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Andy Spade

Just attended the AIGA Design Lecture Series featuring Andy Spade, who is currently the creative director/founder of Partners & Spade – a new studio that specializes in advertising, publishing, art and film. I’ve always liked how he and his wife developed the Kate Spade and Jack Spade brands. What makes them stand out amongst many high end brands is that they invite the consumer to feel like a character in their stories. Continue reading Andy Spade

Freshjive

Freshjive is a streewear label that is planning on being one of the world’s first anti-branding campaigns by stripping their logos from their clothes (outside the garments and on the labels themselves).

“Throughout the years I’ve become uncomfortable with this business of branding and brand identity. I’m not the type of person that buys something for the brand name.” – Rick Klotz, owner of Freshjive Continue reading Freshjive

Window displays

There’s something fascinating about window displays because they’re used as a tool not only to entice passerbys but also used as tool to separate purchasers with onlookers.

“The fact that display appeals to our ambitions is part of why it appeals to our imaginations. Even if you were to buy each piece of merchandise in the window, would you be able to re-create the dream?”


check out Forefront: The Culture of Shop Window Design

Paul Smith

Just came across a video over at Wolff Olins featuring Paul Smith, a high end fashion label. He’s a designer who doesn’t follow trends and continues to be creative on his own terms. Throughout the video, he mentions how he develops his brand to stand apart from Louis Vuitton, Prada, or Gucci. Smith focuses on quality in his products and creative experimentation. In his presentation he comments, “It’s so sad that all the shops are so formulaic now.” I would have to Continue reading Paul Smith

Beyond the Rack

There’s a huge growing trend in luxury e-tailing: RueLaLa, Gilt Groupe, HauteLook, and Beyond the Rack just to name a few. Luxury brands pride themselves on creating an amazing shopping experience and I find it interesting that these e-tailers have created a shopping “experience” of their own in the virtual world. There’s a great article in the NYTimes by Rob Walker and another article from the Economist.

Chasing Cool

In Chasing Cool, Noah Kerner talks about quality of products and how quality used to be rooted in workmanship, passion, and pride in the materials. However, now “quality” seems to be used as a fashionable marketing tool.

“If a product doesn’t embody quality, and you’re trying to reach a market that’s attracted to that cachet, you need an easily digestible catchphrase, and the number of products that have alighted on luxury this and luxury that goes Continue reading Chasing Cool

Echo Park

While I was in Los Angeles, I got a chance to visit Echo Park Time Travel Mart, a leader in convenience retailing that sells everything you need before you take a road trip through the fourth dimension. You might be asking what all this craziness is, well, Echo Park is actually a facade for writing workshops affiliated with 826 Valencia. Other amazing stores I’ve checked out were the Pirate Store in San Francisco and the Brooklyn Superhero store in New York.