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Visual Merchandising Plate Setting Display

This is the first project of the semester. It is individual and requires your creative thinking. Let's consider this an opportunity for you to showcase just how outside the box you can think! The project itself is quite simple and can use many materials from your home (or friends, parents', etc), depending on your creativity level. Please start by thinking of a sort of theme, as well as the product(s) you are merchandising (advertising) for potential consumers. It may help to envision yourself working for a company for which this display is needed inside the store or in their front window.

The requirements: it must be multi-dimensional/ multi-level and it must evoke multiple senses; the project must include a beverage (or the illusion of one), a natural element (flowers, twigs, etc), food (edible or created/illusion) and a light source (candle/s, chandelier, lamp, etc). You may want to browse the mall or online galleries such as Sur la Table, Z Gallerie, Williams Sonoma, Anthopolgie, etc for inspiration. Please remember to get creative and think outside the box. You'll never get points off for going above and beyond! Below is a great definition of visual merchandising to get you started, followed by images of plate setting examples, creative window displays under this theme and an article for inspiration.

Visual Merchandising:The art of coordinating all physical aspects within the retail environment to showcase the business and its merchandise and promote customer sales; the visual environment of a retail store; includes the store's exterior, window displays, interior, signage, lighting, and merchandise displays.

RDI Design Competition Winners

The winner of the 38th annual store design competition by the Retail Design Institute is a colorful lifestyle experience. Here’s this year’s best in class and RDI’s other 2008 winners.

The 2008 Store of the Year might seem a somewhat unusual choice, since, for starters, it’s not a store at all. Asian Paints Colour Store in Mumbai was created as a place for Indian consumers to see paint choices and get inspired by the various colors available to them to recreate in their homes. But it’s all inspiration and suggestion. There’s no actual product sold in the store.

“Home decorating in India has been handled almost entirely by contractors,” says KBS Anand, president of decorative business at Asian Paints. “The Indian DIY industry is only now beginning. We wanted to de-mystify the category, to make our customers feel like experts in color and home decor.”

The design, by Fitch Worldwide’s Singapore office, is intended to present products within lifestyle contexts. It’s inspired by “holi,” the Indian color festival in the spring, during which powder and water, colored by medicinal herbs, are sprayed into the air to fight the viral fevers and colds associated with the changing climate.

Hundreds of LED lights are suspended in an arch over the store entrance, and when a shopper selects a color from one of the pedestals, an electronic pulse shoots across the store’s façade. Motion sensors hidden within each pedestal send a pulse of the selected color up through the archway lights, creating constant color shifts throughout the whole storefront. The effect is called the “color heartbeat.”

The backdrop to many of the room sets is a “domino” wall, a rotating tri-graphic system that allows as many as three colors to be displayed. The panels rotate every 10 seconds, providing a dynamic example of how color can affect space.

“We wanted to create a walk-in home decor magazine,” says Darren Watson, Fitch’s design director. “The store brings an editorial approach to its layout – presenting products in a lifestyle context with easy-to-understand choices, recommendations, top tips and the latest trends.”

By Steve Kaufman for VMSD.com (March 2009)

elanstyles.com is the website for premiere houston fashion stylist and creative élan raichle rogers. élan specializes in fashion styling, prop styling, show production and fashion consulting with particular regard to photo shoots and marketing and advertising fashion campaigns. élan's work can be seen throughout product and apparel marketing such as Hewlett Packard and handbag designer Elaine Turner; various modeling agencies like Neal Hamil and Page Parkes; editorials and publications such as The Advocate, skirt! magazine, Todo Texas, and 002Houston; her annual fashion show benefitting Spay Neuter Assistance Program; multiple television appearances as a fashion expert on Fox Morning News and KHOU-TV’s Great Day Houston; her instruction of Fashion Styling/Imaging and Visual Merchandising at Houston Community College.