Bag is Beautiful: What Makes a Bag for Life Great?

Bag is Beautiful: which is your favourite?

As some of you may know, I've got something of a soft spot for supermarkets. No matter how much I am told about their role in perpetuating everything that's bad in society, from environmental destruction to in-work poverty, all of this ill-feeling melts away underneath the reassuring glow of the fluorescent lighting. If for some strange reason you don't share my misplaced love of big retail I suggest you come back next week, when I'll hopefully be looking at something more interesting.

Green Shoots of Growth 

Up Close and Personal with Morrisons' Bag for Life

Still with me? Okay, then allow me to begin. Today I want to give a shout out to Morrisons for their inspiring range of fruit-themed bags for life. That's time, the humble bag for life. It may not hold the answers to how Britain can avoid a triple-dip recession (clue: it's not about an in/out EU referendum) but for it's definitely providing me with some much-needed  green shoots of growth this January?

What's so special about Morrisons' bag for life, I hear you ask? Like all the best things in life, it's something of a mystery. If pushed, I'd have to say it's the supremely bright and breezy colour scheme. The bag pictured centre stage makes great use of green. As students of colour theory will know, green is the colour of nature ans is said to symbolise growth, harmony  freshness and fertility. Could this be the reason I feel so positively predisposed to Morrisions' offering?

The Bauhaus of Supermarket Design

Own Label: Groundbreaking design work from Sainsbury's 

I suspect there's more to my love of Morrisions' bags for life than their colour scheme. Looking at their representations of fruit I'm reminded me of a great book I got for my birthday last year. Own Label tells the story of Sainsbury's groundbreaking Design Studio between the years 1962 and 1977. Flicking through the images contained in the book, I can see parallels between Morrisions style. Sainsbury's designs are arguably more coolly modernist than Morrisions' cartoony illustrations but they both display a willingness to deviate from the pursuit of photorealism. Is my enjoyment of Morrisons' bag simply a bad case of nostalgia?

Whatever the underlying reasons for my fondness of Morrisions' Bags for Life, I'm just glad to know they're out there in the world, doing their thing.

Share Your Views on Bags for Life

What's your take on the current state of the Bag for Life scene? Do you think I'm wrong to lavish so much praise on Morrisons offerings? Maybe I should be focused on a Bag for Life from an up and coming retail outlet instead. Or perhaps I simply need need to get out more. As ever, your thoughts are appreciated.

Morrisons: The Rose that grew from Concrete

A bright future for Hagley Road beckons?

Since moving to Birmingham in May I've found myself strangely fascinated by the rapid development of the new Morrisons supermarket on Hagley Road, next to the Five Ways roundabout I pass everyday on my way home from work. Today, the supermarket threw open its doors to customers for the first time. Like some Z-list celebrity, I got myself along first thing this morning to witness this momentous occasion. This is my story.


Supermarkets: the endless love affair

Readers who know me will know that I've got something of a soft spot for supermarkets in general and Sainsbury's in particular. I know, I know, supermarkets are perhaps the ultimate expression of late capitalism's empty consumerism and environmental destruction in pursuit of profit.

And yes, arguably given my first career was in local government I suppose I should care more about the undue influence supermarkets with their (allegedly) vast land banks have on the Planning system and functioning competition in this country.

Luckily, however, all of these feelings of mild unease fade away as soon as I cross the threshold an am bathed in the perpetual daylight of supermarkets' brutally efficient lighting. Then, all of a sudden my years spent as a student trolley-wally and checkout assistant at Sainsbury's somehow collude to make me turn a blind eye to the emptiness of modern capitalism and enjoy the rush that can only come from a trip around a supermarket with a footprint of a small developing country.


Morrisons on Hagley Road: The Rose that Grew from Concrete?

Given the soft spot I carry for supermarkets, my expectations for the new Morrisons were reasonably high. I believe it was the late Tupac Shakur who described in his poetry the rose that grew from concrete.Without wishing to reach for the pseud card so early into a post, it's only mildly hyperbolic to suggest that as I witnessed the store's emergence over the summer and into the autumn I believed it could very well be that rose.

While it's fair to say I am writing this post with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, for those of you who aren't familiar with Birmingham, it's worth pointing out that Morrisons doesn't exactly have much competition in the roses stakes. Hagley Road is, after all, (in)famous as the home of Spearmint Rhino, not to mention the most randomly laid out Tesco known to man. Still, I'm told it's important to have hope.

First Impressions of the new Store

The hottest ticket in town: 10 minutes to go until the official opening

After queuing patiently with around 30 or so my fellow citizens I was allowed into the store at just gone 9 o'clock. First impressions of the store were good. I'd heard Morrisons knew a thing or two about how to run a deli counter but nobody had told me their fresh fruit and veg game was this strong. Forget everything you thought you knew about refrigeration, it turns out fresh vegetables should be kept at their best with a fine mist of water vapour. I don't know if this is an environmentally friendly method but who cares when it looks this (literally) cool?

Greenery in the Mist

My sense of wonderment didn't stop at the fresh fruit and veg area. Like a Zombie in Dawn in the Dead I shuffled along to the brightly lit counters offering all manner of freshly prepared foods. By now most of us will act faux-nonchalant at the magnificent sight of a row of freshly prepared in-store pizzas but one thing you positively can't front on is a bar serving fresh fruit salad. Sadly, I'd already breakfasted otherwise I dare say I would have been tempted to dig deep and make a real and lasting contribution to my 5-a-day target.

Fresh fruit, fresh thinking

Sadly, my first visit to the new Morrisons was not entirely care-free. After spending too much time in the company of designers at thinkpublic I'm sorry to say I've become something of a font snob. And as much as I enjoyed my Monday morning visit to Morrisions, the supermarket giant's approach to the written word cut me deep. Upon leaving the store my eyes were burned by the sight of a 'see you later' sign, written in a handwritten style that wouldn't be out of place next to Comic Sans. After reading a brilliant book on the groundbreaking work of the Sainsbury's in-house design studio, the sight of this sign made me question the concept of progress.

Sign of the Times: Had Morrisons not read Just My Type?

Moving On

With my curiosity over the new Morrisons now sated I am hoping I won't ever feel the need to blog about a supermarket visit in this much depth again. Nevertheless, I hope my paean to Hagley Road's renaissance has piqued your interest in the new Morrisons enough to make you want to pay a visit to the store. And if for any reason you can't make it to Hagley Road, I'm sure there'll be a supermarket near to you that's equally deserving of your time and attention.

Roots of Reggae: Good Time Rock

@JoeSmithDesign Roots of Reggae poster on display at Supertone's Store, Acre Lane, Brixton

It's been an enjoyably hectic couple of weeks or so since my last proper post so I thought I had better get another one written before my thoughts take on a rose-tinted hew and (to continue with the colour theme) my anger at the Coalition's plans to privatise the NHS simply becomes just another grey hair on my weary head.

So where to begin? Gainful employment seems a reassuringly sensible place to start so here goes.

Experience is Everything

A poster which caught my eye whilst on location at James Cake hospital in Middlesbrough

Last time I mentioned I'd picked up some freelance project work with thinkpublic. With much fanfare I can now reveal I've been leading on a piece of work with the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. The project is looking at how staff and patients experience either delivering or receiving Ambulatory Care services and exploring with them how, in future, we can build better processes for capturing and understanding these experiences in order to improve how services are designed and delivered.

Exploring how staff and patients experience and feel about services is a really powerful way of involving them in identifying and co-designing service improvements. The project is still ongoing but already we have identified lots of new areas for improvement and, more importantly, got people believing that they have the power to improve health services. You can read more about the project, including an explanation of what Ambulatory Care actually means, in the blog I wrote for thinkpublic.

Guardianista Profiling

An ambition realised: my profile on The Guardian Website

 Besides the work for thinkpublic, I'm also proud of the article on co-production which I recently wrote for The Guardian local government network. For the 90 per cent of the population who don't and should never have to know what the term means, co-production simply describes sharing the design and the delivery of public services with users. The article is based on my experience of attending a leadership network event designed to give officers of Lambeth Council the confidence to work in more collaborative ways with their citizens. You can the full piece here.

 I am also pleased to have recently connected with the social enterprise Spots of Time, whose mission is to make it easy for all of us for volunteering our time in fun, bite-sized ways. Rather like the work I've been doing with The Amazings, my involvement with Spots of Time is strictly pro bono for now (and I HATE U2) but hopefully there will be more formal opportunities as the organisation grows and connects with different communities. Watch this space for how things progress.

Roots of Reggae

An even greater ambition realised: Roots of Reggae blowing up the spot at  Sainsbury's Forest Hill

Those of you with the good fortune to have spent any time in my company or read my Tweets may well have heard of a little project I'm developing in my spare time called Roots of Reggae. I don't want  to go overboard in this post but here are a few key milestones:

• Age UK Lambeth have endorsed the project, which should help attract an older crowd than might otherwise get along to the Ritzy Brixton.
• Mistah-Brown Selector of Tighten-Up Crew up and Sly and Reggie have both been brilliant in offering their support to the event. Mistah-Brown in has brought on board his good friends DJ Keith Lawrence and MC DaddyRanks, which means we're in store for a fantastic day of music.
• Support with publicising Roots of Reggaes. Whether it has been DJ David Katz, music store owners Supertone and Blacker Dread, South London Press, The Brixton Bugle or local traders, I have been amazed by the warmth with which Roots of Reggae has been received.

Next Steps

For the next week or so I'll be working hard to ensure the Roots of Reggae launch is a success. I'll look to write a separate post this weekend on my experiences of developing the project. Other than that, I'm looking to continue with the freelance work whilst looking for new opportunities.

You can follow developments with Roots of Reggae on Twitter @RootsofReggae but to really get what I'm talking about make sure to get along to the FREE launch event on the afternoon of Saturday 3rd December.