HUMAN BY WONDERLAND #11
Discover more from Creative Currents
HUMAN BY WONDERLAND #11
A newsletter about design and creativity, and how they contribute to a better world.
Hello, Friends.
Welcome to Edition #11 of HUMAN.
This week, we have written an article sharing how our Wonderlanders overcome creative blocks, rounded up our favourite corners of the internet - including the worlds fastest electric plain from Rolls-Royce - and shared Substance, an app helping creatives build purposeful brands. We’ve also shared a bizarre and beautiful collection of hybrid teapots from UO, an agency based in Japan.
If you have time at the end, we’d love it if you could spare a minute or two to fill out the survey at the bottom and let us know what you think of HUMAN!
Enjoy!
How Wonderlanders overcome creative blocks
Wonderlanders, like everyone else, face creative blocks from time to time. Over the past 18 months of WFH, we’ve also gotten pretty good at topping up our creative tanks to re-inspire ourselves. To that end, we thought it would be a good idea to share some of these techniques and methods with our readers, and hopefully help them to overcome their own creative blocks, if and when they arise.
Japanese knife maker, Kai, has developed the world’s first paper razor.
Rolls-Royce's electric plane set a world record after topping 387mph.
The world's first electric autonomous cargo ship, has taken to the water at last.
Curious about how Chipotle creates their Cultivate a better world videos?
Check out the uniquely innovative Kid A Mnesia Radiohead exhibition.
Greece’s government and Microsoft have digitally preserved ancient Olympia.
Apple is (finally) offering customers self-repair parts and manuals.
Inspired by origami and biomimicry, Lunark might be the start of life in space.
Substance: Build on purpose
Founded by James Groves and Stephen Lloyd, Substance is a London-based app designed to give creative agencies insights that they can use to help clients build organisations with purpose.
There is a near-infinite number of inspiring, cool, and exciting brands in the world. But how many of them - when we really stop and look below the surface - do we truly connect with on a deeper level? How many of them feel purpose-driven and honest? This is what Groves and Lloyd hoped to change, with Substance. Groves and Lloyd - both experienced strategists and design and advertising educators - are on a mission to help creatives by giving them the tools they need to build brands with purpose.
Lloyd and Groves describe Substance as a strategic insight application, and have created it with the goal of fine-tuning a brand’s purpose. Currently, there are four workshops that agencies can run with their clients: Purpose, Positioning, Personality, Progress. Groves explains that “by interrogating the client’s DNA to such a rigorous level this way, you can ensure the creative endeavour is perfectly aligned with the organisation’s purpose”. In doing this, and conducting such a “deep analysis – including an exploration of their positioning, personality and the progress they want to make,” creatives gain the confidence in their own creativity to help brands reach their full potential.” It’s an ambitious goal, and one we fully support in our mission to hero examples of design and creativity being used in ways that contribute to a better world.
Especially when it’s so deliberately done on purpose.
Japanese design studio UO has created a hybrid teapot collection exploring the various possibilities of green tea. The unique series reimagines the traditional Japanese teapot, contorting it into a variety of different shapes and challenging people to reimagine ways of making and consuming tea, its varying tastes and production methods styles, and even its purpose.
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Thanks for reading,
Team Wonderland.
