Trait 5: Emotive
ENVIRONMENTS FOR TRANSFORMATION
Last but not least in our series of Traits is the deal clincher: the intangible but oh-so-powerful emotive quality of an experience. In terms of engagement this is The Mothership - not much beats being awed, or moved to your core.
This is about experiences, spaces and ideas that harness the power of evocative content to instigate powerful emotive responses.
The Emotive Trait is one that builds on highly impactful instantaneous reactions. To provoke these feelings brand are increasingly taking us on wondrous journeys; whether down memory-lane drawing on the power of nostalgia, or to escapades in dreamland bringing to life otherworldly narratives.
Evocative Escapes
Brands and creators are concocting a wealth of emotive journeys for us to pick and choose. From exciting experiences offering breaks from the ordinary, to inner journeys inviting us to discover the best of ourselves - these experiments prompt us to partake in new adventures and provide space for us to reflect and connect with our emotions.
Offerings of freedom
Experiential has seen a recent surge in the offering of personalised escapes.
/ Automotive giant Mercedes-Benz has achieved this beautifully in a current summer activation City Escapes, presenting consumers with the opportunity to freely explore the wonders of their surroundings. With Copenhagen as its test location, Mercedes-Benz is inviting Danes to borrow a brand new A-Class vehicle and journey out of the city. The website and accompanying guide suggest a series of cultural sites and natural wonders to explore, all within a 3 hour drive. Cars can be booked online and picked up from the pop-up hub, located in the heart of Copenhagen throughout the summer. The experience is proving to be such a huge success that Mercedes increased the number of cars and extended its road-tripping offerings by another month.
Explorers are gently nudged to document their experiences online, and brand ambassadors - part of Copenhagen’s social elite - post videos and write about their favourite places, opening-up to personal stories and fond memories. This concept has brought with it strong partnerships with influencers and venues across design, fashion, nature and culture.
The visual language for City Escapes, in both space and graphics, offers a refreshing contrast to the otherwise polished and glossy car brand. A more rough-and-ready approach, applying grain filters and scrap-book style photography, implies a conscious shift to attract a younger and perhaps more adventure-hungry audience. The pop up space is dressed simply and with natural materials such as wood and greenery, breaking this up with low-tech lighting features, such as a neon banner stating ‘Escape the Ordinary’.
Internal Voyages
Aside from inviting us to take dreamy trips, experiences are increasingly inspiring us to go on personal journeys - sometimes of growth, sometimes simply igniting a sense of space and awe within.
/ Fashion label Coach crafted a mysterious experience, under the tagline ‘The life coach will see you now’. The campaign messaging spoke directly to this overt desire to affect -
Hello…your future is calling. Are you going to pick up? Life Coach is an interactive experience that will heighten your senses, stimulate your soul and wake up all the feels. You’ll find games, fortunes and toolkits for self-expression - and other thrills for your third eye. (startyourlife.coach)
The event, held in New York over 6 days, offered audiences a cosmic-inspired immersive experience, delivered through four out-of-this-world rooms. Meandering from a concierge’s lobby, to a coney-island-esque fairground, to a subway station, to a fortune-telling forest the participants engage with whimsically meta-physical interactive happenings. There is no particular narrative to follow, only moments nudging participants to create and feel, making the experience personal, empowering and unique.
The power lies within you. Batteries not required. (startyourlife.coach)
/ Also in collaboration with Mercedes-Benz is the Light Therapy Bar installation created for Copenhagen’s annual Frost Festival, aiming to literally bring light to the city during the long and testing winter time with a month-long programme of light installations and events. The Light Therapy bar combines music and socialising with the effects of light-therapy, to boost energy levels and wellbeing. The clinically white space was contrasted by more tactile elements in pink and furry furniture.
As seen in this scheme it’s interesting to note that, whilst Millennial Pink is generally passé, it’s still a big player in the emotive arena. Perhaps somehow, beyond trends, this colour is still a reflection of a broader state?
/ A general tendency at Milan Design Week and other global creative events has been the offering of environments that break away from the bustling activity (see Trait 03: Attentive for more on installations inviting reflection). Acclaimed architect Asif Khan’s installation at Milan this year was simple yet highly evocative: he filled the courtyard of a Milanese palazzo with a sea of tall vertical timber beams, painted red - creating
Something between a forest and an open-air cathedral. (dezeen.com, 3 May 2018)
Harnessing the idea of space as an opportunity to pause, Asif Khan eloquently awed us once again by tapping into the emotive sensibility we can experience when in environments that are almost spiritual in their serenity.
Pulling at our heart strings
Some things in life have the astounding ability to inspire genuine emotion - making our hearts pang and our minds soar. Forward-looking brands are digging deep to unearth what those are, and drawing from them to shape the most memorable experiences.
For love of Art
Art, in all its shapes and sizes, is undeniably one of the most powerful triggers of emotion. It can affect on many levels and is one of the most powerful vehicles for conversations and connections. As beautifully put by Thomas Merton “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
/ Mega-brand IKEA is developing a new range, Formål, which is a sign of artful things to come. Side-stepping the function-led principles the Scandi brand is recognised for, this collection paves the way for objects existing for the pure sake of delight. Message being: forget about maximising efficient space-use, this is about maximising pleasure.
Cultural Dreamlands
Cultural institutions have always been leaders in the movement of creating emotively impactful environments - but recently we are seeing them take on this tendency towards building fantastical, directly narrative, worlds.
/ As part of a Denmark-wide initiative to expand the country’s cultural tourism offer, the City of Odense has embarked on an ambitious project to transform the existing Hans Christian Andersen Museum into a flagship tourist attraction, harnessing the worldwide appeal of Andersen’s stories. Inviting the world to stroll through an interactive Forest of Fairytales, stepping into magical world of stories from our childhood (project in progress).
/ The increasingly mod area of King’s Cross in London is home to a summer long experience for the British Museum of Food. Concocted by avant-garde food architects Bompas & Parr the highly stylised exhibition, SCOOP: A Wonderful Ice Cream World, celebrates the heritage, delight and innovation of ice cream.
SCOOP presents various facets of ice cream in an interactive and multi-sensorial decor.
Expect ice cream weather, eat glow-in-the-dark ice cream, understand the neuroscience of the frozen treat and explore the dark side of desserts. (bompasandparr.com)
One area imagining the future of the sweet treat reveals clouds of vaporised vanilla ice cream, to be consumed by inhalation, and glow-in-the-dark ice cream. Alongside these a digital piece illustrating our neurological response to eating ice cream projects coloured laser lines onto a wall, visualising how each spoonful makes us feel.
Art and/or Brand Destinations
With pressure on brands to offer ‘more’ they need to adopt some of these qualities and find ways to expand beyond their commercial premise. They need to move and affect their audiences.
Many brands are making smart links between commerce and culture, by partnering with well-loved institutions. COS has been collaborating with the Serpentine Gallery for several years running, as have Uniqlo x Tate Modern.
Brands from all industries are flocking to the alter of Art, basking in its infectious glow.
/ Retail Mecca Selfridges recently hosted The Flipside - a multisensory exhibition held in The Old Selfridges Hotel.
In The Flipside we invited you to explore altered states of luxury by Google Pixel 2, Loewe, Louis Vuitton, Thom Browne, Gareth Pugh, Byredo and Mr Lyan in an incredible one-of a kind space created by Selfridges. (selfridges.com)
Part art exhibition, part performance space the environment - and it’s core theme ‘Radical Luxury’ - can be viewed, experienced, interpreted and felt in many different ways. For example: Google Pixel 2 hosted an event with outstanding photographers around capturing perceptions, whilst visionary dance company Rambert reflected on movement, with a transformative performance redefining luxury.
/ Another great example is Red Bull Arts; contemporary art spaces and artists residencies, in New York and Detroit, adding yet another feather to Red Bull’s winged-cap.
/ Leaders in all things bathroom, Roca, have opened architecturally acclaimed galleries in urban hot posts around the globe. Roca Galleries are indeed impressive and designed by some of the world’s most sought after architects. Powerful concept spaces evoking the brands essence through sculptural forms and considered space-use.
Interesting to observe: the brand has segmented their retail landscape three-ways (points of sale, showrooms and galleries), perhaps acknowledging the diversity of ways in which consumers need to engage with a brand in physical space, if they want to stay relevant in the cut-throat arena of brick and mortar.
/ Lexus recently launched The UX Art Space by Lexus, an art gallery come cultural hub in Lisbon, manifesting their desired shift towards becoming a luxury lifestyle brand. “The UX Art Space by Lexus harmoniously connects the vehicle and the artwork”, said Carolina Grau (independent curator and expert in contemporary art).
This exhibition will transport visitors and engage their emotions with the use of abstraction and deconstruction, while creating an artistic interpretation of the movement, sound, shape and colour pallet that is truly Lexus. (newsroom.lexus.eu)
With brands increasingly jumping on this art-loving bandwagon consumers are rightfully growing sceptical of this move. Even if dreamy content has to be authentic and relevant to the brand.
Worlds of Wonder
Across a wide breadth of sectors environments are capitalising on the effects of the ‘awe factor’: inviting us to ‘play and stay’ rather than ‘grab and go’, in a new breed of spaces that aspire to both memorability and share-ability. Dreamlike alternate realities and fairytales for grown-ups are building on the power of story-telling, playfulness and wonder to bring experiences to life - capturing our imagination and our hearts.
Elevating the commercial experience by crafting breathtaking environments is a sure-fire way of getting instantaneous emotion across - and the sectors of retail and hospitality are certainly not missing out on this trick.
Dreamy Hospitality
Despite the current mood of living more simply, mindfully and locally - which favours down-to-earth environments, reflecting their surroundings and the local community - we are noticing a rise in a counter movement to this. From nimble gestures such as bedtime storytelling, through to maximalist interiors that wrap you in alternate realities, hospitality environments offering grandiose escapes from the ordinary are swelling.
Enticing other-worldly interiors offer guests a retreat from the mundane; an escape we seem to be increasingly craving. This is undeniably an effective marketing tool, giving these venues a second life on social media.
Tech plays an important part in these shifts towards hospitality transcending the here and now. Hotels will provide guests with seamless and spontaneous once-in-a-lifetime-stays by harnessing personal data and preferences for a fully customisable experience. Futurists predict that with AR, travellers can also expect fully immersive hotel destinations, alternate realities complete with costumes, story lines, drama and action. Talk about taking the power of narrative literally!
/ The Ace Hotel have created an enchanting set of Bedtime Stories for adults as a collaborative project with local authors, in LA and London. These were designed as a one-off performative reading event, then available on a dedicated in-room channel for guests to enjoy in their own time and space. This is a great example of how simple pleasures can be highly evocative; taking guests back to that child-like state, embracing the comfort of being read-to as a symbol of being taken care of. A super-smart move showing that small scale gestures - when smart and considered - can have big impact.
/ Frame magazine’s ‘The Challenge’ commissions creators to conceptualise future-forward spaces, services or products. A recent entry by multidisciplinary maker and designer, Natasha Hussein proposes a considered and innovative vision for hotels. The multi-sensory Eden Hotel pushes the notions of customisations by inviting guests to inhabit rooms and affect surfaces within the hotel in a manner that reflects their lifestyles and preferences. For example the lobby desk’s digital pattern might change to respond to a guests’ country of origin, room furnishings might support passions such as painting, and bookshelves might be filled with personal literary favourites. This empowering sense of agency and personalisation enables guests to design their experience as they would their home, making it instantly unique.
Natasha’s fascinating explorations around the internal and external manifestations of feeling ‘at home’ shape a rich and engaging offering. The approach challenges the relationship we have to ‘homes away from home’: too often aesthetically pleasing but emotionally sterile environments. Seemingly designed as theatrical sets, the furnishings provide a decor intended to create a mood, not generally with the purpose of being used or interacted with. In the Eden Hotel both the guest and the space make their mark on each other, in a vibrant and dynamic exchange, optimising chances that the guest will emotively, and meaningfully, connect with the experience.
/ On the other end of the spectrum the ultra lavish Mondrian hotel in Doha with a fantastical interior inspired in part by imagery depicted in the Middle Eastern folk tales ‘One Thousand and One Nights’. The decor is blown out of proportion, with eccentric and intricate details unfolding around every turn - such as golden eggs, detailed mosaic treasures, ginormous bell-shaped lights and a 24K gold-plated lift.
/ An oldie-but-goodie tucked away in central London, Sketch offers quite the alternative reality comparable to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. Sketch continues to attract an unheard-of media attention and has done so even before Instagram. Open in 2002, from founder Mourad Mazouz’s vision to create a Rubiks Cube type destination that would continue to change with the times. Surprising interiors make each trip to Sketch unique, sweeping visitors off their feet with a myriad of bizarre, decadent and quirky pockets of space. Cocktails are served in an enchanted woodland bar and afternoon tea can be enjoyed in plush pink surroundings, surrounded by contrasting monochromatic childlike sketches by artist David Shrigley, commenting on the banality of everyday life (such as his News Series that mocks dramatic news headliners, with provocation such as ‘Women Spills Coffee’, and ‘I Lost A Shoe’).
/ In Milan the cultural institution Fondazione Prada was established by fashion house Prada in 1993 with a mission to dedicate its programme to art, cinema and photography.
We embrace the idea that culture is deeply useful and necessary as well as attractive and engaging. Culture should help us with our everyday lives, and understand how we, and the world, are changing. (fondazioneprada.org)
Its well-loved Bar Luce was dreamt up and realised by visionary filmmaker Wes Anderson. Not surprisingly the settings, inspired by Italian popular culture and aesthetics from the 50s and 60s, are dressed as his film sets: brimming with charismatic charm and fascinatingly stylised details.
Anderson states “I tried to make it a bar I would spend my own non-fictional afternoons in”. The outcome? An evocative blend of functional spatial design and enticing narrative queues.
/ One of the oldest buildings in Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, India, has seen its interior revamped in a Wes Anderson inspired lavish decor for the Feast India Company. Aptly nicknamed The Pink Zebra the restaurant experience blends the Wes Anderson-esque high visual impact with a level of extravagance befitting of bygone days. A nostalgic yet fanciful journey, taking visitors back to a time of lavish eccentricity.
Retail Spectacle
The theatricality used by hotels and restaurants to attract customers and to craft a second life online, is not dissimilar to some innovative retail concepts, where focus has moved entirely from product to experience.
A brand that has impressively positioned itself as an autonomous entity with multiple alter-egos is eyewear designer Gentle Monster. The brand’s name refers to the wish to try living someone else’s life, a wish that becomes a hidden monster - curious and envious - lodged at the back of the mind.
Gentle Monster are pioneers in the future of retail having adopted vast learnings from the Museumification of Retail phenomenon; focusing on value, beyond product.
Their ground-breaking retail concepts are more like immersive, multisensory art installations than stores. They’ve found a brilliantly successful formula for marrying art with commerce, shaping the retail landscape into a moving and enticing canvas for artistic explorations.
The goal is to give visitors a pulse-quickening experience. Although we can’t rule out the commercial aspect entirely, we always think about consumers’ emotions. We want to give them a chance to liberate themselves from daily life and jump into an entirely different world. (gentlemonster.com)
Aside from their stores they use sister spaces (BAT Project and Quantum Projects) as ever-changing experimentation grounds for creative collaborations of astounding installations and content.
In charge of visual tone and spatial design are Monster’s in-house multi-disciplinary teams, including art directors, fashion editors, fine artists, sculptors, scenographers, filmmakers, graphic designers and photographers. Perhaps another type of diversification required in the future of the retail landscape?
As touched on in Trait 01: Responsive, bookstores worldwide are making a major comeback. Contrary to some predictions, the tactile quality of print simply can’t be replaced by digital. And what better way to escape reality than to settle in and enjoy a literary favourite?
Responding to an exhausted market of online shopping, designers (especially in Asia) are rapidly transforming the once dusty and outdated libraries and bookstores into spaces of exploration and amazement.
Book publisher Jin Hao has held an unwavering belief in bookstores in China since opening his first bookshop more than 20 years ago. Today, he owns a series of Zhongshuge Bookstores across China (Zhongshuge apparently means ‘love book pavillion’) - one more madly immersive than the other, with playful Dr Seuss inspired details in every nook and cranny, mirroring the inspiration and adventures found in books. Jin Has has partnered with design firm X+Living to shape these literary wonderlands. Each store has its own unique character, and the overarching characteristics of a Zhongshuge concept store seem to be: mirrored surfaces to reflect the fantastical scenes, nature-inspired quirkiness, whimsical book displays and vast spaces functioning as urban oases. All with the ambition to express the magic of books and their power to transform us.
Summary
Today emotion has become inextricably embedded in the process of design and innovation. Terms like ‘the experience economy’, ‘neuro architecture’ and ‘design psychology’ are part of creative vocabularies, recognising the benefits of a more holistic understanding of the ways in which designed environments impact our emotional selves.
Brands and organisations are catching on to the fundamental importance of this trait in how they engage with their consumers - understanding that emotionally charged situations can lead to longer lasting memories. Writer Anaïs Nin eloquently states -
We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.
Raising the point that we perceive and remember events by how we relate to them, and by how they make us feel.
