Department stores – and effective merchandising – are frequently defined with a layering of stories. And in campaign thematic development, the heart of positioning is essentially experience design and storytelling. Customers engage emotionally with complexly layered retail experiences - where multiple touchpoints reinforce the telling.
Over our 30 history with Bloomingdale's retail design development, Girvin has developed a variety of in-store campaign concepts, merchandising design for fashion and product promotions, product identity, packaging, print advertising, alphabet design, shopping bags and in-store signing treatments.
The key management principle is story – linked to merchandising and seasonal strategic intentions. For the "World Celebrates", we managed this same implementation: define the story, create thematic design explorations, select defining elements: a heavy script signature; a cartouche with distressed typography in various languages; a roughened rule; a star-crossed compass with varying languages.
These created the opening storytelling toolbox that would ultimately be tested at the executive level, among thousands of consumers, and implemented in all print and dimensional design. Planning the storied experience lent itself to numerous applications: merchandising, print, packaging and video.