May 26
Friday Fives, Vol. 214
This week, we’re unwrapping some delicious new branding, buying our moms Mother’s Day flowers, and asking a kitchen robot if our sauce needs a little more salt.
Thorns in the Flower Industry’s Side
It’s springtime and the flowers are blooming! But the flower industry? Well, it isn’t booming. Florists are everywhere are struggling this year. The big issues stem from a lack of supply, which can be traced back to 2020 when, because of the pandemic, fewer flowers were planted and there were fewer people available to pick them, plus global shipping delays and global warming made everything even messier. People, it’s time to come together and help florists, who’ve helped us bouquet our way through numerous life events. As if you needed another good reason to buy your mom Mother’s Day flowers (which is Sunday, by the way) your purchase will help regrow an industry in need of a little support.
Some people are born with the ability to taste food and know if it’s got the right mix of salt, fat, acid, and heat. For everyone else, Cambridge University built a robot that can sample food for you. The robo chef “chews” the food in question and analyzes its salinity to determine if it could use another pinch of salt or if you’re better off throwing out the whole pot of stew because it’s more sodium than soup. We’re still a few years from home versions of a bionic Bobby Flay, but we can’t wait. No, seriously, we’re hosting brunch this Sunday and if our egg scramble is under-seasoned we’ll never hear the end of it.
Summer is coming in hot, and in some places, probably a little too hot. To combat the heat, Coors Light, the beer that wants to be known for chilling in both a literal and figurative sense, is creating “Chillboards” to make people comfortable in their homes. Chillboards work by covering black rooftops in reflective white paint, which they claim can reduce temperatures inside homes and reduce the need for A/C. You’re probably wondering how people will see the billboards if they’re on rooftops, and the answer is — they won’t. Coors acknowledges that this campaign is more about providing a public service (and of course getting written up in newsletters like ours) which we think is pretty darn cool.
NFT sales plummeted 92% between September 2021 and April 2022. This steep drop has many wondering if the NFT craze is dead, or if there’s still an opportunity for NFTs to make a comeback. Most NFT proponents will tell you that they expected a crash to happen, and that the future of NFTs could become even more interesting. Without the gold-rush mentality of selling NFTs to get rich, NFT artists could create more freely and could shift other creators’ focus to making tokens with utility, like the ones listed here. There are some people still, who will tell you that NFTs remain the dumbest thing they’ve ever heard of and they’re only surprised they didn’t crash sooner. We’ll just have to wait for the next drop to find out.
We’d be the first to tell you that having talented designers is integral to a company’s success. But according to a new report from global consultancy McKinsey & Co. it’s not the size of the design department that matters, rather, it’s how embedded designers are across the company. Instead of having a design team siloed from other employees, business should strive to have designers weigh in on decisions across the board. Designers’ creative thinking and problem solving can lend a new perspective and help crack problems outside of the design realm, leading to increases in revenue, employee satisfaction, and innovation. When designers are given more chances outside of design and mentorship to hone non-design skills, they’re also more likely to stay at a company for 5+ years. Basically, designers make the world go round, so staff them all around your company.
The Working Assembly is an award-winning branding and creative agency.
Established in 2017, we collaborate with emerging and evolving companies for end-to-end brand building, including strategy and visual identity, print and digital design, content, and creative campaigns.
Have a project in mind? Let’s talk.
hello@theworkingassembly.com
The Working Assembly
NYC branding agency exploring the intersection of art, design, technology and culture. Partnering with emerging and evolving brands.
