Home Sweet Home
As many of you already know, I have been on a 6 month sabbatical last year walking from London to Jerusalem. It was inspiring to come back late last year and visit a project I was working on before I left at Westfield Chermside.
Even after over 18 years in the retail design industry it is always exciting to see ideas turned into bricks and mortar. I am still amazed at the whole process of how we all work together as a team to create something that months earlier didn’t exist.
Humbling Experience
It is humbling to be working with some of the best people in the industry from Clients, shopping centre RDM’s, consultants and shopfitters.
Each project is definitely successful because of the sum of its parts – each party playing their role in the vision to weave a piece of magic out of thought, out of thin air.
Alchemy
Human beings are true alchemists.
I am still amazed and humbled at the same time at the human ability to create ‘stuff’ out of thin air, to bring into being from a thought followed by concerted effort into physical being. It is more than the genius of one person, but a team effort of hard work and dedication to turn ideas into gold.
The images you see in this post are of White Havana, a homewares and florist shop in Westfield Chermside. It is a magical feeling to be able to walk through a shopping centre and to see a creation that I had a part in its coming into being.
Refining Ideas Into Gold
As a designer, often my role is to bring out and refine the vision that a Client may have for their business.
To hone in and discover the essence of the Client’s business, to get to understand their customer’s needs and wants, and how to then translate that into a memorable customer experience.
Capturing The Essence
An unformed idea is like a piece of ore – in its raw state of earth and metal it isn’t valuable until it is further refined.
Design is a process that takes a raw idea and further refines it till we have the essence. It is this essence that customers are after. A shopper often ‘gets it’ in a split second or not. They vote with their feet and wallet if the captured essence speaks to them or not.
As a designer, our job is to work closely with the Client, to refine their ideas, change their thinking, challenge them, blend in other ideas and continually refine till we reach gold.
White Havana
With the design of White Havana we were fortunate to have a big head start as the Client, had a clear vision of what she wanted to create. Together, working closely with the shopping centre we were able to refine and blend their vision with that of the shopping centre, to create a store that is ‘remarkable’.
Remarkable
We are in the business of creating ‘remarkable’ – about helping our Clients create businesses that are ‘remarkable’, that gets people talking and supporting their businesses with their wallets and word of mouth.
I was paid the ultimate compliment the other day by a fellow retail designer who remarked that White Havana was his favourite shop in Westfield Chermside.