Anti-Virtual Visual

Walking away from this year’s judging for our International Visual Competition (held in April), I could swear my brain was audibly buzzing. I was on my way back to my desk, where I’d immediately be compelled to log onto LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to check what was happening with the VMSD and IRDC groups. I’d spend the rest of the day — in between other duties — periodically posting to those groups, approving members and following up on design-related tweets and posts from others in the field.

But back in the judging room, I’d sat for three hours taking in images of how retailers were doing something completely different to connect with their customers. Again and again, for all different kinds of stores, many of their efforts seemed almost … primitive. It was awesome.

I’ll let Anne DiNardo fill you in on the details of those efforts (see “Craft Works”), but I am going to lift one of the quotes from her article because I’m in love with it. Mihee Yi, visual director for Uniqlo, this year’s Best in Show winner, has a theory why “crafty” displays seem to resonate so well today: “Customers appreciate the fact that instead of throwing money at visual displays, you’re throwing time and intelligence at them.”

Time, intelligence and, I might add, true artistic vision. The judges and our editors kept flipping back to the images of some of these displays, marveling at their simple elegance and intriguing details. We couldn’t get enough. We were – dare I say it? – totally connecting with those brands. We were all wishing we could have seen the displays in person.

This is not exactly a revolutionary observation, but still, the juxtaposition was striking: I found it so ironic, and also so refreshing, that with as much time as we spend “connecting” with one another through social media, what really got me engaged were real-life displays made with hand-sewn doll clothes, ordinary tape and scrawled graffiti.

Don’t get me wrong: Social media has its place, maybe even a lucrative place, for retailers, designers and publishers (though no one’s really nailed that piece of it quite yet). And you can bet I’ll be tweeting my favorite images from the competition before the day is out.

I’m very pleased to welcome four new members to the VMSD Editorial Advisory Board:

Dawn Clark, Principal, NBBJ
Shane McCall, Director, Store Environment, PetSmart
Randy Sauer, Senior Associate, MulvannyG2 Architecture
Todd Taylor, Director of Design, Darden Restaurants Inc.