What supermarkets could do to prevent people hoarding supplies and keep the pressure off personal, stores and shortages.

Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about the whole supermarket hoarding problem that exists since the COVID-19 pandemic started. And how this creates pressure on personnel, stores, shortages and how it excludes some people from getting the groceries they actually need.

So we started thinking and our first idea was to just set a maximum to what and how many products consumers can buy, but we came to the easy conclusion that this wouldn’t be a very smart move, and no supermarket would want to implement this due to revenue loss. So we went further in our thought experiment to find ways on how a supermarket would be more willing to implement limitations on consumers while trying to limit revenue losses.

We took Dutch supermarket Albert Heijn as our “client” (Note: this is not sponsored in any way and we hope that Albert Heijn is cool enough to let us use their “Hamsteren” concept and imagery to show this concept in a more visual way). We created the following concept by taking some initiatives from other countries where there are limitations on the number of products per consumer. In order to still have nice offers on products, and not having people buy more than what they actually need, we created meal packages.

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The meal packages work in this way: every week there will be a selection of 5+ meals that consist of either healthy, easy to preserve or from the “Allerhande” (a magazine from AH with recipes and other articles). To help people with buying their weeks’ worth of food, all recipes have ingredients that match with other recipes. At the end of the week, all or most of the ingredients will have been used.

I had a lot of fun doing this concept and was honestly laughing about the little face masks and stuff, so I made a special AH face mask for the people that are working at AH to stay safe.

Stay safe everybody, stay inside and if you have to go outside for work or groceries, make sure to keep your distance and try to help the people around you.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the logo, especially “why a whale?”. And to be honest, and I don’t know why, but I always envisioned a whale as the logo.

The logo came about when I was researching The Golden Ratio, and to make it easier here’s a bit of a sum up about what the golden ratio is:

“The Golden Ratio is a common mathematical ratio found in nature, which can be used to create pleasing, organic-looking compositions in your design projects or artwork. It’s also known as the Golden Mean, The Golden Section, or the Greek letter phi. And the Golden Ratio exists when a line is divided into two parts and the longer part (a) divided by the smaller part (b) is equal to the sum of (a) + (b) divided by (a), which both equal 1.618.”

After designing the logo I started to play a bit more with the golden ratio, and made several new designs.

Next step in the progress will be creating a brand book where I will show the identity of The Concept Consigliere.

Looking for someone to help you with your company branding? Or interested in working together on sustainable projects? Shoot me an email!

From waste to resource

3rd of feb 2020, the first day of the circular economy week. Today Frans Timmermans talked in Den Haag about the circular economy and at #nordictalks we took the talks to another level from several speakers from Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands about the latest developments within the circular economy.

We kicked off with Andrea Orsag who gave a chilling opening speech about how we, not just the nordic countries, need to work together on creating a circular economy. After the opening she sat down with Harald Friedl to talk about the circularity gap report. The biggest take-aways and the most shocking for me that we went from 9% circularity to 8.6%, which is the wrong direction. In the report it also details on which countries are shifting, building and growing. The most interesting take away from this overview is that Uruguay, Jamaica, Sri Lanka and Romania are doing pretty good, with smaller impact per person and either building or shifting towards a more sustainable society. It is a very satisfying looking report and I would recommend going to https://www.circularity-gap.world/2020

Harald also told us about that he was working on creating a platform where you can easily find sustainable and circular fashion.

Next up on stage was Sarah Nelen Deputy Head of Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans at European Commission. She came to talk about the EU Green Deal, a goal that aims towards being emission neutral by 2050. “It is a growing strategy, and it’s not all roses. We have winners and losers, take for instance the coalminers, they will lose business.” The way that the EU will try and reach this goal is very interesting, they don’t have a clear path yet and she gave different scenarios as possibilities.

The first scenario in this prognosis is where the emissions will slowly go lower and lower, where there is a nice and easy transition into zero emission, and the other is where there will be a build up first, where new technologies and emission friendly powerplants, factories and cities will be developed before there will be a big dip in emissions where it will end in zero.

“Textiles are the new plastics” – Sarah Nelen

Sarah makes the comparison between plastics and textiles because of the ban on single use plastics and the way that plastics are being recycled more and more, the next big step will be textiles and the tons of waste it creates every year.

This plan is a Northstar to keep in mind, actually achieving this will be a huge achievement where governments, private sector and citizens need to work together towards a zero emission EU.

During a panel discussion with companies Ragn-Sells, ARC, Neste and Aker Solutions, they showed us the most recent projects and achievements. The CO2 neutral incineration power plant with a ski slope on the roof and collection of oil from food that can be turned into fuel were the biggest highlights of the conversation.

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Pär Larshans called upon the audience for “collaboration between countries is needed, not just between governments but also with and between the public sector”

To keep it short and sweet there was a nice back and forth between the public and the speakers on stage. The Club of Rome called upon everybody to use one of two resources that are limitless: “There are two resources in the world that are limitless: imagination and stupidity, which resource are you going to use in the fight towards a circular economy?”

There was also someone who mentioned “Hedonistic Sustainability”. So where it becomes pleasurable to become or be sustainable instead of it being a fight for your life and a hassle to become sustainable. But more about that later.

What do you think? Is the EU gonna make it to become a zero emissions society by 2050? Is Trump finally gonna realize that climate change is real? And are we going to see more and more solutions that use “waste” from consumers to create durable fuels and products?

Check out Jeroen van Kooten on Instagram to see the #nordictalks event highlights and like and follow!

We all have seen the presentation from the United States and the new uniform of the Space Force. And I WISH there were trees in space, because I would love to have one, but the reality is a bit different.

This sparked my imagination and I started designing a whole new logo for the Space Force and with a custom camouflage because the Space Force is a custom camouflage due.

The logo is inspired by the American flag and the exploration towards Mars. The 51st star in the middle stands for the potential colony on mars or the moon and the colors come directly from the American flag except for the yellow, which stand for the glorious and golden future of space exploration.
The camouflage consists of futuristic hexagons in a scale of gray colors.

Please enjoy the design and the mockup, if you have any questions or comments, don’t be shy!

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