Reuse Group | Display Ideas

Displays for Salvation Army

We are helping to design the new Salvation Army Select store. We are the creative minds, putting the finishing touches on it. This means that we get the joy of doing the displays within the store. The "bones" of the store has already been designed. Our retail design class gets to be the creative source that breathes life into the space. We get to give the customers the warm fuzzy feeling that is so often felt when one gets to reinvent themselves by buying new (or in this case, gently used) clothes. I think most of us are leaning towards the displays having a boutiquey, vintage feel--a classy and antique touch. On our field trip to Anthropologie, one of the display fixtures they had was this table with a smoked and tarnished mirror as one of its surfaces. Its flawed surface caught my eye. The fact that it was hard to make out images in it, and the way the light was softly distorted in it--well, lets just say that I desperately want to use tarnished mirrors somewhere in the store. I think its a beautiful material to work with. I imagine the image above to be on the wall in front of the dressing rooms. Right now it is just blank, and there needs to be something there. Also, it is quite dark back there, so having a reflective surface would help brighten up the space.
The display above that I have designed also incorporates the tarnished mirror circles. I used my walk through greensboro as inspiration for this. It had rained earlier that day and I noticed lots of leaves. The mirrors, along with the leather straps that hang mimic the shape of a raindrop. There is also leaves and moss/fake grass placed under the mannequins, giving the space an outdoorsy feeling. Also, placed within the leaves are some red shoes that we have been collecting/painting to incorporate our guerrilla marketing strategy. I like the idea of having a two mock walls behind the platform. This gives us as designers more to work with space-wise. Also, I have designed my own platform, just for the sake of my display areas. I think this one works well because it subtle enough to be very versatile, yet still goes with the rest of the fixtures in the store because of its white paint, and rectangular reveal that pierces through it on all sides.

I decided that this display would be up around back-to-school season. Many old, leather bound books would be stacked around, with our red shoes, sitting strategically on the stacks and platform. This, to me, has a vintage and sophisticated feel--a feeling I adore.

An Inspiring Walk Through Greensboro

The pictures above are the products of my wonderful photography skills. I decided to take a walk through a neighborhood in Greensboro this weekend. I snapped pictures of things that tickled my fancy. Sometimes, in order to get inspired, all you have to do is open your eyes.

p.s. i LOVE editing photos. I think it might be my forte. Perhaps I should look for an internship doing photography. hmmm...something to ponder.

Inspiration

Earlier today, I was driving back home from work and it started to rain. I stopped at one of the very annoying stoplights between my apartment and work and my attention was caught by a raindrop, rolling its way down my windshield. I adjusted the focus of my eyes to see all of the raindrops more clearly instead of just looking past them (probably not a good idea when I'm supposed to be waiting for a red light to change to green..but I'm just so easily distracted.) I noticed right then just how beautiful they were. The way they picked up the light and distorted the image beyond the window was just lovely. Perhaps I can use this concept in design somehow.

Timepieces

Hello all! As a continuation of our store that we conceptually created, our class was given a new task: to design three different time pieces that could fit into the store. They had to somehow document the passage of time while also keeping the concept of the store in mind.

This first idea is my favorite--I think it goes with my concept the best. I researched different ways (other than clocks) to tell the passage of time. Two really interesting things that I found was the hourglass and the act of counting tree rings to tell the age of the tree. I thought of how neat it would be to combine those two ideas into one beautiful timepiece. I think both of the elements used (sand and wood) go very well with my concept. I decided to take the "zen garden" approach to my project. As we all know, the zen garden's main element is sand--thus, the hourglass. Also, I knew that the zen garden came from the Japanese. When I think of japanese design, I think "symmetry," "geometry," and "simplicity." I also remember that they use lots of wood in their design.

The timepiece designed below is my interpretation of the combining of these two ideas. I decided to place it on the back wall of the store behind the cashwrap. All of my materials in the store lead the eye back to that point. I placed an hourglass-like installation within a wooden circle. The sand within the hourglass takes a full year to fall completely to the bottom. The wooden circle consists of four rings that are all stained different shades (the lightest on the outside, and darkest on the inside--this creates visual depth.) Each ring represents one of the four seasons. One can tell what season it is currently, based on the level of sand. When it reaches a new ring, that indicates a new season. The sand in the hourglass counts the tree rings. The whole timepiece (or, timewheel, as I like to call it) can be rotated from the back of the wall when the year is finished. To me, this is the most interesting and most calming piece.

The next idea I though of for a timepiece is illustrated below. It would be placed at the same place as the previous timepiece (obviously, the store would only have one or the other of these timepieces.) After researching a zen garden, I found myself captivated by the ripples in the sand. I wanted to capture that texture and imitate it in a larger scale up on the wall. To do that, I decided that my back wall would be a textured wall. One time while researching, I came across a wall located in the Fort Lauderdale airport that seemed to mimic the undulating ripples of zen garden sand. The way the light hit the wall was incredible. (A picture of this wall is a couple posts down in my inspiration photos.) I decided to have a wall like this in my space, made out of molded plaster. I thought about the passage of time and decided to use two bamboo stalks as clock hands. There would be no numbers on this "clock," just the shadow of the bamboo on the ripples behind it.

For my last idea, I thought that I would take a bit of a different approach. Both of my previous ideas are at a large scale, so I thought I would also create a timepiece at a smaller scale--something that could be set around the store. Going along with the concept of "silent stone," and my continuation of the concept, "zen garden," I realized that since the common denominator between the two is the stone, I would create a stone replica that would tell the time. Now, I don't mean that I'm just going to slap a little clock on top of a random stone--I'm wanting to have really nice glowing stones, sprinkled throughout the display areas of the store. They would be made out of a thick, slightly textured acrylic. Inside would be a light that is set to a timer and changes colors depending on the time of day. It changes slowly from a robins egg blue during the morning to a grassy green during noon time. From there it changes to a pale, sunset pink for evening, and then to a dark indigo for when night comes around. In order to change the batteries, all one has to do is slide open a well hidden bottom compartment that sits flush with the rest of the stone.

Materials Presentation

Here is the material presentation I talked about in the previous post. I think I might make some make some minor changes to it before I print it out. But I think from looking at it, the feeling that I want to convey is very apparent. I'm so glad I found the wall covering picture (shown reflecting each other on either side of the board.) It is pretty perfect--even the flowers in it have the rosy warm pop that I was envisioning in my head for the store. Yay.

New Project!!

New project alert! It is nearing the end of our second week back to school. What's due tomorrow, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. It's a digital material presentation board for a new store that we are going to be designing. For this project, we were GIVEN the concept. Let me stress how meaningful that is--coming up with a concept for any new project is so challenging. It is actually one of my favorite parts of the design process, but gah, it gives me headaches. When coming up for something that your whole project is going to be based on or inspired by, so many ideas are running through your head, and it is difficult to pick just one. Or sometimes, you can't think of any. So for miss Suzanne to just hand me my concept on a silver platter (actually, I picked it out of a plastic tub), that completely skipped the "oh my gosh, what the heck is this whole thing going to be about" part of the process. It is a good way to start off the year, I think. We're getting back into the swing of things slowly.

Anyway, for my little store, I'm going to be selling perfume and cosmetics and my concept is: (drumroll, please) Silent Stones.

Did you just say "Huh?" because that was my exact reaction. I really didn't know what it was. I started researching it and for a couple days really kind of drew a blank a to which direction I should take it. At first I thought that I wanted to set up different beautiful, lit up displays around a dimly lit room and they would symbolize rock formations. After a meeting with the class, though, I rethought that and went back to the concept.

What is a stone? How does "silent stone" make me feel? Where are stones found? I thought of the feel of a stone. What differentiates between a rock and a stone?

After being in this state of mind, my thoughts were flooded with relaxing images in nature. Already at this point, I like where this was heading much more than the lousy 'rock formation' idea. What was I thinking? That had no substance. This store is going to feel spa-like and slightly japanese inspired. I'll have my actual materials presentation up tomorrow, but for now, here's some images that inspired me.