Bloomberg invests in Little Sun

Michael Bloomberg’s foundation has announced that it will invest $5 million in Little Sun, the solar-powered lamp and global project designed to bring clean, affordable light to people living in places without access to safe, reliable and affordable electricity.

As well as providing clean energy to places dependent on costly and toxic kerosene lighting, the Little Sun business model equips local people to start small businesses and generate profits from the sale of the lamps.

The Bloomberg foundation will provide a low-interest loan to help the business grow and have an even greater impact on the lives and livelihoods of people in the Sub-Saharan Africa.

Danish artist Olafur Eliasson who created the lamp, said: "With a Little Sun in your hand, you become a power station, charging your lamp in the sun, you also empower yourself."

Wolff Olins is proud to be a Little Sun development partner.

You can contribute to bringing environmentally and financially sustainable energy to Africa by buying a Little Sun here. 

Image via Little Sun.

Big night, big deal: Wolff Olins @ Fast Company Innovation By Design

It was a very good night for Wolff Olins last night at the Fast Company's Innovation by Design Conference and Awards show. Our work snagged 2 spots out of 1,200 submissions, 54 finalists and 9 awards given.

USA TODAY, which took home one of the 9 awards given, was lauded as a 'hail mary for business impact' by Square.

Little Sun, a finalist, was spotlighted as a shining example of rethinking the supply chain and shaping the future of design.

We were in great company too – Google, Uber, The Mars Rover, MIT Labs, Dyson, Tesla and Nike also received recognitions. 

Read more about the winners here. For a deeper dive into our work, visit USA TODAY here and Little Sun here. And check this out for a little backstage Q&A with our CEO, Karl Heiselman.

Congrats to the others. We're thrilled!

A Work of Art That Works In Life

Here’s a film we just made about Little Sun - a work of art that works in life by bringing light to millions of people living without electricity.

Little Sun taps into the most abundant raw material in fast growth economies: the power of creative optimism. It is a raw material we think all brands need to learn to take advantage of.

We hope you can feel just a little of it in this clip. 

Little Sun Wolff Olins from Wolff Olins on Vimeo.

For more information please visit the Little Sun website.

Bit of gumpf on it.

By Karl Sadler

Tinkering around the other day trying to figure out how an Arduino microcontroller ethernet shield worked, we stumbled across this post by Greg on his labby blog. 

He's hacked a gumball machine that is connected to the Internet and utilises Twitter's API to operate its dispenser whenever someone tweets the hashtag #candy4greg.

This Christmas, our chairman Brian Boylan gave each of us at Wolff Olins London a Little Sun as a gift. (Little Sun is a little solar-powered lamp designed for people who have limited access to reliable energy. We helped out with the brand and business model for them last year.)

Anyway, when we saw Greg's post, and seeing as he'd open sourced the code, we wanted to try it out to see if it could work with the Little Sun.

The circuitry inside is intentionally very simple, but our first obstacle was getting a special hex screwdriver to open it up. Little Sun told us they were intentionally locked down, as lots of Little Sun owners were removing the rechargeable battery components from the kerosene replacing lamps and leaving the leftover parts unused.

With a very simple set up, we wired in the lamp's LED to the Arduino's power supply. The boards were then attached to the Little Sun body with Sugru. The solar panel and rechargeable battery has been removed and will probably be used with something else from the parts bin for another project.

So now, here's a video in our office of Little Sun blinking every time someone on Twitter mentions #littlesun.

Little Sun Hack from Wolff Olins on Vimeo.

There seem to be a lot of people tweeting about Little Sun, so, lots of flashing.

If the internet of things is the future, this does raise the question of how many 'things' we'll have in our life, powered, drawing energy and our attention. It's not clear how genuinely useful this experiment was, but it's a taste of what's possible and we love it when code works!

Karl Sadler is a designer at Wolff Olins London.

The Shop is Open

By Sophie Gaskill 

Here's a snap that should warm you up on this snowy day.

Little Sun is a project developed in response to the energy deficit facing many parts of the world. It is a project to bring light to the 1.6 billion people in the world who live without reliable access to electricity. Little Sun is a beautiful solar-powered light in the shape of a hand-sized sun. It’s a work of art that works in life. And this week, it was nominated for a 2013 Designs of The Year award by the Design Museum in London.

Wolff Olins is one of Little Sun’s partners and last year we worked closely with the team to take Little Sun from an idea and prototype to a fully fledged brand out in the world. The picture at top shows the first Little Sun flagship store. It was taken in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe where the store was built by the network of Plan Zimbabwe Former Sponsored Children and the Junior Achievement Zimbabwe (JAZ).

In accordance with Little Sun’s goal of spreading light, safe energy, and profits everywhere, this Little Sun store is operated by local residents and generates local profits.  Residents can purchase a little sun for $9 USD.

For more information about this project, visit their website.

Sophie Gaskill is marketing & content manager at Wolff Olins London. 

Little Sun Puts Power of the Sun into Tate Visitors’ Hands

By Julian McBride

This past Saturday, London’s Tate Modern museum turned off its power so that visitors could explore their galleries using only the light of the Little Sun. Check out this Wall Street Journal story for more details. 

Little Sun is an ambitious work of art by leading artist Olafur Eliasson and solar engineer Frederik Ottesen. Wolff Olins worked as a development partner together with Eliasson and Ottesen to create a groundbreaking inverted distribution business model through which the lamps can be sold at both a profit for local retailers and an affordable price for consumers.

The Tate Blackouts will continue until September 23. Meanwhile, as of today, U.S. residents can now do their part in helping to address the global energy challenge by purchasing Little Sun for $25 + $5.95 at http://shopus.littlesun.com/onestepcheckout/ (NOTE: U.S. orders currently have a delivery time of 30 days)

For wholesale, contact: [email protected]

  Image via The Telegraph

Making the light that is for all of us into light that is for each of us, the wonderful Little Sun launched today at the Tate Modern. We are delighted to be a development partner for this project.

Little Sun is a hugely ambitious work of art by leading artist Olafur Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen that will bring light to millions of people living off grid.

Little Sun is a response to today’s global energy challenge. It is a beautiful solar-powered lamp that produces five hours of light from five hours of charging. Its light enables people off grid to study, share, cook and earn.

As development partner we've helped make Little Sun happen by articulating the idea, creating the brand and defining a radical business model, 'profit to point'.  The model ensures that profits increase the closer distributors are to the point of need and is possible because Little Sun is a work of art.

This summer Eliasson is presenting Little Sun at Tate Modern as part of the London 2012 Festival, which runs across the UK until 9 September 2012.

Thanks to everyone involved in making Little Sun happen.