We like to invest time in tracking trends and exploring possibilities with new innovations, so through our blog, I’m going to be posting regular snippets of the best stuff that’s out there, and which you could adopt, to further connect with your online audiences for the good of your brand. Currently, there’s a new crop of location-based social networks that are rapidly growing in popularity. These services use your location, and those of the people around you, to create new connections and experiences online. With location-enabled mobile devices ever increasing, it has now become a reality that information can easily be used to keep people you know up-to-date on your whereabouts and recommendations.

Foursquare primarily focuses on location enabled mobile devices like the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Palm to enable you to “check-in” to public venues that you visit. Along with checking into venues, you’re are able to see which of your Foursquare friends have checked into venues nearby and you can also leave “tips” for other people who are visiting the venue to use on their visit.

What makes this interesting for arts, culture and leisure, is that Foursquare has recently enabled venues to gain access to their statistics, so that you can track and do something with the knowledge of these online visitors. You can find out; Most recent visitors, Most frequent visitors, The time of day people check-in, Total number of unique visitors, Demographic breakdown of visitors, Portion of Foursquare check-ins broadcast to Twitter and Facebook.

If this data alone doesn’t create a fire in your belly – think about how arts, culture and leisure venues can benefit from adopting Foursquare in their visitor model? It can aid you in getting the word out about your current exhibitions, events, productions, etc, with a wealth of opportunity to then reward and provide incentives to your most frequent Foursquare visitors. Here are a few ideas:

A Mayor special offer: unlocked only by the Mayor of your venue. Who’s the Mayor? It’s your single most loyal visitor (the user who has checked in the most in the last 60 days). For example: “Foursquare tells us your the Mayor, enjoy this free ticket to our next event.”

Offers based on check-ins: unlocked when a user checks into your venue a certain number of times. For example: “Foursquare says you’ve been here 10 times? On your next visit why not bring a friend for free?”

Frequency based offers: are unlocked every set number of check-ins. e.g. “Foursquare users get a free coffee every 5th check-in!”

So what have you got to loose? Get your team around a table to see how Foursquare could be part of your visitor model?

I’ve recently finished a ten week course in bookbinding. Ten weeks since I decided I wanted to do something with my evenings that didn’t involve TV or the Internet. The course was lead by the talented Lucy May Schofield, and as you can see from my images, I was the sole guy amongst the club. I’ve never tried a proper hands-on craft, despite years of ‘creative’ education, graphic design seemed to always steer in the direction of the computer for me.

Apart from the needlework (which my clumsy fingers still haven’t mastered) the course was a real eye opener into the world of binding techniques. Every week a new binding method was attempted, coptic, pamphlet, japanese, bomb-fold, concertina and the oddly named ‘trouser books’, the list goes on. So here’s some pictures of the structures I’m most happy with, and a couple of ‘work in progress’ shots for evidence! Watch out for a Wonder publication using hand-bound methods coming soon…

With our specialism in arts and culture, we get many an opportunity to attend exhibition previews. This week, following our work on an identity and campaign for Henry Moore Institute, we attended the preview of two new exhibitions – Hermann Obrist: Art Nouveau Sculpture and Out of my Mouth: The Photosculptures of Alina Szapocznikow.

Herman Obrist is thought to have only sold one of his sculptures during his lifetime, but these remarkable surviving plaster forms are arguably the first abstract sculptures, influencing the development of the European Art Nouveau movement and are shown here for the first time in the UK. Whilst the other original mind, Alina Szapocznikow coined the term photosculpture in 1971 to describe her photographs of chewing gum bent into curious and beautiful shapes.

These are fantastical unmissable exhibitions, displaying truly remarkable works from experimental artists who clearly influenced 20th century sculpture, and which we believe will inspire all those who attend in 2010!

Despite a personal reputation for choosing pastel colours by default, our latest identity project for the Audience Influencers leadership development programme gladly resulted in a vast array of bold, vibrant colours in the form of a repeating geometric pattern. The shapes used in the identity provide a stylish depiction of the nature of the development these cultural leaders will experience over the course of this bespoke 18-month programme.

Branded programme folders are fronted with full sheets of repeating patterns, whilst inside each divider has a gradually reducing pattern until the only a few lonely triangles remain – suggesting the end of the development programme (get your coats!).

We met with Alan a few times to get to grips with his art and to seek inspiration for the campaign. On our third meeting, he casually drew a few pencil marks on a scrap of notepad and unbelievably passed them across the table to me (yes, I do still have this original piece of art and no, I won’t be parting with it on eBay).

This gave us a starting point…marks from the artist which we could play with, and use to provide windows for an imaginative copy-based campaign. I’ll let you judge the results for yourself, but it seems to have done the trick as more visitors have been drawn into the space.

Catch this exhibition before it closes (and gets painted over) on the 2nd May 2010!

2010 is already filled with glee as we launch a new website and blog…bringing news, views, rants, raves, trends, and tips from the design consultancy for arts, culture and leisure. Bookmark it, share it, comment on it!