Have you noticed the increasing amount of 0870 numbers that are popping up?

Most of us will have committed to a phone contract that includes an allocation of free minutes to other mobiles or landlines. What we find really annoying is that these so called Premium or Lo-call numbers are excluded from any inclusive minutes that you may have. So more often that not, you end up with a bill at the end of the month for more than you expected. Not only are you charged an extra rate, but the company you are calling makes money from your call. This is especially annoying when waiting in a queuing system or when you are on hold.

Well, there is a solution. saynoto0870.com gives you the opportunity to enter the 0870 number and will than provide you with an alternative number (i.e. those beginning with 01 or 02) which will bring you straight through to the same number.

The search can extend to 0844, 0845 and 0871 numbers, giving you the opportunity to save
more money.

We would like to point out that it’s not always successful (or very well presented), but more often than not, it will provide an alternative number giving you a sense of enormous well-being!!

The summer is officially here and festival season is in full swing!

Masters Allen didn’t want to miss out, so we headed for the sunny (well almost sunny) fields of Oxfordshire for ‘Wakestock’ the UK national wakeboarding festival. For those of you who don’t know what wake boarding is, then it’s simply waterskiing but with a board. The interesting bit is being able to do jumps and tricks off the wake of the motor boat. We found it good fun to watch, mixing that with some great music and camping and you have Wakestock.

Whilst we were partaking in the fun, we became interested in the festival’s main sponsor logo – “Relentless energy drink”. It’s a brand we have not come across before and were intrigued to see this brand promoting itself so heavily within this extreme sports festival. We were so intrigued, that when we got back from our weekend, we investigated further. It turns out that Relentless has spent the last couple of years targeting extreme sports events, creating a brand that has now become part of the extreme sports tours and festivals landscape. Sports such as, wakeboarding, motor cross, mountain biking, skateboarding and surfing. The product sits well within this market, building on the adrenalin rush atmosphere. We were impressed by the way this brand has concentrated its creative approach to target a specific audience and not gone for a safer, more general route. Even the logo design has a flamboyant, energetic, almost tribal tattooed look and feel, again directly targeting their desired audience. With the extreme sports attracting large crowds to these events, it seems that relentless have tapped into a seriously exclusive yet financially lucrative market, that is still growing.

As far as the product goes, we weren’t too impressed, unable to finish a single can due to the ‘extreme’ taste. But then if your marketing is so strong, does it really matter if it’s not to everyone’s taste?

For those of you that share our love of all things Mac. You may find this post quite enlightening, we did!

The year 2008 marks the 10th Anniversary of the iMac, the computer that changed everything at Apple, hailing a new design era spearheaded by design genius Jonathan Ive. What most people don’t know is that there’s another man whose products are at the heart of Ive’s design philosophy, an influence that permeates every single product at Apple, from hardware to user-interface design. That man is Dieter Rams, and his old designs for Braun during the ’50s and ’60s hold all the clues not only for past and present Apple products, but their future as well:

When you look at the Braun products by Dieter Rams—many of them at New York’s MoMA—and compare them to Ive’s work at Apple, you can clearly see the similarities in their philosophies way beyond the sparse use of color, the selection of materials and how the products are shaped around the function with no artificial design, keeping the design “honest.”

This passion for “simplicity” and “honest design” that is always declared by Ive whenever he’s interviewed or appears in a promo video, is at the core of Dieter Rams’ 10 principles for good design:

• Good design is innovative.
• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic.
• Good design helps us to understand a product.
• Good design is unobtrusive.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is durable.
• Good design is consequent to the last detail.
• Good design is concerned with the environment.
• Good design is as little design as possible.

Ive’s inspiration on Rams’ design principles goes beyond the philosophy and gets straight into a direct homage to real products created decades ago. Amazing pieces of industrial design that still today remain fresh, true classics that have survived the test of time.

The similarities between products from Braun and Apple are sometimes uncanny, others more subtle, but there’s always a common root that provides the new Apple objects not only with a beautiful simplicity but also with a close familiarity.

For more information visit;
http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to-apples-future

Welcome to the Masters Allen news and views pages. Over the coming months this will become a resource of useful hints and tips on all things design, marketing and internet related, covering new technologies to fascinating design ideas.