Pav Kailey

Situated at the Royal College of Art, Helen Hamlyn takes on design research projects aiming to find effective ways to humanise healthcare and specials is how healthcare is delivered. They are the longest running venture of design research at RCA. They collaborate with business, academic, government and voluntary partners. Working alongside students, graduates and academics. 

Today some friends from the course and I visited London to gain inspiration and visit independent stores and galleries. We stumbled upon some interesting stores we thought had great minimalistic interiors or colour.

Topshops Stranger Things window installation in light of the release of season 2

This helped gain research and inspiration as well as seeing interior and retail experience we thought didn’t work or styles we wanted to avoid.

•Vintage Chuck Taylor brand

•Derived from Basketball enthusiasts 

•Like Vans has a large age group wearing their footwear.

•However not known for extreme sports or creative lifestyle. 

•Vans and Converse are both casual footwear.

•Morphed under NIKE into fashionable footwear.   

Compared to Vans, not as creative custom footwear. Comes from a less creative and unique beginning. 

•Campaign: Forever Chuck 

•Uses celebrities to promote their footwear being an anchor for pop-culture.   Done in a series of chapters made into films.

Intuition & Logic: There can be a conflict between the two which creates mistakes. 

Unintentional Blindness: The brain is so set/focused on something it won't notice things that are around you. This can relate to a customer fixed on a certain product in a store where they miss other products or way finding around them. 

Two ways of thinking: 

Fast: System 1 - automatic mode, effortless, responsible for what we do most - visual perceptions. 

Slow: System 2 - rational, consciousness, logical, sequential, effort, concentration. 

Depending on a customers way of thinking this could effect how a store is experienced. I think the store has to be highly visual, will it need a lot of logic to get around. As designers we want to make it as easy as possible to customers to get around and experience. So they don't miss a thing, which requires System 1. 

Halo Effect: Based on what you like, will make you love things. Based on what you dislike will make you hate things. However, you like things because of experience. If you were to give an audience what they have never experienced it creates a new opportunity as designers for them to love it. 

Lau Tzu: Father of Taoism, ‘Of a good leader when his task is finished, his goal achieved.[his pupil] We did that ourselves.’

We were set up with the task of watch our online tutorials set by David our personal tutor. 

The set of videos discussed:

 The cycle everyone will go through of working in a team 

How to adapt 

Change 

Aims of working in a team 

Roles within a team

The challenges 

Methodology 

Ground Rules 

Who do we want to engage? 

These range of topics were linked to psychology with studies embedded showing a cycle explaining the feeling in a team, first being: 

We all form together for the 1st time and are all strangers (always awkward) 

Idea building helps create the idea flowing but ultimately bring a lot of pressure

Storming will take effect - where everything inevitably goes downhill for the group as they feel lost and stuck 

Norming - as they all share a common goal of the deadline, everyone becomes stressed and works together towards this 

Performing is everyone working together as a team on their idea 

Sustaining the project after its done is the challenge. 

Light et al: Persuading to make change cannot bring significant change in knowledge in terms of approach conception, attitude and behaviour. 

I plan to research further into different ways explore and find new locations. I know of a website: 28dayslater.co.uk which allows viewers to find new locations to explore around there areas. 

After narrowing down locations as a group we will decide to visit locations and document our journey there. 

Documentation

I have suggested we make an Instagram account to showcase our creative progress and outcomes. If it comes to needing a target audience physically present at our creative projects it can be a great way to network and advertise our presence. 

Collab Project: Proposal Idea: Meeting 2

Possible Aims: Make people uncomfortable, create a reaction/response

Idea: Everyday objects are placed into chosen locations around Birmingham, with a possible history or interest. These objects are to create a juxtaposition with the location. For example, a velvet sofa in an abandoned house. This can be done through style, colour and media used. We are thinking of making some of these objects, finding them, or producing them digitally. By creating these differences, we will hopefully receive a response out of viewers. The locations could range from public to abandoned. In terms of finding locations everyone could research places of interest in Birmingham and find out history or interesting facts. We can then figure out what objects would be best suited for locations and narrow everything down.  

 I made a mood board on Pinterest about this theme for a visual guide. 

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pavkailey/off-the-edge/

Week one: Introduction, Group Theme & Name

I started the Collaboration project last week. Was lovely meeting new creatives with different skills. I know one person previously from our course in my group (Sasqia). I have a positive outlook on this project as I’ve never done anything like this before. We were also introduced to many other course leaders with different background skills which is a booster.

My group consists of: Charile (Film, special effects), Sasqia, Alice (Illustration), Samuel (TV Radio), Emily and Ellie (Art&Design)

We began by introducing ourselves, talking about our skill sets and coming up with a group name: Ninety Degrees which is linked to our chosen theme Edge.

For this space we can chose any location/space. 

Pop up:  Will it be long term?- To use as display room purposes to give awareness of brand to new potential/existing customers. Is a good way to gather customer data. 

Sales

Awareness - using social media, marketing ideas, street signs, way findings

Showroom - display best products in elegant almost exhibition style 

Gather customer data - excellent for further potential shops and retail experience. Can learn what worked and what didn't. I can research customer review data from vans or look for global reports. 

Who is the client? 

The client is able to determine the: aesthetic, materials used, budget and location. 

I find with Vans it is easy to find the aesthetic and materials as they are modern and urban trend setters. So new lifestyle trends in footwear and fashion will always be up to date. 

After talking to Matt from Provide I gained an insight to where I could take my project and how to create a retail experience from the LivingOffTheWall series. 

His talk with us about his personal experience with creating Provide gave me a lot of inspiration and things to think about when producing for a target audience. 

Space is important in a store as you need to find a way to create a connection and create way finding around a store so that customers will look at everything. 

Graphics in the store can help with the way finding and the visual language with the brand. Provide were able to produce  hand printed designs that fed into the independent feeling and visuals of their brand. This gained a lot of good feedback from the customers, creating authenticity. As Vans is already an established brand I don’t think all these aspects of graphics in the store would apply to me. However, this information is worth thinking about incase I work on independent shop in the future. 

Visual Cue’s like a graphic street sign resonates with customers and allows people to see these noticeable logos or titles from afar. As a street sign can be the first retail exposure to potential customers. Vans is quite a well-known brand to their target audience and is noticeable from afar. Which makes their signs successful. 

Matt had moved the location of Provide and had created various pop up’s in Digbeth, the Western Arcade and Rope Press studio. Each space was presented differently: one with white walls, one with more way finding that others. The space they set up shop that interested me the most was Rope Press. Provide had set up the store as a museum layout, customers where to follow a black line around the spacious area. T-shirt’s were hanging from the ceiling. I think this was an interesting way to engage existing and new customers as the idea of hanging clothing, resembling similarly to a museum exhibition. 

I have decided to explore these series of videos on Vans channel on YouTube. I stumbled upon these accidentally when to find more information on the culture and lifestyle of Vans. This series focuses on the lives of various rebellious and unique creatives, from Graphic Designers, Tattoo artists to Set Designers. The films are shot in a raw style by a Documentarian, Jared Eberhardt. Focusing on creatives that are less well-known, that are known for bending the conventional rules of art or design. Emotion and passion are the key traits within these creatives which lead to exciting insights to their stories and styles. For these reason’s I would like to focus on these element of the brand and ultimately create a retail experience from it.