This website contains detail about the five-week process project in creating an interactive retail space and product for the ALESSI brand. Our course content of the knowledge society, generational cohorts, subcultures, and form semantics were applied to the project weekly. In order to convert our knowledge into successful innovation, we needed to understand ALESSI’s brand language. Learning the language, structure, brand identity, and vision of ALESSI was essential to the process of developing an interactive environment consistent with the values of the company. Other interactive precedents (Philips Design, Domus Academy, Ivea…etc), Klaus Krippendorf’s semantics, and information from Lorenzo Imbesi innovated the development of our interactive space and product ideas.
Changing from “design for function” to “design for understanding,” our team embarked on ideas that explored ways of reconciling technology and traditional domestic qualities, integrating technologies in an essentially ‘human’ way for the individual to richly experience the presence of something highly valued: the comfortable lifestyle that ALESSI products provide. Within the two segments of our project, we aimed to create something meaningful, memorable, relevant, and desirable for the audience.
We were given a site analyze and work with, scooping the right location and the right mix of culture for the ALESSI retail store to be placed. It was important to understand the invisible seams between language, experience, and reality of the SOMA (Main and Broadway) setting. The purpose of analyzing the environment and selecting a site is to integrate the ALESSI brand into the areas, reinforcing the existing connotations of high and lowbrow (product, behavior, environment, and communication) community.
The culture of SOMA is distinctively shown through a decentralized, but inadvertently hidden, mix of cultures. The amount of traffic and interaction is constantly changing, as café shops are emerging, opening opportunities for social interaction. Notable brands reflected a small local community influenced by design and music. A variety of groups reside in the area, populating it as its potential economic growth towards and upscale community. The variety of people created these experiences. Artists open studios, students living off cheap rent, and individuals who have enough money to afford large estates, but chose the lowbrow lifestyle. The high culture and growth in the area are intermingled to offer lowbrow experiences.
It was important to use a space that was meaningful and unique in terms of its context of the SOMA area in consideration with ALESSI’s identity. The space selected was the Anti Social Skate Shop. The surrounding areas would emphasize and carry the brand experience of ALESSI through imaginatively sitting at the corner of lowbrow commodities of Main Street with street traffic experiences of Broadway.
