protein journal 5

Prote in Journal Issue #05Prote in Journal Issue #05Prote in Journal Issue #05

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Prote in Journal Welcome / Feed / Br ie f ing / Prof i le / Gal lery / Guide / Data

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Issue #05Prote in Journal Welcome / Feed / Br ie f ing / Prof i le / Gal lery / Guide / Data

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Issue #05

We like to look at things a little differently here at Protein. Which is why in this, our fifth issue, we take a look at the changing face of online influence, examine London’s booming craft beer scene, explore local internet community radio with Dalston’s NTS and track down Matt W. Moore at Barcelona’s OFFF festival. Plus there’s the usual awesome data viz, social insight and of course INSA’s Girls on Bikes.

For those that are new to Protein, we are a cultural operating system that includes daily insights, in-depth reports, integrated apps and invite-only events all accessed through our members service, Protein OS:

http://prote. in/os

William Rowe, September 2011

Welcome

General: journal@prote. in

Editorial: editorial@prote. in

Advertising: sales@prote. in

Distribution: distr ibution@prote. in

Contributors

William [email protected]

Addie ChinnManaging [email protected]

Max ReynerHead of [email protected]

Max SpencerArt [email protected]

Contact us

Jonathan FaganInsight Analyst

Teddy FitzhughContributing Photographer

Chloe RahallContributing Designer

Gigi BarkerEditorial Assistant

Kate BerryFeed Correspondant

Sara KabiriFeed Correspondant

Alex ShepherdFeed Correspondant

Stephen FortuneFeed Correspondant

Nadia SaccardoFeed Correspondant

Nicole KobilanskyFeed Correspondant

Tarik FontenelleFeed Correspondant

Holly VennellFeed Correspondant

Protein UK, 18 Hewett Street, London, EC2A 3NNProtein US, 96 Diamond Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222Protein AU, 285 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, 3182Protein DE, 116 Chausseestrasse, Berlin, 10115

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Prote in Journal Welcome / Feed / Br ie f ing / Prof i le / Gal lery / Guide / Data Issue #05

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Contents


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Issue #05

Feed

Editor’s Picks

Submitted by Prote in

Robotic Painting Machine

A robot that can hear? Benjamin Grosser’s mechanical creation paints art in response to what it hears.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/robotic-painting-machine

Stop Motion Sculpture

Designers in Melbourne have created a real-life stop-motion animation with a public piece of art.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/stop-motion-sculpture

Coutume Cafe

Making coffee is a laboratory process at new Parisian café Coutume.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/coutume-cafe

Nike Graphic Art Studio

Nike has just launched a new gallery show in the US that explores the brand’s graphic history.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/09/nike-graphic-art-studio

Braille iPad

The iPad changed how we use touch-screens. But if you’re visually impaired? The Omnifer has a solution.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/brai l le-ipad

Arsenal 125

Football and art combine as Arsenal celebrates its 125th anniversary at the Saatchi gallery in London.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/arsenal-125

Sensory Lab

Melbourne’s Sensory Lab has travelled to London to offer coffee-lovers an immersive brew experience.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/sensory-lab

The Emotional Breakdown

The Emotional Breakdown web tool measures the happiness of people around the world.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/the-emotional-breakdown

The web is an endless sea of information. But who has the time to sift through it all? The Protein Feed is here to help. It’s a daily update of what’s important, new and next in the world of fashion, music, food, film, culture, art and design. Here are our picks from the last couple of months.

http://prote. in/feed

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Electronic Tattoos

A scientific research team has developed wearable electronics that can be applied to skin.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/electronic-tattoos

Talk to Me

New York’s Museum of Modern Art launches an exhibition about innovative and intelligent technology.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/talk-to-me

La Gelatiera

An ice cream shop features a book telling the stories of the materials used in its interior.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/09/la-gelatiera

Visual Complexity

Visual Complexity is a new book about data visualisation that shows us the beauty in information.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/visual-complexity

The Big Yellow Rabbit

A sculpture of a giant yellow rabbit has popped up in a small town in Sweden.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/the-big-yel low-rabbit

Haberdashery East

DIY-hackers Technology Will Save Us has created a haberdashery for tech in London’s East End.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/09/haberdashery-east

Slow Tech: Designs for Digital Downtime

Protein teams up Henrietta Thompson to produce an exhibition about digital downtime.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/09/slow-tech

Sarah Illenberger

Artist Sarah Illenberger’s new book details her imaginative three-dimensional illustration work.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/sarah-i l lenberger

And Darkness Descended

Theatre company Punchdrunk has turned the arches of a railway station into an alternative universe.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/09/and-darkness-descended


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Time Printing Machine

A new DIY printer that takes over 20 hours to print a colour image is bringing craft back to the desktop.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/t ime-printing-machine

BMW Guggenheim Lab

A new public forum in New York by BMW and the Guggenheim hopes to improve urban life.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/bmw-guggenheim-lab

Object Abuse

A cat flap made from a flat cap and other functional designs feature in KK Outlet’s latest exhibition.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/09/object-abuse

DFC Taco Shack

Our favourite chef Dante Fried Chicken opens a 3-day pop-up taco shack at our concept space.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/09/the-ldn-taco-shack

Cinemetrics

Cinemetrics is a piece of data-viz software that breaks films down into a readable visual fingerprint.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/cinemetrics

Lego Greenhouse

Sebastian Bergne’s LEGO greenhouse explores how the toy can function beyond the playroom

http://prote. in/feed/2011/09/lego-greenhouse

WikiHouse

WikiHouse is an Open Community project that lets people construct their own buildings.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/wikihouse

Data Hack Day

Protein and onedotzero combines forces to host a Data Hack Day at the London Transport Museum.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/09/data-hack-day

Visiomento

Brooklyn-based indie band The Drums launch their own online channel.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/visiomento-by-the-drums

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Read Unread Bookshelf

A new bookshelf gives you a gentle nudge to help you through that pile of untouched books.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/read-unread-bookshelf

Urban Outfitters Bike Shop

Levi’s teams up with Urban Outfitters to open a traveling bike repair shop across the US.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/urban-outf itters-bike-shop

Rooftop Takeover

Foodie collectives The Clove Club and The Young Turks take over Peckham’s rooftop café, Frank’s.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/rooftop-takeover

How Do You Wear Your Lacoste?

Lacoste teams up with LOOKBOOK.nu to let people win cash for showing off their stylish looks.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/how-do-you-wear-lacoste

Rizlab

Brooklyn-based indie band The Drums launch their own online channel.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/07/rizlab

Secret Sensory Suppers

A dining event at this year’s London Design Festival goes beyond the typical restaurant experience.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/09/secret-sensory-suppers

Swallowable Perfume

Lucy McRae is working on a capsule that once digested can omit perfume from our skin.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/swallowable-perfume

Wacom Inkling

The Wacom Inkling is a new scanning device that turns any notebook sketch into a digital image.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/09/wacom-inkl ing

Eternity Clock

An installation made from 36 electronic clocks spells the word Eternity every 12 hours.

http://prote. in/feed/2011/08/eternity-clock


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There is an old and wise Czech proverb that reads: ‘a fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it is always better to be thoroughly sure.’ Beer, good beer, one could argue, has been integral to our communities for some 10,000 years, ever since the Neolithic Revolution when we decided to lay aside our hunter-gatherer garb and settle down.

But the thoroughly established beer market as we’ve known it in the UK is changing. The honourable craft of brewing is coming to the fore in London with a group of new local breweries. And its swelling popularity can be aligned with a wider trend towards craftsmanship that has been spreading throughout a range of industries.

Like many a great idea, Ian Burgess’ eureka moment came to him in the middle of drinking a cold refreshing beer. He was on holiday from the UK in Australia, relaxing on a beach with a bottle of Coopers, one of the country’s finest hand-crafted ales.

As he looked down at the bottle in his hand, he thought: “Why isn’t someone doing this in London? This would go down really well back in London Fields.”

And it did. Just last month, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, a crowd of East Londoners gathered at an old railway arch for the launch of London Fields Brewery, Burgess and his partner Jules Whiteway’s new microbrewery. Burgess is no stranger to the drinks industry. He made his name as the founder of London’s Climpson and Sons coffee, one of the pioneers behind the surge in local independent coffee shops.

But with his latest venture, Burgess and Whiteway join a number of London-based entrepreneurs that have recently set up small-scale breweries. There’s The Kernel, standing in a railway arch on the increasingly popular Maltby Street Market near Tower Bridge.

Rise of the Beer Makers

Submitted by Addie Chinn & Jonathan Fagan

Briefing

“There are a number of young drinkers - the hipsters - that are drinking these craft beers. These younger people are looking for something different, with full flavour and nice packaging.”

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East London Brewing Company opened this summer in Bethnal Green. Redchurch Brewery is about to launch in Shoreditch. And there’s rumours of a Hackney-based brewery opening in the next six months.

London is playing catch up to a wider small-scale real ale trend. Over in the US, particularly in areas like Portland, the craft beer trend is notably entrenched. With annual growth peaking in the mid-1990s, according to the Brewers Association, microbreweries now represent over 97% of America’s 1700-plus breweries, of which the ‘regional craft’ sub-sector is a growing element. And it’s grown beyond America, too. “In Denmark,” says Mikkel Borg Bjergsø, founder of the Danish Mikkeller Beer, “we had a ‘beer revolution’ 10 years ago. I think we’re seeing this same trend in UK at the moment: going from traditional towards experimental.”

Back in the London things are starting to stir. And behind this resurgence in small-scale beers is a new type of beer enthusiast, wanting something authentic and locally-produced. “There are a number of young drinkers - the hipsters - that are drinking these craft beers,” says Burgess. “These younger people are looking for something different, with full flavour and nice packaging.” Kernel forgoes complicated emblems for a minimal ‘stamped’ identity on its bottle labels. London Fields ties a simple brown label around the neck of theirs. It’s this simple, pared back and clean design that stands out from the crowd and catches the eye of these aesthetically conscious consumers.

These drinkers also find the local provenance of the beer appealing, says Burgess - a key difference to older craft beer movements in London, which saw drinkers obsess over obscure imported US labels. “These new drinkers are really into buying local and supporting small businesses and community,” says London Field’s Burgess. This can also be understood by looking at the stockists for Tower Bridge’s Kernel beer brand. It’s found in bars and pubs, but also the city’s growing number of local cafés such as Railroad in Hackney andLook Mum No Hands, a popular stop-off for cyclists in Clerkenwell. “People are getting more

interested in good beer, and good beer is becoming more easily available”, says Evin O’Riordain, the man behind Kernel.

As for the brewers, there is a kind of do-it-yourself attitude and aesthetic that’s central to their ethos. “I decided I didn’t want to do the same thing for my whole working life”, says Stu Lascelles owner of East London Brewing Company. “I wanted to work for myself”. So many of these craft breweries in the UK and throughout the global fraternity seem to begin with a small group of friends and a desire to get hands-on and make great beer. It is this diversity that makes this new craft beer exciting; taking on board its tradition and past, but shedding the fetters and restrictive style-definitions of mainstream beer organisations. As Mikkel says, “It is all about the idea. If the idea is good, there are no limits.”

Hand-crafted charm with small-batch innovation are the new desired attributes – and this is something not limited to the food and drink sectors. With creativity and authenticity, marketers can successfully position themselves within this growing and frankly exciting trend. At its heart is the image evoked from small producers shaping traditional wares by hand – beers, cured meats, furniture, denim, wine – treating production as a craft.

It is about quality over quantity, certainly. But more than that, it is a focus on products that are made with passion. It is an ethos brought to creation, branding and industry that consumers are becoming attracted to across the board. So perhaps it’s time for everyone, and not just this new generation of brewers, to get a little more hands-on.

http://prote.in/briefings

“There’s The Kernel in Maltby Street Market. East London Brewing Company opened in Bethnal Green. Redchurch Brewery is about to launch in Shoreditch. And there’s rumours of a Hackney-based brewery opening.”

“At its heart is the image evoked from small producers shaping traditional wares by hand – beers, cured meats, furniture, denim, wine...”


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Since the internet came along, radio just isn’t what it used to be. You can listen to other people’s mixes on Soundcloud, stream music to your heart’s content on Spotify or even create your own radio station on Last.FM. All this crowd-sourcing and user-generated content has given us a lot more choice of what to listen to, but whatever happened to the good old local radio station?

NTS radio is taking local radio back. Founded by Femi Adeyemi and Clair Urbahn in April this year, it’s an online station based in London’s Dalston district that’s revisiting the days of pirate radio and community broadcasting. It’s local in perspective, but global in reach. ‘It’s a really good way to tap into a scene,’ says Clair. ‘There’s a worldwide interest in Dalston at the moment.’

It all started over a decade ago when both Femi and Clair dreamed of one day running their own radio station. ‘I remember in 1998 wanting to start up an FM frequency station,’ says Clair, ‘and talking to this guy who said: ‘yea, we can fund it if you do it online’. And I was like: ‘no way would I want to do an online radio station, that’s not real radio!’’

How times have changed. Over a decade later their dream has finally been realised, but the pair decided to launch the station solely online. So why did they opt for the web rather than FM radio? ‘You just have more freedom,’ says Femi. ‘On traditional radio you can’t even swear, and someone has to listen to the whole show twice in case there’s something offensive that’s been said.’

The majority of the station’s output is music shows, fronted by local DJs and music experts, which people can listen to by accessing the NTS Radio website. ‘It’s a free for all,’ says Femi. ‘Anything goes. We just ask for passionate people. It highlights the number of people who are doing independent projects and prepared to take risks to chase what they actually want to do.’ Listeners might tune in on a Wednesday morning to hear Thristian play dubstep on The BPM Breakfast show. They might hear nostalgic mid-90s hip-hop on the Livin’ Proof show. Or soul and funk courtesy of DJ collective Piff Gang on the PG Tips Show. And they might even catch part of an academic conversation about social sciences on the station’s increasingly popular talk show.

The website doesn’t just function as a place to access the station’s content. It also lets listeners see the people behind the shows, learn about their story and see photographs of the Dalston community. And by doing this, it lets the listeners feel like their a part of this musical community, even if they’re just tuning in for a few moments. ‘Shows are like a family, and people want to be a part of that,’ says Femi. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life, it’s that everyone wants to be part of a group.’

Each of the show’s pages features portraits of the presenter, shot against a backdrop of the local Dalston landscape. There’s also video clips containing short interviews with presenters, which are overlapped with spiraling shots of the local streets. Throughout the rest of the website, photographs of recognisable Dalston hotspots appear, such as the façade of the Rio cinema and the red-brick of the Dalston Culture House. All these portraits, video clips and the photography help the listener understand the importance the station has on the community. NTS Radio sounds local, but it looks local, too.

http://prote. in/profi les

NTS RadioSubmitted by Max Reyner

Profile

“It highlights the number of people who are doing independent projects and prepared to take risks to chase what they actually want to do.”

“Shows are like a family, and people want to be a part of that.If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life, it’s that everyone wants to be part of a group.”


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Issue #05

Amidst the ocean of infographic mediocrity that’s out there, Peter Crnokrak stands out for a number of reasons. First, there is his inimitable style: with the sharp white shirt, slim overcoat, patent brogues and immaculately coiffured quiff, he resembles a data-friendly Elvis (or possibly a Nick Cave from an alternate, digital reality). And then there’s his absorbingly intricate data visualisation work…

Under the moniker of The Luxury of Protest, the Canadian-born designer applies an elegantly elaborate aesthetic alongside his research background (in the field of Quantitative Genetics, no less) to unravel a variety of society’s more complex systems. There was his ‘Maths Dreamed Universe’ (“Mathematics is the language of nature,” the piece’s explanation reads. “This [data visualization] shows the mapping of numbers 0 to 100,001 arranged in a spiral coordinate space”). And then there’s the award-winning ‘Everyone Ever in the World’ (which we featured as a limited edition print in our Protein Journal #3) – a vast, hypnotically intricate series of radiating circles that represents “the number of people to have lived versus been killed in wars, massacres and genocide during the recorded history of humankind.”

So how exactly does one go from holding a professorial position in Quantitative Genetics to crafting intricate data visualizations about the very history of humanity? The 40 year-old designer smirks wryly, straightening a starched, white shirt cuff and explains that when it comes to making such a massive career transition, nothing motivates quite like Earth-crushing boredom.

The real change came when he began to collect cover versions of Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ (“I love collecting things as I think a lot of designers do”).What began as an impressively large, glorified list was eventually transformed into one of the iconic pieces for which Peter is so well-known – especially here at Protein – embedding several visual artefacts from his old scientific life to give the entertaining dataset an unpredictable dynamism. With its nuanced focus on complexity and detail, this technically-minded yet visually creative approach has become something of a trademark.

“I’m a firm believer,” Peter explains, “that if something is complex and something is heavy, then it’s really dishonest to simplify it to a degree that simply panders to the lowest common denominator.”

This is also a perfect example of another way in which he stands out from many of his design peers: his conceptual eloquence. Tonally consistent yet emphatically precise, his sentences are as dense and loaded as his intricate visualisations. Consider his opinion on the current boom in the sphere of data viz:

“A lot of people have said the reason data visualization is popular these days is because we have so much data. But I think that’s just absurd. We’ve always had a lot of data, and more data than we can actually ever deal with. The vast majority of the public don’t really care that there’s that much data – I certainly couldn’t care less. Instead, what is really is that with social networking and the easy accessibility of news sources online, we’re getting so much information of how the world works that people simply want to know more. And data visualisation addresses that issue.”

What makes him stand out from the multitude, perhaps more than anything else, is the sense of scale: the intricate complexity of his designs, the sheer breadth of his datasets, and his wider vision for the future of this creative field in which his unique skillset has placed him so aptly.

“The world doesn’t need any more graphs,” he says. “There are so many algorithms that will make a really beautiful graph for you. What is really required is to push the symbolic approach of representing any kind of information and coupling that with data, so that it allows you to understand data in a much more profound level than just simply seeing a bar graph. That’s where the really interesting aspect of where this field is heading: where the contribution of the artist meets the contribution of the designer who truly understands semiotics and the use of symbolism. How do you couple that with quantitative data? And where do you end up after that?”


Peter CrnokrakSubmitted by Addie Chinn

Profile

“There are so many algorithms that will make a really beautiful graph for you. What it really requires is to push the symbolic approach [and] understand data on a much more profound level.”

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Issue #05

INSA: Girls On Bikes

Gallery


An ongoing public installation project from a long-standing member of the Protein fam, Girls On Bikes sees visual artist INSA working with volunteer models, bikes (his current preferred icon of commodified culture), and those iconic large-scale painted walls of his – like the one we proudly have along one whole side of our Protein London HQ.

In his own words: “This set of photographic works orchestrates a conflicting dialogue between all the elements and explicitly subordinates the value of [my] own street art to both the possessed object of the bike and the overtly sexualized female presence – thus questioning our individual perceptions of ownership of public space, of sexuality and of belonging(s).”

Sounds good; looks even better.

http:// insaland.com

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Al l photos by http:// tomographer.co.uk/


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Issue #05

3. La Petite Fripe

More than your average vintage shop, La Petite Fripe has accessories galore and something for every occasion, look out for their immense 50% off sales.

http://paris.unl ike.net/ locations/307937-La-Petite-Fripe

6. Nanashi

Nanashi is a healthy, Japanese-inspired eatery in the edgy 10th arrondissement. Kaori Endo helms the kitchen creating fresh, innovative fare, including a selection of bentos at lunchtime and Japanese tapas in the evening.

http://paris.unl ike.net/ locations/307819-Nanashi

4. La Gaîté Lyrique

La Gaîté Lyrique is an experimental laboratory of all forms of cutting edge, bleeping digital arts, film, design, theater, performance, games, programming and music.

http://paris.unl ike.net/ locations/307755-La-Ga-t-Lyrique

7. Au Cochon D’or

Au Cochon D’or is a charcuterie with a difference—it’s one of the best understated butchers in Paris. Stocked full of quality hams, pâtés and saucissons you’ll find something to whet your appetite.

http://paris.unl ike.net/ locations/308341-Au-Cochon-D-or

5. Ofr.

This quaint bookshop stocks an exciting array of art and photography publications among literature, graphic novels, magazines, art prints and even a wall of t-shirts.

http://paris.unl ike.net/ locations/301430-Ofr

8. El Café Bar

This tiny corner café is where the mob of locals enjoy their aperitifs—like the pastis at 2,20€ or Martini at 2,50€—before diving into the menu that combines its Basque roots with a rustic, southwestern French touch.

http://paris.unl ike.net/ locations/307966-El-Caf-Bar

Paris Store Guide


Guide

With our friends at unlike.net we’ve prepared a series of guides to give you an insider’s view of some of our favourite cities. Last issue we gave you a shopping tour of Berlin – now here’s fashion designer Maroussia Rebecq’s Paris. Maroussia is the brains behind fashion brand and creative agency Andrea Crews who have put together performances for the likes of Colette and Centre Pompidou.

1. Andrea Crews

Andrea Crews is a conceptual fashion house featuring a ready to wear line in store and a space for their art collective and creative agency to work their magic.

http://paris.unl ike.net/ locations/304600-Andrea-Crews

2. Sésame

Featuring an inventive health oriented menu, Sésame is a rarity in Paris with their vegetarian and vegan friendly offerings.

http://paris.unl ike.net/ locations/307933-S-same

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1. Andrea Crews

25 Rue de Vaucouleurs75011 Paris+33145263668

www.andreacrews.com

2. Sésame

51, Quai de Valmy75010 Paris+33142490321

www.au-sesame.com

3. La Petite Fripe

118 Rue Oberkampf75011 Paris+33149234092

4. La Gaîté Lyrique

3 bis rue Papin75003 Paris+33153015151

www.gaite-lyrique.net

5. Ofr.

20 Rue Dupetit-ThouarsSt Germain75003 Paris

www.ofrsystem.com

6. Nanashi

31 rue de Paradis75010 Paris+33140220555

www.31ruedeparadis.com

7. Au Cochon D’or

23 Rue Poissonniers75018 Paris+33146060858

8. El Caf é Bar

45 rue Rodier75009 Paris


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Issue #05

Some people call them trailblazers, others call them tastemakers. Whatever name you give them, influential consumers are hot property. But thanks to a growing number of online tools and services, we can now estimate just how influential they are. As a result, brands are falling over themselves to target them. But just how useful, or accurate, is it?

Have you been re-tweeted recently? Or received some ‘likes’ on your latest Facebook status? If you did, then you probably increased your online influence.

A growing number of companies are using information about people’s social networking activity to record their influence online. Put your Twitter handle and Facebook name into a website such as Klout, and you’ll get your rating. Justin Bieber has a PeerIndex of 89. Stephen Fry’s is 93.

But how exactly is this being calculated? ‘Influence at its lowest level is an outcome of trust that you have within a massive group,’ says Simon Cast, head of products at PeerIndex. ‘You’re looking at the reputation people have in order to work out their influence.’

It all works using complex mathematics. Companies such as PeerIndex take all the pieces of information about engagement within a person’s social networking circles and feed them into algorithms that work out their index score. Importantly, this isn’t just a popularity contest. If you have a lot of friends and followers, you’re not necessarily influencing their behaviour and tastes.

‘Having followers is the popularity measure,’ says Cast. Instead, services such as PeerIndex take into account your importance in changing behaviour, as well as your reach and the quality of the content shared. If you get re-tweeted by someone, that’s worth something. If you get re-tweeted by someone with a high influence rating, that’s even better.

“Justin Bieber has a PeerIndex of 89. Stephen Fry’s is 93. Put your Twitter handle and Facebook name into a website such as Klout, and you’ll get your rating.”

The Art of Measuring Influence

Submitted by Max Reyner

Briefing

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But it’s not just about getting a high rating. Different people will become influential about certain topics. Klout, for instance, deciphers conversations people have on Twitter to work out what topics they are experts on. If your tweets about lager and pubs get a good reception, then it’s likely you’ll be considered an expert about beer.

All this has got brands hot under the collar. For them, it’s a chance to get their products mentioned by people who others look to for information and opinions. It might sound like a long-shot for the brand, but evidence suggests people often make purchasing decisions based other people’s referrals. According to McKinsey & Co, word-of-mouth is a factor behind between 20% and 50% of purchases – and influential people generate three times as many word-of-mouth messages as those who are non-influential.

The brands can reach these people through the websites of the influence metric companies. Klout has a section on its website called Perks. It’s a place where brands can offer free products to people, if those individuals have the right sort of influential expertise. If you’re considered an expert about make-up and have a high enough Klout score, you might be offered a new set of lipstick by a beauty brand to try out. Car brand Audi recently worked with Klout to identify influential people on Facebook, giving them a shortlist of people to target with new campaigns. In July, PeerIndex worked with British book publisher Penguin to help promote its title Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru. It identified people who are influential about literature, London and culture. These individuals were then sent review copies of the book in the hope they would talk about it on their social networks. ‘It’s a reward to having built that social capital,’ says Cast. ‘In return, Penguin gets reviews without having to go to literary journals.’

There are, however, many limitations to all of this. For a start, spotting experts on Twitter isn’t easy. Klout, for instance, assumes that if you talk a lot about a particular subject on Twitter, and receive numerous retweets and replies, then you’re more likely to be influential about it. You could be just mentioning that subject as a critic, or asking a lot of questions about it as a novice. Then there’s the problem of offline influence – how can this be taken into account in your influence scores? ‘Currently, Social Monitoring tools cannot take real world events

and add them to someone’s influence score,’ says Nygel Weishar, a social media and community relations specialist at social media monitoring company Sysomos. ‘For example, Justin Bieber might be promoting a new brand of shoe. Even though he may not have tweeted about the shoe much, the real world happening of the endorsement deal would send his influence in the footwear industry right up the scale.’

Another problem is the idea of hierarchy, and how people with greater influence are filtering down their ideas to the masses below them. ‘You’ve got somebody of a higher status telling someone of a lower status that’s paying attention to that higher status person who then gives them a message,’ says Mark Earls, author of Herd: How To Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature. ‘That’s not how social influence works. It does happen some of the time, but in the modern connected world, it’s less hard to find your experts.’ Earls puts this misunderstanding down to dated theory about how people communicate with each other within the Twitter-verse. ‘Social networking theory is based on broadcasting networks,’ says Earls, ‘with a central message that’s spread around. But it’s not like that. In reality it’s much messier. It’s not one or two interactions involving a recommendation. It’s several interactions with a number of people that add up to influence.’

Perhaps, then, social media metric companies ought to consider real world behaviour first. But for now, these services are translating these retweets and replies into index scores, and inviting brands to offer free products to those deemed more influential. You’d better get tweeting.

http://prote.in/briefings

“Social networking theory is based on broadcasting networks, with a central message that’s spread around. But it’s not like that. In reality it’s much messier.”

“Importantly, this isn’t just a popularity contest. If you have a lot of friends and followers, you’re not necessarily influencing their behaviour and tastes.”


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Gallery

Lacoste x LOOKBOOK.nu


Lacoste’s designs have always been on point. Inventor of the polo shirt and the first to pop a logo on top of their threads, the clothing brand is now 80 years strong and still synonymous with casual elegance.

Last week the Lacoste x LOOKBOOK.nu project launched at our concept space 18 Hewett Street. The project revolves around an ongoing competition, where all budding models, trend-setters and stylists can upload shots of themselves wearing Lacoste and be in with a chance to win a cash prize of £1,000.

To celebrate, Lacoste brought in a roster of incredible DJs including Mercury Prize nominated Ghostpoet, Alex Patchwork and Streets of Beige to play live sets to a heaving crowd of suitably stylish partygoers. The walls were filled with an exclusive collection of photographs, featuring new talent, musicians and respected creatives all donning the latest Lacoste AW11 collection.

http:// lookbook.nu/lacoste

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If you’ve been to Barcelona, Marseille or Cincinatti, and spotted a dazzling pattern of geometric colours covering a wall of the city’s architecture, then chances are you’ve seen one of Matt W. Moore artworks. The Portland-based illustrator and graphic designer, who now operates through the one-man MWM Studio, is the pioneer of a style called ‘vector funk’, and has exhibited his bold, colourful designs on both canvas and wall within cities around the world.

Like many instinctive visual artists, it all started with doodles on the back of notebooks during hazy days at school. ‘I was obsessively doodling,’ says Matt, ‘every notebook in school was filled up with illustrations.’ As he grew up, pen and pad evolved into spray paint and concrete wall, and Matt became immersed in the discipline of graffiti. His moniker at first was ‘Retrospect’, but this soon changed to ‘Retro’ (‘I quickly learned it was far too long to paint,’ he says). It then changed again, to ‘Reone’, as another street artist in California already had the name.

As he grew older, his designs matured. He became more and more comfortable with using spray cans, and developed an interest in a much more abstract style. He dropped his street moniker, and began focusing on the shapes he painted. He also went to college and learned how to create graphics digitally. He studied a technique called vector illustration, which helped him develop a more academic and mathematical process in his work. ‘I’m now channeling all this knowledge and vocabulary back into handmade art and mural painting,’ says Matt.

The result is what has become his signature style: a visual language of geometric shapes filled with bold, bright blocks of primary colour. He calls this ‘vectorfunk’, and the term has since become a way to describe all graphic art of this genre – a measure of the extent of his influence. He’s since had brands knocking on his door to collaborate, creating graphics for the identities of clothing brand Ecko, and for skateboard brands Nike SB and DC Shoes.

He still finds time for his handmade art though, much of which is produced during his extensive travels. Every six months he journeys to a new city to take up a six month residency to create original work inspired by his new surroundings. It’s no holiday, however. ‘I’ll go to a new

city I’ve usually never been to, with no artwork with me, and an exhibition coming up within a month,’ says Matt. ‘I’ll work like a madman.’ In April 2011, he spent time in Cincinnati in the US. In winter 2010 he spent a month in Paris. And in 2008, he spent time in Brazil. But one of his favourite destinations remains Barcelona. There’s a warm reception to his art, he says. ‘There’s a lot to be said for a place where a mural can be enjoyed by a mother and kid who walk by it,’ says Matt.

Matt is now about to embark on an entirely new venture: designing furniture. ‘I’m taking ideas from my work and applying them to functional objects,’ he says. Expect to see chairs, tables and hand-blown glass door knobs, all bearing his signature geometry. But that’s not to say he’ll hang up his spray paints just yet. His handmade work continues to interest and inspire him. ‘I look at my fine art as moonlighting, with those late nights and weekends in the studio,’ says Matt. ‘It recharges me.’


Matt W. MooreSubmitted by Max Reyner

Profile

“I’ll go to a new city I’ve usually never been to, with no artwork with me, and an exhibition coming up within a month. I’ll work like a madman.”

“I’m now channeling all this knowledge and vocabulary back into handmade art and mural painting,”

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When envisaging a typical data visualiser at work, you’d probably conjure up images of a person slaving over rows of numbers and wrangling spreadsheets. But Denver-born and London-based data designer Stefanie Posavec is of a different breed. Rather than simply turning a set of numbers into an information graphic, she finds data in things we wouldn’t normally associate with this type of information.

She calls this ‘hidden data’, and it could be found in something as unexpected as a novel or a song lyric. Take her Literary Organism series she completed as part of her MA at Central Saint Martins. Armed with a set of highlighters and a ballpoint pen, she set about colour coding, reconstructing and presenting Kerouac’s seminal On the Road in an entirely new way. Each sentence and paragraph was highlighted a different colour based on subject and sentence length. With this information, like the anatomy of a flower, the book was transformed into a graphic design of beautiful and detailed florets. Part One is broken into chapters, chapters into paragraphs, paragraphs into sentences, and sentences divide into words.

So what inspires this level of analysis? “I’m interested in things that appeal to the really vigorous detailed aspect in me,” she explains. “Everything I have done so far has revolved around things that I love such as books, language, maths and numbers. As long as I’m looking at something that I’m really interested in, it makes the days and hours of sifting through and analysing a subject easier.” She approaches data both as a source of inspiration but also aims to produce design work with a message. As she puts it: “I like design that has an underlying meaning, where everything is there for a reason. And with data everything has to be there for a reason”. It’s the type of work that pulls you in on first look, but holds your attention with the depth and amount of information each piece contains.

Her unique approach recently caught the eye of the MoMA in New York. Stefanie’s (En)tangled Word Bank was recently selected to appear in the museum’s ‘Talk to Me’ exhibition. The work is a collaboration she produced with her brother-in-law, Greg McInerny, an ecologist at Microsoft Research. The series delves into Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species and shows the insertions and deletions of text through his six revised editions. The graphic follows the same floral structure

she developed in her Literary Organism analysis, though with a little help from McInerny’s processing, and shows how the naturalist edited his work over its 13 years of changes.

Probably at the more artistic and conceptual end of the data visualisation spectrum, but Stefanie’s gift for analysis and interpretation has led her into a number of commercial projects such as The Bundle Annual Report 2010, OK Go’s latest album cover and the Stephen Fry myFry iPhone app she produced for Penguin. Over the last year there has been a noticeable increase in the use of information based graphics by media channels and brands. “Anything that can compress as much information as possible into as small amount of time as possible is what everyone wants right now,” says Stefanie. “I think brands or non-profits are interested in using facts and statistics as hard evidence. Companies that have lots of statistics are asking for really good information design.”

The myFry project is her first foray into digital work. With a background in book cover design and the written word it is only natural that her work has primarily revolved around print. As the book shifts from the pages to the screen this medium will come into her work, she concedes, and she has started experimenting with the capabilities that digital design offers. “Digital data visualisation provides the user with different viewpoints”, she says. “They’re able to manipulate the data more easily than with print”. “But a digital experience is ephemeral, and you’re only left with the memory of it. With print and posters they last longer - they’re more timeless. So I’d like to work with the best parts of both”.

Next Stefanie is looking to get her hands on more juicy and untouched data. “I’d love to collaborate more with scientists and researchers,” she muses. “Perhaps an artist-in-residence at a research institute; working with people with lots of interesting data that don’t really know what to do with it. And turning that data into something beautiful to show the public all the wonders that they are missing.”


Stefanie PosavecSubmitted by Jonathan Fagan

Profile

“Everything I have done so far has revolved around things that I love such as books, language, maths and numbers.”


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‘11 x’ Series

Fascinated with long multiplication and handmade calculations, data designer Stefanie Posavec in her ‘11 x’ series seeks to unlock the hidden beauty in numbers. Hidden patterns emerge in the cascading lines of digits as the numbers multiply and reveal themselves.

After designating a specific coloured shape for each digit, she began to search for a variety of interesting patterns that occur from multiplying 11 by various strings of numbers. This piece is for 11 x 11. To see the series and pick yourself up a print head to her website.

http:// itsbeenreal.co.uk

Data


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