my live project, Celebrity Furniture...

This project was one of my favourites, it was a live project so I had constant interaction with the owner of celebrity furniture and i think i enjoyed it so much because it was a totally different type of project for me. All of my previous projects had been designing products, where in this project the aim was to create the environment a product is sold in, to encourage users into the sales area hopefully encouraging the sales of their products.

Celebrity Furniture is a company that sell reclining chairs, they distribute their products to over 50 stores in the UK, one of them being Hopewells in Nottingham, below are pictures of my visit to the store and the celebrity furniture sales area, can you see it? No? Its where my friends are, not exactly eye-catching is it.

So this was the extent of Celebrity Furniture's advertising, some backrest sheets, a couple of tags and a book showing the fabric options. After looking around some other branded furniture pieces it was obvious that the companies who were receiving the better sales were the ones who had specialised advertising pieces that drawn the attention of the customers, for example this bed firm pictured below.

the full block of advertisement, from the ceiling to the floor, the lighting, the graphics, the LED screen, the leaflet holders, the definition between each of their products via advertising backing headboards....its more pleasing to the eye, its easier for the customer to understand and evaluate the products.

Another company even had a model showing what their product was made of inside, after interviewing a number of elderly people, the main thing they wanted to know was that the product was of a good quality and by seeing what each of the chairs are made of, this would cater for the customers needs.

over head advertising can draw the customer from one side of the store to the other, gaining more interest into the company's products

an advertising board showing high quality graphics and samples of the material options is an easier way to advertise, everything the customer needs is in one section, they don't need to ask for an extra samples book, that maybe being used by other customers.

After doing this research i decided to use the company's name, Celebrity, to be reflected into their advertising, making the company's name seem more relevant. With this in mind i thought of other words for celebrity, one being, star. I then started experimenting with a shooting start design and ended up making a birds eye view plan and of display stand for the chairs.

By using stands this will help to separate the colours of the chair fabrics from the floor, as in the Hopewells store i visited the chair colours and the carpet were exactly the same, making the products blend in, inside of standing out to the customer. I also experimented with adding promotional boards to the stands, deciding on mesh screens that have printed info about the products that are going to be placed on the stand that can be hidden away inside poles and rolled out and fixed by the sales assistants when needed. They can also be used to confine the user when trying out the chairs to help with privacy, confidence and stigma issues about owning a reclining a chair as they are seen for the elderly.

I also came up with the idea of having the shooting star part of the display stand in modular forms so they can be re-arranged by each store, depending on the size of display area ea ch store has.

I also made a column to advertise the products by holding a tv screen with a constantly rolling slieshow of information about the products on offer, so that when the sales assistant is busy with other customers, the information that other customers need can be gained from this, aswell as holding leaflet and brochure compartments. I also came up with the idea of customers being able to take fabric samples home so they can match them up with their current home aesthetics, via card pieces that allow fabric samples to be attached to them via velcro or another adhesive, the fabric samples and card strips will also be on the column stand.

my final presentation board for the owner of Celebrity Furniture, showing my shooting start ramped display stand design and my matching advertising block holding samples for the customer to take away with them and an LED screen showing constantly rolling information about the products and the company.

here is my second board explaining the advertising features, the ramped stands, the changeable display backdrops for the stands and the option to take away fabric samples so the customer can match them to the existing aesthetics of their home.