Looking at how the 'Experience Economy', as outlined by the marketing experts Gilmore & Pine, translates in design terms, blurring the boundaries between Set Design and Interior Design. Our latest exploration of issues in cultural trends and their impact on design thinking.
Looking at how the 'Experience Economy', as outlined by the marketing experts Gilmore & Pine, translates in design terms, blurring the boundaries between Set Design and Interior Design. Our latest exploration of issues in cultural trends and their impact on design thinking.
Looking at how the 'Experience Economy', as outlined by the marketing experts Gilmore & Pine, translates in design terms, blurring the boundaries between Set Design and Interior Design. Our latest exploration of issues in cultural trends and their impact on design thinking.
>>> The Battle for Reality in the Experience Economy: Set Design V Interior Design: If the number of seminars is to be believed, awareness of the Experience Economy is growing sharply and along with this an increasing concern about how we might design for it. One of the key tenets of the Experience Economy is the notion of staging consumer experiences. Gilmore & Pine, who coined the term, make many comparisons to theatre indeed Joseph Pine made this explicit in an article of 2008, stating that architects need to design like set designers. In addition, business thinkers such as Tom Roberts have talked about how businesses even service businesses need to embrace what he refers to as the Dream Economy. Over-adjusted to reality, perhaps and already plentifully supplied with choice when it comes to basic goods and services - customers are crying out for fairy-dust for leisure, retail, entertainment and even services as a form of non-mundane experience. Ideological Car Crash! Design v Theatre This new focus on the theatrical and dream-like raises quite a problem, however, when it comes to design and in fact the more you know about design training the more you realise what an ideological car-crash this could be! Barring perhaps theme-pub designers, interior architects are mostly hugely resistant to the idea of theatre! Most architects and architecturally-trained designers would be horrified by the idea of treating design as a set it goes against modernist notions of truth to materials (and to eras). In set design, the intention is not to design this world but to transport the audience to a different world. Elements exist in set design largely as a prop or backdrop or representation - they do not need to be real, functioning or truthful; furthermore, they can also be suggestive or sur-real, since again the aim is to transport the audience. And in fact the bashing of the theatrical is not exclusive to architecture even theatre practitioners themselves have tried to dismantle the Wagnerian notion of theatre as total- artwork or, perhaps, total-escapism. style manifesto 2014 Theatrical Exaggeration v Interior Design Close-Ups On a pragmatic level too, and because of the distance between stage and audience (even in the round), elements are often exaggerated in theatre and the overall effect heavily dependent on lighting. Of course lighting is also crucial in interior design - but it tends to be more dramatic, and less functional, in theatre. In fact the difference between theatrical design and interior design is not dissimilar to the difference between theatre and film: because stage actors are at a distance, stage make-up, acting style and even facial expressions are exaggerated, whereas in film the use of close-up demands more realism and subtlety. And just as interior designers may balk at designing sets, set design itself can only partially translate to, for example, a retail environment: the immersion of the audience - here the customers - within the set radically changes spatial relations; things must function; lighting must be subtler. In fact theme designers all too often looked down on, but uniquely positioned between interior and set design - will have an advantage, though they may need to apply their thinking to a much broader demographic. Hybrid Design Models This presents an interesting problem, with an economic and cultural shift coming directly into conflict with design training. Increasingly, the Experience Economy will call for new and hybrid models of design - conventional, modernist-driven design training may no longer fit the bill. Our sense is that design will need to re-engage with alternative design approaches that were, at the time, dismissed as passing fads (I am thinking primarily of postmodernism, which took a much less reverential approach to notions of reality) - but also to draw on techniques from Visual Merchandising and styling all of which are usually dismissed in design as lowbrow. Style Manifesto has long believed these boundaries need to come down. We continue to think through this and, in our next paper, will look at another dichotomy that needs to be undone that is, the difference between the notions of styling and design. FOR FURTHER WRITINGS ON THIS SUBJECT DO VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT:- www.stylemanifesto.co.uk