Posts Tagged ‘ Retail Birmingham ’

Give Give Give Me More More More

Give Give Give Me More More More

I hated these “signs” when they appeared. They’re everything signs shouldn’t be: difficult to understand, vague, pointing to places they care about rather than ones you do: “It lists shops, or rather it doesn’t list shops it lists ’shopping arcades’ or ’shopping areas’ — and the ’shopping area’ (at least those listed) is not how people navigate. It’s an advert for anything that’s “not the bull ring” dressed up as information, it’s advertorial, it’s more street clutter on an already cluttered New St, and it’s crap. At least it tells you where the train stations are (although not Moor St which is nearest).” But as I saw yesterday, it’s no longer even pretending to be a sign: Where’s the justification for more adverts? How are people going to find the Burlington Arcade now?

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A Bad Sign

A Bad Sign

It’s taken me a while to get round to blogging this, I took the photo a few weeks ago of a new (to me at least) sign that has sprung up near to the bull in town. It’s quite obviously been paid for by Retail Birmingham (one of the ‘Business Improvement Districts’ that are now forming to spend small wodges of cash on “improving thier districts”, which is convoluted, but fine). It’s a sign, Brum isn’t well sign-posted — so it should be a good thing, right? No, not really. It’s a bad sign from the perspective of anyone trying to find anything, because: It lists shops, or rather it doesn’t list shops it lists ‘shopping arcades’ or ‘shopping areas’ — and the ‘shopping area’ (at least those listed) is not how people navigate.  It’s an advert for anything that’s “not the bull ring” dressed up as information, it’s advertorial, it’s more street clutter on an already cluttered New St, and it’s crap. At least it tells you where the train stations are (although not Moor St which is nearest). Birmingham needs good, clear, informative signs, (like these being piloted in London, but better obviously) — not adverts (this...

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Retail Repackage Remodel

Retail Repackage Remodel

Retail Birmingham is a BID – Business Improvement District – with is (stop me if I’m wrong here) kind of a government approved council for businesses in its area, they have a few tax breaks or something and power to spend a bit of cash on things to improve their locale. They’ve got a new website - lovingly and beautifully designed by local dudes 383. The site itself is smart, but the content doesn’t seem to know what it is – is it for customers (nice maps and guides, event listing) or the BID itself (don’tcha think that huge title might be a little confusing?) ? For Brum geeks tho’ – the fun is, subscribe to the RSS feed and get news that doesn’t get the ‘huge Jamelia forehead shot’ treatment on the site – including (how the hell do they calculate?) footfall figures for the city centre: January footfall figures: -5.8% on last years figures Birmingham City Centre – busiest days in January Sat 26 Jan – 284,263 Sat 12 Jan – 242,032 Sat 19 Jan – 238,871 Fri 25 Jan – 206,262 Fascinating stuff – and there’s nice jetwash-porn with before and after pics of when Ramora...

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BiNS is mostly by Jon Bounds a Birmingham based social web consultant, producer and writer., You can hire him to work on your social web campaigns or anything really—he's not fussy. Follow him on twitter or drop him an email.

There's also the odd bit of stuff from Danny Smith.

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