// Andi Grant - Creative Director  

Ever wondered what a Creative Director gets up to? Here's a little taster of a week in the life...

We are lucky enough to have some really great clients that are inspirational to work with and provide us with thought provoking briefs. Whilst looking after our current clients we spend some of our time forging new relationships with brands that can benefit from our experience in visual merchandising, retail design and mannequins. It is important for any mind, whether creative, business or social to seek new challenges and it was the case this week with a visit to southern Europe and a non clothing retail brand.

The basics of good visual merchandising, eye catching displays and intelligent retail design are applicable across all genres of retailing and we are finding increasing numbers of retailers seeking out our skills to enhance their brand and offering – outside of fashion merchandise. In this sense some brands are playing catch up whilst others are already ahead of the game (like the brand we met in Milan this week). But as the high street becomes ever more competitive retailers will need to respond whether they are offering technology, fashion or even ‘services’ (think estate agents)

SFD have been thinking about non clothing application of visual merchandising techniques for a while, these visuals above were done whilst working on a technology related brief and show how mannequin forms could be used to bring traditionally boxy products and displays to life.

Whilst on the plane over it was intriguing to see where ALITALIA had chosen to place some of their branding – on top of the wings? The thinking behind this is a little bit unclear, as you would hope that passengers would be pretty confident of who they were flying with before they get on the plane, and the only other way for this branding to be seen would be if they plane were to perform some aerobatics – not a comforting thought! There must be a significant cost to this application and it would be great to know the thinking behind it…any ideas on a postcard?