From the Editor

From the Editor
Honing the craft

By Alison Embrey Medina, Executive Editor
March 08, 2010

In the age of budgets and bottom lines, one might assume the craft of visual and store design would slide over and take a backseat in the overarching retailing equation. One might assume that design risks would be quelled, visual bonanzas would be axed and the entire retail landscape would become a white-walled world devoid of color or imagination.

One might be wrong.

The ability to awe and amaze is the last hidden trick in the book, and one that our industry tends to excel at—exponentially—even as budgets diminish. In the Q&A on page 10 of this issue, DDI’s 2010 Markopoulos Award winner Tom Beebe reflects that he feels the art and craft of display has been missing, surmising that cookie-cutter mentalities have dominated retail for too long. Perhaps he is right, on a grand scale. But he and designers like him are on a mission to bring that wonder and joy back into the retail experience—the need to satiate the artistic appetite. He relates the feeling a customer should get from passing by a store window or retail display to “finding a $10 bill on the floor in a taxi.”

To Beebe’s point, we’re seeing a great deal of retailers having to “go back in the trenches” of retail, and in the most beautiful, imaginative ways. This issue alone is chock full of them. H&M created a brilliant showroom exhibition for its H&M Home line, crafted primarily of oval mirrors and crafty MDF slung from the ceiling (page 18). At The School of Life, we find a basement area of the store with all walls decorated in a black-and-white mural hand-done with a marker pen on white emulsion paint (page 20). Selfridges completely reinvented its third floor with crafty additions, such as sprawling “trees” created from yellow-painted steel and pine wood, and quirky merchandising touches, like the dramatically scaled hanger feature used to merchandise clothing (page 46). And let’s not forget Juicy Couture’s eccentric London townhouse, where simple shaded silhouettes painted over ornate architectural detailing transform each area of the store into its own distinct personal playroom for the customer (page 30).

In Archibald MacLeish’s famed 1926 poem “Ars Poetica,” the stanzas conclude in a simple statement of bold clarity about the essence of poetry: “A poem should not mean, but be.” How true this is for any retail brand as well.

��A store should not mean—it should just be. Natural, instinctual design tends to stand the test of time—and budgets. Creative thought—and its proliferation in the retail environment—has the uncanny power to cause onlookers to stop, pause, take in and appreciate. And maybe even buy something. It should, from the moment a customer walks in the front door, ignite the senses and encourage the natural human instinct to explore. In any given retail store, shoppers don’t have to know why or how each of the visual and design elements came to be—for the consumer, they just need to be. And be great.

In a portion of Beebe’s interview with DDI Managing Editor Jessie Bove that did not make it into his Q&A, he reflects on how his career transgressed from retail to editorial and back to retail again: “It’s funny how, sometimes, you have to go backwards to go forward.” Beebe has gone from his early days in visual at Bergdorf, Neimans and Paul Stuart, to styling editorial spreads in what was one of the industry’s most beloved publications (DNR). Now he is once again working back “in the trenches” in the retail windows at Paul Stuart, bumping his head on ladders and rediscovering the world of pins, threads and wire. In his eyes, returning to the craft of retailing is invigorating. Remember that first day at your first job in retail, and how the possibilities just seemed endless? That’s inspiration. Now, put your craft to work. The world is ready to be amazed again.

Alison Embrey Medina
Executive Editor
aembrey@ddimagazine.com