Branding and Retail Trends for 2016

Do you have physical premises that your customers may encounter?  If so, you are in control of one of the most critical manifestations of your brand.  Your brand is simply the impression people have of you.  Architecture and Interior Design are utterly critical in forming this impression, dictating a ‘channel’ of your brand mix that is immersive, tangible and multi-sensory. These brand spaces can deeply impact and engage with our basic human nature, creating emotional responses, and rational thought patterns that influence behaviour for better or worse. As 360° thinkers and creators, our approach to helping clients create spaces that have the desired impact on their target audiences, is to embed and harmonise the architecture and interior design process within our Research & Insight, strategy development and holistic customer experience design methodologies. Informed by our Research & Insight and Brand Definition processes, and acting as...

As retail designers working across a number of sectors, we usually respond to very specific briefs when designing a store. However, the objective of our work is always the same: to provide a unique and magical experience that exceeds expectations, making advocates of our client’s customers and keeping them coming back for more. As well as conducting our own in-depth research programmes in order to ensure that we’re designing for the consumer’s needs and wishes, we’re also very mindful of current trends that resonate well with consumers. Here we have collated our observations of the most recent trends in retail design and branding: Offer an experience    Online sales in the UK grew by an impressive 16% in 2013, taking the total revenue generated to £107bn. A further 17% growth is expected for 2014. To combat this, physical stores are pulling out all the stops to design experiences that cannot be replicated online. Queue the renaissance of the pop-up. These s...