DESIGN BLOG

King of Shaves products have been nominated in a number of categories in this year's FHM UK grooming awards. Click here to vote for your favourites!

Last weekend (5-7 September 2008) KMI launched our first fragrance for Hed Kandi in Ibiza to selected members of the press. Following on from our successful body sprays, Eivissa Eau de Toilette is the first fragrance for Ministry of Sound's funky Hed Kandi brand.

Conceived and designed by KMI, Eivissa comes in a gorgeous custom tooled glass bottle that fits beautifully into the hand and features the 'sun burst' motif from the Hed Kandi logo. It also features a removable charm that also stops the fragrance from being accidently dispensed. Sold in a beautifully elegant high gloss white carton with gold print and emboss detailing, this Eau de Toilette will be initially available from Boots and The Fragrance Shop this autumn.

Some images from the press launch can be seen on our flickr.com pages here.

After the efforts of Tap in the UK to persuade us that purchasing bottled water is not only daft considering the generally very high quality of UK tap water (and indeed water in the 'western' world), and the huge environmental impact of shipping water around the globe, not to mention the 'carbon footprint' from bottling water and then throwing the bottles into land fill, and last (but not least) the fact the direct cost to you (I read that bottled water is actually more expensive than petrol) it was interesting to read that a New York company, TapdNY, has started selling local NYC purified tap water. I do like the design, bold city influenced graphics, with a great tag lines such as "no glaciers were harmed making this water".

However I think Tap in the UK is environmentally better, selling empty containers and stickers to encourage you to use water in your own home (the NYC version still has to be shipped in trucks at somepoint).

I read an interesting article on this subject in The Guardian. You can read it here.

At KMI we are concerned about the fact the many products are mainly comprised of water and that we are all paying to ship a lot of water based 'stuff' around the UK and the world. We are actively investigating ways around this... stay tuned for more news... but until then I was reminded that our first product, a 15ml Shave Oil first produced 15 years ago and still going strong today, is arguably one of the most environmentally friendly ways to shave. Despite it's compact size, you can get around 60+ shaves from just one bottle. It's light weight means a much reduced carbon footprint both in terms of manufacturing as well as shipping. The packaging is also made from (at least) 75% recycled plastics (like old fizzy drink bottles) and it is, of course, all fully recyclable.

Microsoft's advertising campaign in the US has now moved on from the surreal Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates adverts buying shoes and living in an 'ordinary' household (which I quite like but then I was a Seinfeld fan) to ones which seem to take on Apple's "Hello, I'm a Mac" adverts head on.

Although showing the wide use of PCs, and the adverts also feature email addresses for all of the 'real' people shown in them, to me it has missed the point.

Microsoft does not make PCs. It makes operating systems and programs that run on a PC. And increasingly PCs are used to run other operating systems including Linux - and are even being hacked to run Apple's OS X. So they are spending a lot of money advertising something they don't sell. Doh.

It transpires even the adverts were created on Apple Macintosh computers. Read about that here.

The Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld adverts (arguably about 'nothing' just like the Seinfeld TV shows):

And some of the original "Hello I'm a Mac" adverts can be seen below. Not that they are to be held up as great advertising, they can be slightly irritating, but they do get their points across. And they are definitely advertising Apple products.

Saw this on The Dieline packaging website. Just made me smile - great copy and lovely 'design'. Shame their website is not up yet, I fancied being entertained for a few minutes this morning!