The Art Of Decorating Show Windows And Displaying Merchandise

Situated at the crossroads of visual culture and consumerism, this essay collection examines visual merchandising as both a business and an art. It seeks to challenge that scholarly ambivalence that often celebrates the spectacle but denies the agenda of consumerism. The volume considers strategies in the imaging of selling from the mid nineteenth century to the present, in terms of the visual interaction that occurs between the commodity and the consumer and between body and space. Under the categories of Promotion, Product and Place, contributors to the volume examine the strategies in the presentation of retail goods and environments that range from print advertising to product design to store display and architecture. Visual Merchandising: The Image of Selling is located directly at the nexus of business practice and cultural myth, where the spectator never loses sight of their status as buyer and the object of desire is always still a commodity.

Designed to Sell presents an engaging account of mid-twentieth-century department store design and display in America from the 1930s to the 1960s. It traces the development of postwar philosophies of retail design that embodied aesthetics and function and new modes of merchandise display, resulting in the emergence of a new type of industrial designer. The evolution of aesthetics in department stores during this period reflected larger cultural shifts in consumer behaviour and lifestyle. Designed to Sell explores these changes using five key case studies and original archival sources to reveal the link between designers and consumption beyond the design of individual objects. It argues that design is not simply connected to retail consumption, but that it is capable of controlling how and where customers shop and what they are drawn to purchase. This book contextualises this discussion and brings it up to date for students and scholars interested in design, retail, and interior history.

An expansive take on American Art Deco that explores Chicago's pivotal role in developing the architecture, graphic design, and product design that came to define middle-class style in the twentieth century Frank Lloyd Wright’s lost Midway Gardens, the iconic Sunbeam Mixmaster, and Marshall Field’s famed window displays: despite the differences in scale and medium, each belongs to the broad current of an Art Deco style that developed in Chicago in the first half of the twentieth century. This ambitious overview of the city’s architectural, product, industrial, and graphic design between 1910 and 1950 offers a fresh perspective on a style that would come to represent the dominant mode of modernism for the American middle class. Lavishly illustrated with 325 images, the book narrates Art Deco’s evolution in 101 key works, carefully curated and chronologically organized to tell the story of not just a style but a set of sensibilities. Critical essays from leading figures in the field discuss the ways in which Art Deco created an entire visual universe that extended to architecture, advertising, household objects, clothing, and even food design. Through this comprehensive approach to one of the 20th century’s most pervasive modes of expression in America, Art Deco Chicago provides an essential overview of both this influential style and the metropolis that came to embody it.

Part 1, Books, Group 1, v. 21 : Nos. 1 - 135 (Issued March, 1924 - April, 1925)

The book builds an original argument for the department store as a significant site of design production, and therefore offers an alternative interpretation to the mainstream focus on consumption within retail history. Emily M. Orr presents a fresh perspective on the rise of modern urban consumer culture, of which the department store was a key feature. By investigating the production processes of display as well as fascinating information about display-making's tools and technologies, the skills of the displayman and the meaning and context of design decisions which shaped the final visual effect are revealed. In addition, the book identifies and isolates 'display' as a distinct moment in the life of the commodity, and understands it as an influential channel of mediation in the shopping experience. The assembly and interpretation of a diverse range of previously unexplored primary resources and archives yields fascinating new evidence, showing how display achieved an agency which transformed everyday objects into commodities and made consumers out of passersby.

This comprehensive guide to visual merchandising covers both window dressing and in-store design, as well as all the other elements, real or virtual, used to enhance the contemporary retail experience. Featuring a range of shops, from fashion emporia such as Selfridges, Printemps, and Bergdorf Goodman to small outlets, the book offers practical advice, supported by tips from the most inspiring visual merchandisers and creative directors across the world. It reveals the secrets of their profession and all there is to know about the latest technology, mannequins, props etc. It also examines the psychology and ever-changing trends behind consumer behaviour. Visual merchandising is presented through lavish colour photographs, diagrams of floor layouts and store case studies, and includes invaluable information such as a glossary of terms used in the industry.