House of Fraser, one the U.K.’s largest premium department store chains, is now offering its customers a unique mobile shopping experience with Augmented Reality (AR) technology from Layar.

By integrating the powerful Layar SDK into its existing mobile app, House of Fraser now allows customers to “Scan to Explore” and shop for products directly from its catalogue through AR. Customers can quickly shop and access immersive content, like videos, music 3D product previews, recipes and lookbooks.

The Layar SDK allows for a seamless integration of AR technology into existing mobile applications. House of Fraser also used the app commerce platform Poq to quickly and easily create a customized mobile AR experience for their customers.

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London-based design and communications agency Magnetic London, a member of the Layar Partner Network, has seen a recent flurry of activity with Augmented Reality. The agency has helped numerous companies from various parts of the world discover how Layar can help bring print and digital together, so here’s an overview of some of their most recent projects.

Khan Academy Turkce
Working together with STFA Holding, one of the largest Turkish conglomerates, and its corporate social responsibility project Khan Academy Turkce, Magnetic London created the first book cover with AR in Turkey. Together they added interactive AR content to the recently published Turkish translation of Salman Khan’s education reform manifesto, “The One World Schoolhouse.”

Scanning the cover with the Layar App reveals videos about the academy in Turkish, as well as links to the Khan Academy Turkce website and social media pages. Magnetic London designed custom calls-to-action which were printed on the inside jacket flaps of the book.

“Readers who downloaded the app and scanned the cover were impressed with how easy it was to use the app,” said Kaan Aydogmus, Creative Director of Magnetic London. “They said such an innovative technology fits very well with this book of Salman Khan. Readers were excited about the AR technology and curious about how it could be used in other areas.”

New Economics Foundation
Magnetic London also recently worked with the New Economics Foundation (NEF), the UK’s leading think tank for promoting social, economic and environmental justice. Together they produced interactive Community Currencies in Action flyers to excite policy makers and academics about local currencies with Augmented Reality.

“The interactive element serves as a great talking point to start up conversations with people we want to collaborate with,” the NEF said. “We are glad we used AR. It takes some explaining to get people to download the app, but this can serve as a useful way to get people to really look at the flyer.”

British Tech Summit
The agency also recently attended the one-day British Tech Summit in Istanbul, which convenes high profile British and Turkish technology and telecom businesses. Magnetic London had it’s own stand at the event to showcase its business, and even Blippar founder and CEO Ambarish Mitra showed up to say hello!

“People were queueing in front of our augmented exhibition stands to experience this technology with our Discover London in 360 campaign,” said Aydogmus. “We had three panoramic photo spheres of Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, and St.Paul’s Cathedral. People who scanned our stands were taken into these spheres where they had to move and turn around themselves with their phones in the air to look up and down to discover those places. We had the most attention at the event.”

BakuTel
Magnetic London even made a trip to Baku, Azerbaijan to participate in the BakuTel exhibition, one of the largest design, technology and telecommunications expos in the region. The agency was excited to show off Layar’s Augmented Reality technology to many of the event’s high-profile attendees, and even made the evening news.

“We had a chance to present all of our design services including Augmented Reality to the President of Azerbaijan, Mr. Ilham Aliyev, to the British Ambassador Mr. Irfan Siddiq, and the UK’s Trade Envoy Mr. Charles Hendry,” said Aydogmus. “The president experienced Augmented Reality himself, and he was amazed with it.”

AR in Travel and Hospitality
And finally, similar to our own series of webinars and overview documents, Magnetic London has been creating animated slideshow videos detailing the benefits of Augmented Reality for specific industries. The latest animation is about the Travel and Hospitality Business, we’ve embedded it below!

Katy Perry isn’t the only eye-catching thing in this month’s Elle UK.

Inside the popular women’s magazine, readers will find they can scan pages with the Layar App to discover bonus materials, including links and behind-the-scenes videos.

Here’s what Elle had to say about its latest issue:

“You can bring the web page (pg 40) to life so you can get to the online content direct via your phone, including our behind-the-cover Katy Perry video.

See the Chanel page with the whole world on it? You can scan the page and see every look from that show while you’re on-the-go.

And that’s not all – you could also win a beauty goody bag, worth £200. All you need to do is head to pg 314 and find the hidden beauty video using your Layar app. Tweet @ELLEUK using #ELLEsept and the name of the video for your chance to win.”

With the Layar Creator, brands can easily add digital interactivity to print in just minutes! Learn more here!

Check out what readers can see with Layar in the September issue of Elle UK below. To see more great examples, visit our new Inspiration page!

One of our favorite use cases for Augmented Reality is artistic expression and the ability to make digital statements on top of places and things in the real world. 

Gilt City is artist John Goto’s response to the ongoing global financial crisis expressed in Augmented Reality around London’s Bank of England.

In his latest collaboration with developer Matthew Leach, Goto uses montaging techniques to show “marginal characters isolated in the bustling commercial centre” to draw attention to the widening income gap between the rich and poor.

If you launch the Gilt City layer near the statue of Wellington outside the Bank of England, you’ll see a motley cast of characters including a banker, a naked man, a bullfighter, a drug dealer and several other men of varying occupations asking for money.

As the user, you decide who to give money to and who to zap! If you choose to give money to the person, the black-and-white figure regains its color. If you choose to zap the person, the figure explodes, never to pander to you again (well, until you relaunch the layer, anyway).

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