Are Window Displays important?

Window displays are the first point of contact with customers, so yes they are very important. Window displays are a retail strategy, so if you have a aesthetically pleasing window, chances are it will increase sales. Your window display needs to show who you are as a brand and tell customers what your business does, the target audience/ promotions/ what it sells etc. As a customer to many stores, I know that if a window display stands out to me, I would want to look around. Successful elements of window displays include the store’s appearance, lighting, colour  presentation and themes which bring it all together. Themes tell a story and intrigue the customer, theme ideas can range anywhere from coordinating colours to grouping products for different styles. It's good to consider the store, season, new products, overall look and feel of the brand to have a successful theme and window display. These are a few window displays that have stood out to me recently: 

My own photography:

Valentino- this was the window display from Valentino on Fifth Avenue, this is my favorite display from the images i've included, mostly due to the styling that has a significant impact to the window display. It's a very simple, clean display, however the styling is very bold and colourful which really intrigues me.

J. Crew- the window display for this is fun, creative and playful which suggests it not a really serious brand and is more casual wear.

To conclude, I think window displays are very important. They tell the potential customer what the brand is like, so you can consider it before entering. A successful window display is visually appealing which usually attracts a large amount of customers. 

Thank you for reading

Charlotte

Pink and Red

A trend I've been seeing a lot of recently is the combination of both red and pink, a few months ago if i thought about wearing pink and red together i would've instating thought no and how it would clash. However i am really starting to love it, especially within graphic tees. Its a trend perfect for both men and women to create a cool, statement look; I've personally bought into this trend and so far really love the garments i own, the key i find is to only wear the block colours, combining with a pattern could look extreme. I knew I've saw this trend within garments before, however seeing this report on wgsn proved to me how its an up and coming trend.

''This colour combination isn't going anywhere anytime soon, as Preen included several pink-and-red colour-blocking looks in its A/W 17 collection as well.''

-http://www.whowhatwear.co.uk/pink-and-red-trend

 This trend is massively within graphic tees, like the one above. This tee also shows a powerful message, which means you can show a message without actually saying it. The red text against the pink background really pops and stands out showing the text.

Ive also seen this trend within formal wear like above, i personally haven't worn into this as for formal events and evenings i stick to the dark colour palette. Saying that these outfits above are very stylish and bold, so you'll sure stand out from being unique.

Thanks for reading

Charlotte

Ideas and Creative Concept Exploration

For task 2 of the Fragrance Project individually we need to explore 3 ideas, when we come back with our groups we will them pick which idea is the most solid. I choose to develop The festival glitter, Electric diffuser and mental health bracelet. I have selected a couple of my favourite pages from the booklet to show to you that i feel like explain the creative concept clearly. 

The Festival Glitter

This is the double page spread to show the consumer, the consumer would be a a playful, free-spirited individual who enjoys nights out, travelling and festivals. She loves to get dressed up to express herself and is a massive follower of trends. All the images I've including visually show what this consumer would be like, what she would eat, wear, do and use. 

The creative concept for this idea would be bright, bold and have a graphic style. With citrus being the preffered scent for this product, linking it with cocktails to show the mix of flavours/colours would lead to many ideas for the packaging and photoshoot.  

Mental Health Bracelet

I love the layout i created for this double page spread showing the concept. The negative space on the left hand side, next the the full image of the right equals out effectively. The concept behind this idea was that the increase of mental health issues in this day and age is dramatic increasing, because of this we wanted to create a uni-sex bracelet that has a scent of lavender helping to de-stress you. 

The target consumer would be a secondary school student. A shy, hard working student who gets lonely and wants to just be happy. This band would be minimal enough to be allowed to wear a school so whenever they get stressed, they can have a sniff.

Electric Diffuser

The next concept is a electric diffuser that can be controlled by your phone with a scent that relaxes you. The layout of this page reflects the concept itself by being minimal and peaceful yet ordered.  

This is the creative concept, all the images individually show our brand identity, a relaxing, neutral, abstract look. I got really inspired by crystals, i was doing lots of research and found that having a crystal in your room and reduce stress, i thought a crystal being the diffuser itself would be really effective as it wouldn't only look good but it would also have a reason behind it. As you can see on the left it would be a large crystal shape with the scent inside that diffuses whenever you want it too from using the app.

I now need to discuss with my group to finalise the idea, ill keep you updated!

Charlotte 

Insights and Ideas

For our first task of the Fragrance Project in our groups we needed to have 3 mood boards showing our insights and ideas. We needed  to talk about the:

- Market and Product

- Positioning and Promotion

- Consumers

- Insights to Ideas

To create a clear way of presenting, we decided to make each board and idea and explain each revenant top on the idea board it linked with. This gave us a clear view of what ideas related to what idea.

 The first idea was scented cosmetics, in particular glitter. We say many insights showing how consumers are annoyed how festival restrictions mean they cant take in all there beauty products, especially perfume and makeup due to glass packaging. We also saw and know from experience how festivals are very un-hygienic; and with the restriction of beauty products and the hygiene, this is a problem for many people. Our idea was to combine the 2 together and create a scented glitter make you smell and look good. We also interviewed a makeup artist at glowgetglitter and she was telling us how at festivals and events everyone wants glitter, this proved to us that its a popular trend.

The next idea was linking it to scented jewellery, i saw many insights showing how portable fragrance and personalisation are going to be popular in the future. We had a variety of ideas on the board including a diffuser necklace, a candle with the same scent of necklace inside and a infused stone necklace which you can mix and match. However to make it more unique we thought about incorporating an app with it which controls when the diffuser will release scent.

The final idea was a ornamental diffuser, we wanted to create a piece of art/sculpture that also releases scent perhaps linked to the mood and story of the sculpture. ''Mobile app usage is a daily ritual with nearly 75% of of consumers using mobile apps daily'', ''the top reason consumers use apps is to make life more convenient''- Mintel 2017. This is a insight that made us feel like it would be needed to incorperate technology within it, an app linked to the diffuser that controlled the scent would be original.

Overall we finished the presentation with a mid 2:1 which i was really happy with, a key improvement we need to make is to ''Use key theories and principles to formulate your own arguments and ideas.''    

Thank you for reading

Charlotte

The Fragrance Project

So we have recently got given our new brief and last for this year of uni, and I'm pretty excited about it! ''You are required to create a new brand in the highly competitive fragrance market''. There are 4 different parts to the brief:

1.  Finding insights and generating ideas (group)
2. Ideas and creative concept exploration (individual)
3. Brand Launch (group)
4. Brand Promotional Plan (individual)

We got put in groups and at the moment we are all finding research and key insights, as a group we have so far decided not to go down the typical perfume route, we want to create something different, perhaps even something that doesn't exist yet. To get ore research about what already exists we're planning to go to London to take pictures and notes, this will include talking to shop assistance to find  more about the consumers and who buys what. To show all our finding as a group we will do a presentation showing:

• Market and Product
• Positioning and Promotion 
• Consumers
• Idea generation 

Once we complete these moodbaords for the presentation ill do a blog post about how it went, thanks for ready 

Charlotte 

Stella Artois boasting clean water

''Lager brand Stella Artois is rolling out limited edition packs to highlight its backing for a clean water campaign for the developing world.''

 was just scrolling down my instagram and found that Stella Artois have bought out a limited edition pack to boast clean water drive. It reminded me of a seminar i had about how Florida's Saltwater Brewery replaced environment-destroying plastic rings that hold cans together and instead made them out of animal food, The brewery hopes it will help stop marine life and birds from choking on plastic. So when i saw what Stella was doing it showed me that packaging showcasing environmental issues is becoming more popular. ''Stella Artois has linked up with Water.org and said that each pack will provide six months of clean water for one person in the developing world.'' This is a way of making your packaging something much more, it'll be useful to see if theres any issue we as a fragrance brand can link to when designing the packaging. 

Charlotte 

Repeat Patterns - Studio 54 inspired

After researching Studio 54 as a trend I noticed its very popular to clash bright colours and patterns for a typical Studio 54 outfit, considering this I knew I  wanted to link patterns to my Creative concept so i thought it would be useful to create my own pattern. I firstly created a collage in my sketchbook using the most common colours wore in Studio 54, aswell as including animal print and making my own abstract zebra style print. I used a variety of shapes and created this:

All my own designs and images

Original collage created in sketchbook using coloured card, magazine pages, tissue page:

 I then repeated the original collage on photoshop to create this.  

For this one i repeated it 4 times to still make it busy but not as full on as the one above.

I also changed and filled in the colours to make it more vibrant and to fit my theme better. Im really happy with how they turned out, especially as they're all my own work.

Final moodboard using a collage pattern: 

\

I then used the collage as a background for one of my final moodboards for my report. I found by fading it, it looked more like a background rather than the main stand out image.

Thank you for reading

Charlotte