an interlocking 3D puzzle.

The control software ensures the installation is future proof with the opportunity to update content and add peripheral interfaces for interactivity.

Amanda Clay, Head of Brand Management, Telefónica Europe said, “Innovation is at the heart of O2’s DNA, we’re constantly striving to do things differently. Internally is no different. We selected Swam as we wanted something unique in our head office reception, which would capture our employees and visitors imagination and attention.  This is not just a beautiful piece of art, but an effective communications channel.”

Project Director Ray Harris said “This installation perfectly demonstrates the importance of understanding design, materials, technology and manufacturing. The convergence of which sit at the heart of Swarm’s ethos””

Tim and Ray would like to thank the whole team, specifically, Jake Shepherd, Rob Hopkins, Kevin Knight, Tom Elliot, Sam Fazakerley and Metropolitan Works, part of London Metropolitan University.

If you would like more information on this or any other of our projects please get in touch.

Why would a brand want to get their branded content onto a prospects mobile phone ? The phone is part of a users personal space – they view it privately – they view things at their own discretion. That personal feeling can bring the user and brand closer together. Yet it is one of the biggest challenges. Thats why I like QR codes.

QR Readers are available on every mobile platform http://reader.kaywa.com/ and allow brands to add a more personal level to their interaction with the user. This is a link to our website as a starter for 10 to demonstrate how easy QR codes are to interact with,  though the content generated could be a web page, brand video or mp3 track!

I have a rant that I need to share for personal cathartic relief! About 12 months ago, or maybe a little more, we were kindly asked by a design team to examine the technical implications of making a set of interactive stairs. The car marque whose showrooms needed these stairs had a problem getting visitors to the 1st floor.

We were given a YouTube video as reference – you know, the one in the tube station of the Piano Stairs where people playfully jump on the keys and everybody comments ‘fantastic idea’ ‘bring them to our town’ and other such plaudits. To that end we designed a number of ways that these interactive stairs could be matched and further improved upon. Our interactive solution included stairs that lit up when stepped upon, sounds that played, robust materials for durability. The project sounded great. It was a flagship location on the Champs-Elysee in Paris for a major automobile brand.

Well, the automobile company had a major recall and the project lost funding so we didnt get to make a much improved version of the interactive piano stairs … and since that day that video keeps appearing again and again and again!! It came up in two tweets today. So, please Mr Client, put me out of my misery and commission Swarm to make a set of interactive piano stairs. In return I can produce stats to show that the PR will include 14, 378, 121 hits in one year!!

Picture thanks to Dezeen

Swarm have been commissioned to write a number of interactive Apps for iPad. The Apps will feature at The Ideal Home Show. The Swarm interactive development process has the same reliable steps.

These steps are underpinned by a simple timeline usually with contingency – though not in this case as The Ideal Home Show starts in 9 days. Eek! We are Prince2 Project Managers though we have simplified and adapted the process:

1 User Flow – spend time here really flushing out the road map that the user will take when navigating through the App. Be sure to omit any dead ends – a home button always works if all else fails!

2 Wire Frames – make these as ‘Vanilla flavoured’ as possible. The lack of graphics and look and feel means that clients will focus on positioning & function rather than being distracted by ‘bright shiny things’! Swarm use Sketch Flow to create this document.

3 Graphics – a carefully documented graphic procedure is important. Anticipate sizes, format and shapes before starting work on this area. We keep a log of what we have to allow the Designer to design and not administrate.

4 Functional Testing or Soak Testing – pull the interactive App all together and rigorously test it. Does it do everything? Do the graphics all fit the screen? Are the buttons positioned correctly.

And voila!

Swarm are pioneering their way towards true convergence to ensure that there is interaction before (mob or web), during (hardware, installation, mob or web) and after the event, exhibition or retail store visit (mob or web) and to assist this we are providing more and more helpful tools. The latest opportunities are to distribute your clients video content, made into a mobile ready format by us, via an SMS reply, QR code or e-mail.

Swarm can distribute your multimedia content for you!

An increasingly large proportion of our clients are relying on us to distribute their multimedia for them. Getting a ‘mobile ready’ video directly onto somebodies mobile is a powerful and personal brand reinforcing tool.

You may want a fixed price service, or you simply want to out-source your content distribution … you can rely on us to get your message straight into the hands of your target audience.

We offer a fixed price service for content distribution. e-mail or call me for a price.
Simply provide us with your multimedia content – and the details of your target audience – and we will do the rest!

We distribute your multimedia via

1 Email and/or

2 SMS and/or

3 The latest trend, the QR code

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code

…or even across your Social Media sites.