Thinking Through Journey and Customer Procession —
the Strategy of Designing a Way for
Guests, Clients, Experiencers of
Your Story
A key to storytelling will be journey.
Like the finger guided on the progression of the type, and page arrangement,
turned in the seam of the gutter
and margins, turned.
When we think about a story, a journey into the out there, the in there,
there is a meditation — every step, what experience would I find, what moment, in momentum.
There is the footfall — the touch of foot on ground; that’s what?
Hard and polished, soft and wet, textured and ruled, smooth and painted?
What of light — loud, directed, open, soft and warmth, luminously spotlit and dark, candle-formed, scintillant?
What of sound — susurrations, and mellifluous in tone, loud and clanging, reflective and echoic, muffled and hushed. Or changing, as the journey moves ahead? Is there a way to be found, or is the journey labyrinthine.
Any restaurant designer and retail strategist will be thinking about and will, or should, know the answer:
— street, and the story found there;
— entry, and story told at the shop windows;
— doorway, and what happens there?
Entering this place, an experiencer crosses the threshold — what happens?
Light, scent, color, texture.
Entry placement, spectacle, windows, pathways — who is there, and how do
they make their way through — and to where, they are going?
Walking, surveilling any environment, we watch, quiet — listen, study, walk and observe.
There is something that I’m feeling here.
“How was it made?”
“How did we feel that?”
Slow down, study and look into the intention of the place made:
from street,
and alley,
store door,
restaurant vestibule,
concierge and maître ‘d,
humanity and the
vibe of place,
colour,
warmth,
light —
the story of sound.
Reception would be — a whole story.
Place is an embrace into a journey,
a journey of tabulation —
step by step,
moment to moment.
And you get somewhere.
People are touched.
They remember.
They come back.
They share.
A journey, mysterious.
Hard glass, steel and light —
sound loud.
Quiet woods, old electrical —
glittering, luminous, yet soft.
Flowers, cut patterning —
a doubled rhythm of context in story.
Vacuous, underearth,
basemented.
Scary.
Lonely.
But unforgettable.
Every journey
starts with a question; and then a step.
In designing experiences, it’s far more than
“brand touch points,”
it’s what’s memorable?
It’s sensation.
What’s the point?
If I’m going on your journey,
your brand story,
what you’ve designed for me,
what is the point,
what is the story,
and why should I be there,
remembering?
tim | decatur island studios
–––
WHY BRANDS ARE LOVED:
Girvin strategies of memory +
enchantment = audience engagement
http://bit.ly/h9kJdW