Tag: culture

PDD is proud to sponsor The Damned – the greatest surviving British Punk band on the launch of their first album after ten years.

Supporting legendary punk artists and bands has became a tradition of our studios in Asia and this year we are sponsoring the 40th Anniversary World Tour of The Professionals.

Oliver Breit, PDD Manging Director Asia, is an avid UK New Wave collector. If you want to know anything about punk our go-to-person is Oliver. So we’re super excited that this year we have the pleasure of sponsoring iconic dub-punk band, Ruts DC which is making a very special performance in Hong Kong…

Consumer, market and design insights sit at the very heart of design and strategy, but how can you get the best out of these vital nuggets of information? How do you make them inviting and accessible for people to digest, liberating them from the depths of the server and to the heights of engagement?

Graffiti and street art of a city reflects people, place, culture, society, politics and much much more. Our PDD pop-up at LDF this year was in East London, nestled in the heart of creative and sometimes controversial artistic expression. As part of our exhibition we explored graffiti around the world, understanding how the social and cultural context of each place is reflected in, and sometimes influences, the surround street art.

As part of our London Design Festival exhibition, we shared six posters looking at how culture and context affects the work of graffiti writers and street artists in five cities across five cities spanning from the US, Latin America, Europe and Asia. The digital version of this cultural research, ‘Graffiti in context,’ is available to view below.

“Drink some coffee and hammer up some drywall!” That’s what we did on the day before we opened up our pop-up space (three times bigger than last year!) to welcome visitors at the London Design Festival 2013.

This is the question we invited visitors to our London Design Festival pop-up space to respond to. Over the course of the week we got some great replies. Some of the most interesting ones are captured in this short animation.

It is important to understand the multi-cultural nuances when designing products and services for different markets. This book provides a brief exploration of the wider issues surrounding cross-culture design, information on how to tackle it and inspiration from others who have done it well (and badly).

Our technical intern Paul Scopes got an amazing chance to travel to China with a project and work directly with the manufacturers. In this post Paul talks about his experiences of Hong Kong, working with Chinese workers and some of the lessons he learnt along the way.

After a lovely day at the seaside our Engineering Design Consultant Georgina talks about the thrill of Ben Ainslie’s final race and her realisation of the power these games have had to bring people together.

Following a recent business trip to the wonderful city of Sao Paulo, my colleague (Alex Crook – Human Sciences Consultant) and I decided that we wanted to pull together our top 10 most interesting facts, observations and insights. The following article gives you a flavour of some of our favourite things. Enjoy!

PDD Designer, Researcher and unofficial in-house Visual Ethnographer, James Steiner, recently went to Japan working on a project for one of our Asian clients. In what will be a three piece blog series, we will look a bit closer at some of the cultural distinctions that are manifested in the everyday design of Japan.

PDD Designer, Researcher and unofficial in-house Visual Ethnographer, James Steiner, recently went to Japan working on a project for one of our Asian clients. In what will be a three piece blog series, we will look a bit closer at some of the cultural distinctions that are manifested in the everyday design of Japan.

Buenos Aires is not really a place I thought I would ever go to. In fact, before going to BA the furthest I’d ever been from our beloved little island (the UK if you were wondering..) was to Israel when I was a young and fearless exchange student a good 10 years ago now. So when I (along with the rest of the team) arrived in BA I really had no idea what to expect, I’d heard stories and read-up as much as possible, beyond a reputation for fine meats and wines and of course, leather.

Last week saw the 50th anniversary of the opening of the notorious Grade II listed Park Hill flats, located high in the sky over Sheffield hilly landscape.

I’ve got a thing for gritty art. Twisted metal, raw edges, recycled flotsam, retrieved jetsam, rough textures, rude colours and crude material-all tied together with a quirky sense of humour. I’ll blame my 15 years living in the Steel City, Pittsburgh, on this predilection, but more on that in some future post.

At some point we’ve all been there, noticing the accumulation of a number of similar items and wondering ‘is this enough to be a collection yet?’ After this realisation, there is one of two ways to go: 1) become dedicated to the cause or 2) to realise the dangerous ground being tread upon, resolving to limit the acquisition of anymore similar items.

The weathered old man approached me in one of the impossibly difficult to find grocery shops in Havana. Though he spoke no English, he communicated through body language and fierce pointing that he had a small, hungry baby at home and that I should buy him the outrageously priced powdered milk.