Tech, Tock

You know the old certainties about death and taxes? Well, add this one: technology will advance, probably before you’ve become used to the previous versions.

I’m currently deep into research on all the design software architects and store planners are using to create their spaces. I said to one source, “Wow, that’s pretty Buck Rogers-type stuff.” The silence on the other end convinced me that people of a certain generation need to update their references if they’re going to continue talking to people of a certain newer generation.

Nobody in this industry is especially astonished anymore by AutoCAD, the set of computer programs that long ago replaced architects’ sharp pencils, drawing boards and T-squares. But what is astonishing is where computerized design has evolved in the last 15 or 20 years. Programs today now create spaces in three dimensions as well as two. And they not only render, they calculate: budgets, electrical usage, illumination levels, even how the project is shaping up for LEED certification.

Visual merchandisers can design a planogram that creates various merchandise displays for different stores, depending on the types of fixtures, width and depth of the shelf, number of shelves, perimeter or freestanding, location of the aisle, amount and type of signage required, location and type of adjacent islands or gondolas.

And, of course, all those renderings and drawings and plans and planograms can be communicated instantly around the world, so U.S. architects no longer need to roll their plans up in a case and get on the next plane to Japan. Visual merchandising executives can create a schematic and relay it instantly, and accurately, to all their stores around the country. All they need is that the store-level personnel will interpret and properly carry out those instructions. Okay, well, nothing’s perfect – technology can’t do everything.

This technology, which you’ll read about in the October issue of VMSD, has indeed revolutionized the profession of retail design – even though one designer told me, “The one piece of technology I still rely on more than any other is the lightbulb that goes on inside my head when a good idea comes to me.” Someone will no doubt come up with a program for that, too.