Visiting Touchstones, Rochdale's heritage centre, meant that i was able to see the current "Shop" exhibition they were holding. It showed what shop displays were like in Rochdale during the 1900's. I am greatly interested in visual merchandising, particularly window display's and so it was great seeing how different life was and what design tactics were used to sell items during this time.
It was clear to me that displays were not neccessarily thought out as thoroughly as they are today. It seemed that shop keepers would just put as much as they could out on display, this made sense for the time as it was during the first world war and money was tight and so shop keepers had to show their full range of products to try and entice as many customers as possible with their range of items.
Another aspect of the exhibition that i found really helpful was looking at the items that are displayed within the windows not just the way they are displayed. This tin of Vaseline particularly caught my eye as it is strange to see that despite nearly a hundred year gap the packaging has changed very little.
The simple 2 color, color scheme and basic placing of texts is simple and effective and it can be seen above how little it has change today. Alot of products constantly change their packaging to grab the attention of new customers to buy the product. To create a piece of design which is still being used after a hundred years is a graphic designers dream.
I really enjoyed seeing this exhibition and am hoping it will help with the writing of my essay about retail branding as visual merchandising is highly important when it comes to branding a store. It also helped open my eyes to the amazing techniques and visuals going on within visual merchandising today, and how visually beautiful aspects of our life are that we often take for granted.
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