Photo by Andreas Hemmingsson

About a year ago I was approached by David Hamilton, board member of the Swedish Ullna Golf Club and also owner of Caddee. The Ullna Golf Club was established and designed in 1981 by the late Mr. Sven Tumba, a Swedish sports icon and golf pioneer and the same year in August, HRH Prince Bertil officially inaugurated the golf course. Of course there had been many great Swedish golf clubs before Ullna GC but in many ways Ullna GC broke the rules in terms of how you ran a golf club. For example it was the first club in Sweden that focused on making the golf course available for its members. Because of that Ullna only allows 574 members.

In 2011 the members of Ullna GC took the decision to upgrade the design of the Ullna golf course. Jack Nicklaus, one of the worlds greatest golfers and a long time friends of Sven Tumba offered his services. His company Nicklaus Design is one of the worlds most respected golf course design companies. He had visited Ullna GC before and felt it was a true challenge for him to turn this already great golf course into an iconic one.

Photo by Oskar Lind

With Nicklaus Design and Jack himself onboard, Ullna GC now felt the need to upgrade the brand of Ullna. The original brand platform had been used since the opening 1981. It had served its purposes but the upgrade performed with Jack Nicklaus called for a new positioning, a new tonality and an updated brand brand platform.

David Hamilton, head of the Ullna GC marketing department, approached me to ask me about my services. He had heard about what I had done for other brands, my passion for golf and the fact that I’m also a member of Ullna GC. The club had already started negotiations with another agency but wanted to see an alternative. We met in the end of June 2011 in my office on Brahegatan 26. I showed him some of the work I had done for Marginalen Bank, Poseidon and also some ongoing projects for Svenska Spel (that I unfortunately cannot show you). David felt convinced I was a player they should include in the game.

The process. Winning and creating the new brand platform for Ullna Golf Club.

I decided to team up with a design agency I’d worked with before – Visual ID and about a month later Ullna Golf Club decided to award us the project. Together me, Mathias Wiberg and Niclas Svensson from Visual ID started on the process of revamping the Ullna Brand. We had a series of workshops where we discussed the old logotype and what Jack Nicklaus meant to the future of Ullna. We walked several other of the famous Swedish golf courses to get a good understanding of the competition.

Early in the process I communicated to Mathias and Niclas that we shouldn’t focus primarily on design but rather aim for something bigger. I seldom recommend a changing a logotype when I’m working with a branding project. However, the close collaboration with Jack Nicklaus and the massive upgrade of the golf course called for something else. I felt we needed to create something that would last for a long time, we needed to create timeless design, an iconic design rather than a logotype.

Changing a brand platform for a company can be tough. Changing a brand platform for a golf club where members should have their say is more than tough! With this in mind we felt we needed to build on the heritage of the old logo. We bounced several ideas back and fourth but finally decided to go in a specific direction. The idea was to change perspective but keep the third hole (visible on the old logo) as the base for the design.

The topographic logotype

We decided to work with the ‘topographical curves’ of the third hole instead. Once the direction was clear we all brought paper and pens to the table and started sketching. Working out how to portrait the hole visually was not easy. During the process I think we drew at least fifty different designs to choose from. Then in the end once we all agreed on a direction, Mathias, the design director, spent another five days on perfecting the curves. In the end I think he was a little bit tired of me who kept on saying ‘cleaner’, ‘more iconic’ and also the fact that I really had a clear idea of colouring and typefaces.

The member badges together with the badges you receive as a guest.

In the end however I think we reached a fantastic result. As always I decided that we needed to implement the brand platform on several different logo holders. We digitally showed the logo on houses, the golf course, clothing, products, golf balls, pegs, golf clubs, umbrellas, members badges and cards, guest cards, flags and a lot more. We even had the logo visualised in real 3D.

Ullna loved it and we delivered a new brand platform accompanies with the new brand guidelines.

I’ve then worked for the last 8th month with the physical implementation of the brand. We’ve met manufacturers, we’ve created prototypes and we’ve had part of the physical logos produced outside Sweden. Implementing a brand platform on a physical arena is the ultimate project I’d say. It’s extremely exiting but at the same time exhausting as you have to say no a lot of times. Saying no to things that doesn’t look good enough will in the long run lead to a much stronger brand. In the short run it’s not that fun though.

The new, rebranded Ullna Golf Club will re-open on the 8th of june this year. When they do most of my work is done. What is left is creating a new image bank but that has to wait until august when the golf course is in perfect conditions. I’ll get back with what I’ve created then. During the implementation of the project David Hamilton has been an invaluable partner to me in making everything work smoothly. David has also been involved with his on company and his expertise in making some of the implementations come to life.

I’ve worn the following hats in this project – Head of brand strategy, creative direction, designer, project manager and passionate golfer!

Here are a couple of things that gives you a clear idea of the Ullna rebranding project. Hope you like it!

A visualisation of different possible implementation of the logotype

The signage on course

Flags with and without sponsors.

Merchandising

The digital presence

A personal gift from me to the Ullna Golf Club was this guest book. Early in the process I felt I wanted to hand something over when the club re-opens. I searched the web for someone that could help me bring my design alive. Google is wonderful! I found Tedra Ashley, a book binder specialised in making unique guest books. She ran a company called Fine Blank Books and even though she worked out of the US I felt she was the perfect partner for this part of the project. The book is rather large and monumental with a page size of 10 and 5/8″ wide by 13 and 3/8″ tall. The book has around 300 pages (600 page sides to write on) of unlined paper which makes it about 1 and 1/2″ thick.

We’ve even created a signature meal for the restaurant.

Jack Nicklaus himself raises the new Ullna Golf Club Flag.

The green fee tickets.

The golf ball packaging.

Advertising concepts for Ullna Golf Club.

As you might have seen I’ve been working with Marginalen Bank for quite some time now. Last time I posted about Marginalen I wrote about the campaign featuring world class dancer Fredrik ‘Benke’ Rydman. Benke was one of the founders of the dance collective Bounce. Today he’s doing tons of choreography and he’s also the founder of the dance gym House of Shapes. Now as the time had come for a a new brand campaign decided to create sequel to the first campaign. The results when we first aired ‘Benke’ last fall was impressive. The campaign generated great numbers for the Marginalen Bank brand awareness but also in terms of actual sales effects. More than 300 000 people also viewed the first TVC on YouTube. A good number for a bank commercial. All in all the campaign delivered on the Marginalen Bank brand values. The first TVC interpreted a “balanced financial situation”. This time I decided to have Benke interpret “financial harmony”.

From an Art Directors point of view I decided that we should stay with the red theme but evolve how we graphically connected the TVC’s to the Marginalen Bank visual brand platform. In the last campaign we used confetti in the Marginalen Bank brand colors. This time we decided to use round balloons  I felt they would ad to the positive tonality we’re trying to convey.

The entire campaign was created and directed by me in close collaboration with Benke and the rest of the team. Working together with Benke is always easy. He’s a true professional and I’m really proud of the work we’ve created together so far.  Like last time we had Isprod creating the TVC for us. Erik Heusler created the fantastic music, all recorded live. The prints were photographed and retouched by Andreas Lübeck and produced by our production partner Kollor. Finally like most of the times my partner in crime Caroline Karlström made sure everything went smooth.

Living in a connected world where information is accessible 24/7 and shared by everyone through social networks means you’ve gotta spend more money on your product to make sure you’re on top of the competition. In all its simplicity I think this new Budweiser can shows what it’s all about. At first glance a 10° change doesn’t seem that much. But those 10° makes Budweiser unique and it will not only make a Budweiser can look different it will make you feel the difference. This new bottle will save a fortune for Budweiser when it comes to communication activities and on top of that It’s pretty darn cool in all its simplicity.

What’s even more impressive is the fact that this tiny change in shape means a HUGE change in how Budweiser actually produces the cans. They started developing this new can in 2010 and finally it will hit the stores on the 6th of may. Someone at Budweiser took a bold decision. “Let us spend millions and millions to change something today that will have an effect on our future”. Risking your job will lead to success!

I wrote a blogpost the other day about design and why it’s important for future brands. Then today I ‘ran‘ into this fantastic artwork made by london based agency Gregory Bonner Hale for a restaurant in France named Miss Ko. Miss Ko is an underground Asian fusion restaurant.

GBH says the restaurant’s name and identity are based around the character of Miss Ko. A young, sexy but eternally mysterious symbol of Asia, and the embodiment of its traditions and its strangeness. Miss Ko shows us her ‘Yakuza’ full body suit tattoo, a sign in some Asian cultures of ties to the underworld.

Located in the heart of Paris, Miss K? is not just a restaurant; it’s a crazy place where street food, cocktails, art, and music meet to create a unique culinary experience.

This identity is the perfect example of what I wrote about the other day. It’s impossible not to be pulled into Miss Ko’s magnetic brand identity. It’s beautiful, rebellious, story-telling, innovative and yet simplistic in one sense. I love it!

Thinking about design today.

I wrote a blogpost a couple of weeks ago about the three components of future branding; Authenticity, Innovation and Design. Today I though I’d dig deeper into the design part of branding. Why is it important, what does it mean and how do you know you’re on track.

Why is design an essential part of future branding?

Andy Warhol said in 1968 that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Andy was in many ways right. But while he was at it he could just as well have said “In the future, brands will be world-famous for 15 minutes. Designed brands will be worlds-famous forever”. We’re in the midst of a century where the consumers are in control. Consumers define who’s famous and who’s not.

Advertising is slowly fading away and product and service design is taking over as the new instrument to get famous. Design plays an extremely important role here. It’s like a we’re all invited to the biggest prom night ever where brands are looking to get laid with consumers. The sexiest brands on the dance floor will be the winners and design is the prom dress that defines how sexy you are.

Your brand designed – Everywhere!

Design isn’t only about a logotype or the product. It’s about the entire brand universe. Yesterday you could survive with making sure you had a nice logo and maybe a nice product. Today we’re comparing your brand to all the brands in the world. A quick ‘google’ and then you’re being compared with the best of the best.

Designing your brand means caring for every little part of the brand (as I’ve written about before), basically anything visual that represents the business. This means that you as a brand manager or owner of a company should put systems in place that ensures you have control over every part of the brand. When it comes to the logo, marketing material and stationary it’s usually easy. But most brands struggle when it comes to the products, the packaging, their offices, websites and more. Get this fixed today.

How do you know your brand design rocks?

This is the million dollar question. What great design looks like is of course a tough question but the right answer is: On brief! After all, designing your brand is not about creating art or doing something that you personally like. A great design should achieve a designated objective for your brand. On brief and on strategy in other words. There are however a couple of things you should strive to achieve when you’re designing your brand. Here’s a couple of things to think about:

• Differentiate your brand.
• Guide the consumer.
• Create viral effects.
• Connect the thing you’re designing with the brand.
• Tell the story.
• Create brand equity.
• Understand technology.
• Don’t ask the consumers what they want.
• Break rules.

How do you do it? Making your brand sexy?

The only way forward when you want to build a future brand is making sure you have a design team on board. When I say a design team on board I don’t neccesary thing you should design things inhouse but you should defenetly have people inhouse that leads the design process even though it’s an external agency delivering design for you. I think it’s essential that every brand today has a creative director that ensures their brand is on track. Developing a deep and broad knowledge of design and brand inside the company is key component in making sure your brand survives the test of times.

The challenge with having your in house design team is of course to get access to top level designers but that can be solved with using freelancing designers or creative directors. It’s essential however that they’re not connected to an agency or network, that only leads to solutions that benefits the agencies, not necessarily your brand. When you’re looking to implement brand design, here’s a couple of things to think about:

• Give the designers the tools they need.
• Designers are artists. Treat them as such but make sure their ‘art’ is on brand.
• Pay a designer more than you’re paying your CFO. A great designer creates value that lasts forever.
• Put one of the designers on your board.
• Make sure design thinking is spread through your entire organisation.
• Don’t do bad design cause a certain system, product or service can’t be designed beautifully. If so, change the system, product or service.
• Don’t be afraid to approve design that differentiates your brand.
• Constantly question your design process.
• Creativity is the opposite of routine.

Almond Butterscotch named his photo Connected and lonely

That’s one of the most common questions I get when I’m giving speeches or meeting clients. Hell if I knew but the last couple of weeks I’ve been giving it some thoughts, new thoughts though. If you’d asked me one year ago I’d dreamed up some sort of new service or maybe I’d be talking about Instagram, Path or some other new social network. That’s of course in one way part of the answer but lately I’ve spent more time thinking about the vacuum that would appear of people stopped using Facebook.

I’ve been using Facebook since early 2007. It’s been one of my most important channels to keep up with both old and new friends. In the last five years I’ve come to appreciate the constant buzz of images, videos stories and links. People that I hadn’t seen for years and years has once again become part of my life and even if we don’t meet that often in the physical space we’re up to date on each others life. I also feel that the people that I do meet often has grown closer to me.

Now we’re constantly hearing that people are starting to leave Facebook. Some people make more buzz about it than others but in my feed I think it’s very clear that more and more people have stopped posting things on Facebook. It’s in many ways become quiet. And once people stop reacting to each others stories on Facebook the outcome will be less and less stories and suddenly we’ll stop posting anything at all. What happens then? Where do we go?

Well, some people will of course argue that this is great. We’ll stop talking online and spend more time together offline. Other people will probably say we’ll all move to a new social network and start spreading our content there instead. Personally I’ll say we’ll end up doing both BUT what I don’t think we’ll all do again is build up a new presence that in any way resembles how we’ve used Facebook. I’m sure we will not re-establish our network somewhere else. It’s taken many of us years and years and during these years we’ve changed. And this is the big change. This is ‘what happens after Facebook’. After Facebook we will loose contact with those old friends of ours that we had already lost before Facebook. Once again their faces will drift away only to be lost. Every now and then we’ll run into each other downtown and ask one and another “How are things” “Great, how are you” only to then keep on with our own life.

The question “What comes after Facebook” is in one way a sad question and in another way it’s just how life is…contanstly changing. Maybe, just maybe we’ll end up becoming more social again cause being social in the real world social network takes effort while being social in the social network, that takes…a like.

Funny. What comes after Facebook? A new social world!

The food industry keeps on spending money on products that saves us time. Fast food, pre cooked food, half fabricates, frozen food etc etc. It’s easier than ever to distance ourselves from the fact that we are using up natures resources faster and faster. If we keep it up we’ll be in big trouble sooner than later.

This is where the knife comes into play. Get a really good knife. Buy fresh meat, fish and vegetables. Then put that iPhone or iPad away and let the cooking take time. As a result your relation to food will change and you’ll end up appreciating what mother nature gives us and in the long run you’ll start to use less of mother natures resources and more of your brain power.

Change starts with a knife, it’s that simple!

About one year ago I was one of the keynote speakers at Webbdagarna, one of Swedens biggest events on Internet, technology, communication, media, mobile and more.

My subject when I spoke last year was ”2012 The Year of the Swedes” and except for the 2500 people who listened live, another 33491 people has watched my keynote once again on YouTube. A fairly good number considered it’s a Swedish speech. If you haven’t seen it yet, go ahead. I still think my points are most valid. (For you english speaking bloggers I’m sad to say that this speech was done in Swedish.)

This wednesday it’s time again. This year I wont be speaking but I’ll definitely be there both on wednesday and thursday. So if wanna catch up, feel free contact me.

Way back in Tignes. Me, Tina, Andy, Mike and Greger in front.

Early in the nineties I spent most of my days snowboarding and it was at this time that I first met Mike Basich. Me, Mike, Andy Hetzel and Mike’s sister Tina acted trainers a snowboardcamp that Greger Hagelin who lated founded WESC arranged in Tignes. Me and Andy became good friends and about half a year later I visited Andy, Tina and Mike in Snowbird Utah. We spent two weeks riding some of the best powder I’ve ever seen. Now, more than 20 years later I’m still hooked up with the guys on Facebook. And that’s where the inspiration for this blogpost begun.

Mike, still shredding some serious powder and being one of the public faces for GoPro, he always inspires me. He constantly keeps on pushing those boundaries that he started to push there early in the nineties. But I think his latest project is the most inspiring ever. His new home. Named suitable after the brand he had already started when we first met - Area 241.

Mike Basich’s home in the back country.

I think most of us have a dream of building the ultimate home in their heads but few of us ever get to build it. Personally I’m dreaming of a home in the mountains or one close to the surf. Both of those dreams seem farfetched and much to expensive…if you don’t do like Mike of course! Mike thinks differently.

Mike overlooking his land. PHOTO: Chris Wellhausen

When the rest of us looks for land where everyone else are looking to buy land Mike is looking the opposite way. Mike is building his dream house in the middle of nowhere with access to everything you need.

Building his own ski lift.

Near Lake Tahoe Mike has spent the past several years building his dream home. He’s built the house about 5 kilometers away from the nearest road which in fact isn’t much of a road at all.

Mike trying out his new chair lift for the first time.

The only way you can get to the house is by walking a quad or a snowmobile. However, since Mike also want to bring friends and enjoy the powder in winter he’s built himself his own ski lift. You heard it right! His own ski lift and it comes with adjustable seats if the powder turns out to be too deep.

The gear you need to get on top.

People like Mike inspire me. Mike has his own ideas and he’s got the power to see them through! He shapes his life the way he wants to! That is living!

Mike! I’ll follow your lead on this house idea some day!

A couple of month ago I received my Makerbot Replicator 2 3D printer. Even though I’ve been speaking about the revolution 3D printing presents one can not really understand the impact of 3D printing before you actually have a 3D printer at home. My first prints were a couple of toys for my kids inspired by the classic game Space Invaders. However, technology moves fast. When 3D printing is just about to become known to the public 4D printing…makes an entrance.

It’s the scientists over at MIT once again that are moving things into the future. At the TED conference in Los Angeles, architect and computer scientist Skylar Tibbits showed how the process allows objects to self-assemble. Basically he showcased how you could order a chair from your favorite furniture company and it would be sent in a flat package only to self-assemble. You heard it right! Self assemble!

So, as always. You thought you had an idea about the future but it turned out someone else had another plan.