Leslie Davis - Layout

H.Samuel - printed material

The current leaflet designs for H.Samuel in store, and becoming a little out dated. The leaflets do need to contain some key information although could be displayed better. Reversed out text, over sized type, and bad colour combinations. that Gold and blue together? 

An exclusive range to H.Samuel, features better colours but the type is still too big. I know there could be accessibility issues to consider, but something slightly smaller would sit better on the page.

The bag, itself is quite nice, printed inside and out, cord for a handle, and a mix of spot colours on the logos. The problem here is the delivery of whatever is purchased, usually the jewellery would be just placed into the bag with the receipt, whereas other jewellers visited in Meadowhall took a few steps further to deliver the purchase to the customer. Ribbons, stickers, tissue paper etc to make the bag a little more desirable to have and give as a present.

H.Samuel did offer gift bags for purchases, but just as an after thought and not with any similarity to the designs/colour schemes in store. The Ernest Jones store (the sister, more expensive store for the company) had the same bags on sale for twice the price!

3rd draft.

3rd draft was the third in a series of super small exhibitions in the merrion centre. As part of the collab brief, rebecca and I thought we would check it out, and it was well.. disappointing. Although the exhibited work was there, we did find some great examples of layout and type in the zines/pieces also available as inspiration. I feel the concept will be protrayed in some way as layout and was still useful. 

H.Samuel - Meadowhall visit

After 4 phone calls and 3 emails back and forth to H.Samuel, Meadowhall and head offices we finally managed to get permission to photograph in the H.Samuel store in the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield. To get a better idea of the stores, and the variations between them, so POS and other promo material can be designed to work in numerous stores. We have previously already visited the Leeds high street store, so as a variation we are looking at this shopping centre version.

Initial thoughts for the store, although from the exterior it does seem quite airy, but when you move into the store, the interior feels cluttered. This effect isn't so strong with this particular store because it is open on three sides, but unfortunately it is greater in the high street store we visited.

The store was full of potential locations for graphical influences, and additional POS, and displays but wherethe or not it is being used effectively.

Displays feel too generic, manufactured and bland for what should be a personal place to buy gifts. Here is one of few variations to the display cabinets, with simple divider shelves, but this seems to be the only variation. Even though all the jewellery is different, it is displayed as if it is the same.

The floor stands are great for viewing pieces of jewellery much more personally, when the store is busy. A member of staff is usually covering each circular area, as you look around, but you feel a little uncomfortable looking in the stands when someone is watching you, there is a clear divide between customer and staff, when I feel there shouldn't be.

Why mirrors behind the displays? I think they are meant to be there to add a feeling of space and depth to the display but just seems to clutter the wall of gifts.

On one corner of the floor displays, was a 'proposal pack' when bought with an engagement ring, which is simply a bottle of champagne and tissues in a bag. Quite a simple idea but only shown here? why not other occasions? The display is also quite bad, half a teared piece of computer printed a4 held up by a smaller acrylic stand.

H.Samuel - Background

Quick grab from wikipedia on background information, 

The H.Samuel story began in 1862 when Harriet Samuel (nee Wolfe) took over her father-in-law Moses Samuel's clock-making and silversmith business in Liverpool. Harriet moved the business to Manchester's Market Street and ran the mail order side. Her son developed the retail area.

The first H. Samuel retail store opened in Preston in 1890, closely followed by branches in Rochdale and throughout Lancashire. To accommodate the growing business, the company moved to large headquarters in Birmingham in 1912.

After the war, Harriet's grandsons Gilbert and Robert took over as Chairman and Vice Chairman. In 1948, the company was successfully floated on the Stock Exchange.

Gilbert was awarded a CBE for political and public services, became a Queen's Sheriff for the City of London and was elected Master of the Clockmakers Company. Meanwhile, the number of H.Samuel stores rose to over two hundred nationwide.

After the brothers' deaths in the late 1970s, Robert's son took over as Chairman. In 1984 he led an acquisition of the James Walker Group, which doubled the company's presence in the UK.

The website currently in operation, Although the colour scheme tends to be ruby red, gold and white, the current campaign is bright pink? not as fitting with the current identity. Mix of typefaces, and alot of repetition of information.

The christmas advert of 2007, a really effective piece of advertising but the same effect, quality and influence lacks in the rest of the design. Although, 'Helps you say it better' is the tagline, I can't find the tagline anywhere on the site, or in store..

Rob ryan - YSP visit

Back on the 5th February, a small group of us visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for the Rob Ryan exhibition on at the time to see whats what. At first, I was really just going for the ride, I hadn't seen much of Rob Ryan's work and didn't at first attract to his sort of style. Quite delicate, time consuming and well.. feminine. But, with an open mind for more I still came and was pleasantly surprised. Yes the work is time consuming, but for larger one off pieces. His work was also produced in the form of window vinyls, screenprinting and laser cutting. Below are just a sample of the images collected from the exhibition of the techniques I wish to explore, and the rest can be found here. 

I think ever since we started the collaborative brief, both Becca and myself have wanted to atleast consider window graphics into the H.Samuel brief, and never twitched that we had collected some great examples at the Rob Ryan exhibition of vinyl graphics, both on clear and frosted surfaces, the window vinyl can give another depth/dimension to the window and is a prime location to apply graphics for retail spaces.

I really like the black onto frosted, I feel the white might have been lost a little on the material, but at the same time the black doesn't seem too overpowering. This, was exhibitions main piece of signage, above a long corridor leading to the main exhibition space.

The large frame pieces show so much personality and dedication, which is what we want to achieve with H.Samuel. The idea of buying a gift or jewellery should be a personal thing and be more of an experience, than just going to the shops.

Although not a great picture of the window composition, the effect is quite dramatic especially on a good day for weather when you get the reflections and silhouettes created from the design. Although not incredibly detailed like his framed pieces, the windows feel a presence but not in an over powering way.

A better image found on his website.

The variety of colour is great, experimenting with different colour palettes even with a similar message. This screen-print example still has the nice handmade quality to it, and even with a faster form of production, feels very personal. Is this something we need to achieve?

Window displays 1.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/luke_hallam/sets/72157623384425481/ 

The flickr link to the collaboration brief photos taken.

For initial concept development, we explored Leeds town centre and collected imagery of store identities and window displays. Below are a selection of a few favourites of potential ideas, and techniques. 

 

 

Across the length of the Merrion Centre are vinyl graphics applied to the upper windows each design for each store. The successful aspect of the design is that the entire set would of been created by the same group of people, and gives some identity to the merrion centre with similar styled vinyl. The imagery is white with frosted sections to add some depth. Relatively inexpensive to produce, would be either a single colour print, or just vinyl cut material.

Just using a drop shadow instead of block type, still gives the user readable type, but because its less subtle to solid type, it doesn't draw attention away from the window display itself, and allows for large potions of text to be applied, without losing view into the store. 

A combination of window vinyl and instore display, allows you to concentrate and view a particular area of the display, drawing attention to particular products. The design forces you to interact with the display, and brings you closer to investigate, as apposed to just walk by.  

 
On the window of Reiss, was their logo applied directly to the window surface instead of a 2d vinyl. This effect gives the feel of quality even though in reality the cost of something like this wouldn't be much more than a vinyl design. It catches your eye because it isn't expected. With window displays, the designs are usually very linear in appearance, but this adds a little more. This particular design would only be possible in a shopping centre store and not the high street.  

This design shows landscapes made of cut acrylic, with a frosted backing to display jewellery. The brief states that they want to encourage buying outside of tradition occasions, and for self purchase. Could these displays show different scenarios of potential occasions- driving tests, 'will you live with me', thank yous etc.  

 

I originally found this design in GQ for type module and glad to see the campaign stretches across the company, the display is of window graphics and inwindow displays, same typefaces, and same weighted bounding box.