It's not uncommon for design-led businesses to have a rich heritage, but how do you make the most of that legacy while staying relevant to modern consumers?
In this podcast, our Head of Brands and Designs LawJohn Coldhamis joined by a panel of leading designers to explore how businesses can strike the right balance between heritage and innovation.
This episode was recorded as part of the London Design Festival, where we celebrate the creativity and commercial impact of design.
Our guests include:
- Sau-Fun Mo, Head of Design at the London Transport Museum;
- James Dwyer, Creative Director and owner of Lumsden; and
- Dan Flashman, Creative Director at Tangerine.
Together, they share personal insights on how heritage can build trust and emotional connection, especially in challenging economic times, while also discussing the risks of appearing outdated.
From designing experiences for British Airways, to the magical world of Harry Potter gift shops, and the future of London Transport Museum, each story was a brilliant reminder of the power of design to shape how we move, shop, and explore.
Welcome to the latest episode of Gowling WLG's global intellectual property podcast where we discuss a range of topics to help you protect your brands, creations and inventions.
John Coldham:Hello and welcome, my name is John Coldham and I am the Head of Brands and Designs Law here at Gowling WLG. This is out annual podcast as part of the London Design Festival.
We were first invited by the organisers of the Festival to hold an event over a decade ago. The Festival is a celebration of everything wonderful about designs with some incredible products, projects and installations showing off why London and the UK is such a cornerstone to the design industry. However, those designers who invest so much in creating fabulous things need to be wise to the business side of design. Be that insuring that they have the correct agreements in place or insuring that their creations are adequately protected and that is where we come in.
Gowling WLG is a leading law firm that has a particular specialism in designs and are proud to have won several awards for our work. We advise some of the world's leading design led businesses on everything from protection to commercialisation. If you are new to designs we have a guide that might help. If you visit our website at GowlingWLG.com/designsforlife you will find a detailed step by step guide to everything you need to think about if you are in the design industry and you will also find a lot of these sorts of podcasts with the great and the good of the design world who have kindly given their time over the years to speak to us about their experiences.
Before we get started I will just talk about one legal issue that is important for all designers to know about, then I will stop talking about law I promise.
The Government has just launched an important consultation on design law. Whilst Government consultations rarely fill anyone with joy please do pay attention to this one. There is a possibility that vast swathes of design law will be rewritten, and it will have a real world impact on a large number of designers, potentially reducing the automatic protection every designed obtains. We have already published an initial guide to some of the issues that it will cover and I encourage you to have a look at that and let us know if you would like our support in how it might affect you. I am honoured to say that I have been part of a small group of people who the Government has been talking to about this consultation for some time so I have some insight into what they are hoping to do and how we might be able to seer the course of this consultation to ensure that it meets the needs of an many designers as possible. We will be publishing more about that consultation in due course but please do engage with it.
That is enough about law, lets move on to the business of today. This podcast is a little bit different from your standard law firm fare in that we don't really talk about law anymore. The point of this podcast is to allow you to learn form the experiences of other designers. They might be in a similar industry to you or they might not but we have found that over the many years of doing this a lot of the experiences are common across the industry. Some of our events are focussed on being ripped off and how best to deal with that, some of our events have focussed more on design led issues. This year's podcast is the latter and I am delighted to say we have assembled a brilliant panel of designers talking about a key issue, how do you make the most of your heritage whilst still being innovative and ensuring modern consumers see you as relevant, useful and interesting. We see this a lot, clients of ours have found that their rich heritage can be a real draw, particularly in harder economic times when trust is key but the danger of focussing too heavily on a rich heritage is that you can sometimes seem antiquated and out of touch.
So let me introduce my panel, Sau-Fun Mo is Head of Design at the London Transport Museum, I am sure you are all very aware of the London Transport Museum which is based in Covent Garden and it is a fantastic look back over more than 200 years of history of London's transport system but it also looks forward into how transport might look in the future. For example, it published a report as part of its interchange programme last summer looking at how to make transport fit for the future. Design is, of course, key to that and I look forward to hearing more about the work that Sau-Fun has done with the museum.
James Dwyer was a founding member and Creative Director of Lumsden and now owns the business. Lumsden is a retail hospitality and exhibition design agency working with clients like the V&A, Warner Brothers and the National Gallery, to name just a few. James rightly sees himself as a storyteller, he wants to engage emotions like a book or a film would draw you in to make you feel something. Perhaps some of his most well known projects, or certainly the ones that have cost people like me the most money have been his brilliant harry Potter shops around the world. Although he insists that he is not personally responsible for the butter beer stop half way round the Making of Harry Potter Experience at the Warner Brothers Studio in Leavesden this work rather sums up how retail is part of the experience and if there is one thing I know about Harry Potter fans it is that they know every detail of the stories so that rich heritage must be represented well and in keeping with the associated retail experience and if you have ever been to any of the shops you will know that that is very well judged.
Last but not least we are joined by Dan Flashman, Creative Director at design agency Tangerine. Tangerine with it founder Martin Derbyshire, who has been involved with a large number of these podcasts over the years, is well know for having designed British Airways' first fully flat bed in business class many years ago and the business has since gone from strength to strength. Most recently Dan and his team at Tangerine have just completed the project to design the new first class cabin for British Airways which has received widespread acclaim through its balancing of the wonderful history of the UK's flag carrier airline whilst competing with the most cutting edge and innovative of its competitors.
Perhaps we could start by going round the room to say a little bit more about your work, perhaps with a brief look at how you balance heritage and innovation and then we can move on to a few questions.
Sau-Fun why don't you go first.
Sau-Fun Mo: Thank you John. So working at the London Transport Museum where I get to blend history, storytelling and bold public facing design every day it's the joy that I have of working with the heritage design icons of London Transport and being able to really experiment on how we bring it up to date. So my work spans everything from London's 150th anniversary to TFLs official correlation poster and what drives it all is my belief that great design connects people to places, to each other and to the past. So I am really excited about our conversations today, I think this will be a really exciting way to explore how heritage and innovation can work together to create design that feels both grounded and forward looking. For me design is never just decoration, its about making meaning, sparking emotion and creating a sense of place. I am excited to explore how we designers can honour legacy while shaping what comes next and one of my passions is obviously the London Transport Roundel which has been around for nearly 100 years and being able to work with such an iconic brand is a job and in particular being able to rebrand the Museum last year.
John:Great, well we will look forward to hearing a bit more about that in a minute but you talked about emotion there which brings James in very well because I just talked about that as being a key to how you look at things James, so I hope I got that right.
James Dwyer: Yeah, absolutely. As you said I am the Creative Director at Lumsden Design and we are a small team based in London but working internationally and we have great fun working with some of the world's best loved destinations from museums and cultural attractions all the way through to visitor and entertainment attractions and the unique thing that connects all of those is that sort of storytelling, whether it is a heritage collection like the National Gallery which is all about our nation's greatest collection of art works all the way through to the Worlds of Harry Potter as you mentioned, it is how do you get people to engage in those things and feel passionate about those things and also want to spend their precious time at our clients' destinations when everything is competing for that these days and I think Sau-Fu we live in similar worlds but you mentioned a lot of the same things as what we try to do which is to create that joy and that emotion and excitement about when you some to be with your loved ones, be with your friends and connect with these incredible destinations. Everything that we do is about using story telling to extend the experience, connect people, potentially in different ways with our destinations as well, especially on the more historical end, often retail and F&B is a way to connect with an audience in a totally different way to the main experience but also importantly everything we are doing is driving secondary spend so making sure that these great collections, these great destinations are being protected for the future as well.
John: Very good. Well talking about exciting experiences most of us won't get to experience how your work, obviously you haven't only worked on the British Airways first class cabin but why don't you tell us a little bit about that Dan.
Dan Flashman: no I've never flown first class either and yet we have to sort of define what that experience is going to be in the future. It is about personal connections, I mean at Tangerine we work on a huge variety of things not just airline seats, everything from coins for the Royal Mint through to petrol stations and transport interiors, trains, everything which is always a job but despite that variety the projects they are very similar in that you are trying to create a personal connection with an experience and to do that is about the brand and people's connection to that brand so that you are leveraging heritage in that way or what people think about that brand in order to take that product to a new space and balancing those two is really interesting. So with the British Airways first class obviously British Airways what do they have that other airline don't have, this amazing heritage and all that talks very much to service so we went and we really want to leverage this heritage and you have this other airlines don't have this, this is what we should be pushing really hard and they said yes and that's great but we want to take this brand to new places and oh yes you are right so that was for me a really good lesson in balancing the two, the heritage and the innovation and somehow ticking both boxes.
John: An interesting challenge, how did you do that I suppose is the obvious questions that comes from that, so what did you focus on, was it picking out different bits of both or, you tell me.
Dan: Taking little signature elements that are relevant to their past and where they have come from, that people would recognise or not recognise that the crew could talk about, Concorde is also a good reference, its from the 1960s but seems very futuristic so we took some of those S curves and sprinkled a few of those in and then some, in terms of quality, some sort of trying to get a sense of craft which on an airline seat which is space age materials and machined aluminium and nothing could catch fire, getting a sense of craft was interesting. So there is some upholstery detailing that I think takes us to spacewear aviation airline seats haven't been to before. Obsessive attention to detail, I guess little touches that you could pick up on but not defining the whole thing whilst at the same time changing the way, trying to find new ways that the space could work and new technologies.
John: Implementing those as well, very good, and Sau-Fun with the credible history of London Transport generally I appreciate you are museum but you are very closely connected with the wider work of TFL. It is a balance isn't it because every one has a view about London's transport system and it varies, particularly this last week but you have the difficult balance of trying to, I mean a lot of people who engage with London Transport Museum are probably already fans because you wouldn't necessarily make a trip out to the London Transport Museum unless you were engaged with the transport system beyond your day commute but you also, the danger is that you are seem as a sort of very old fashioned thing where we are looking at the trams from 200 years ago and nothing really, or trolly buses, and not much since but the key message I have taken from seeing your museum and also your work is about putting that, not forgetting about any of that because that is what creates, what makes London London in that respect but also looking at hot actually it still works today. So tell me a little bit about how your role has helped with that message.
Sau-Fun: I think just going back to your original point absolutely right, we have the full collection for TFL and a lot of our visitors come because they are just so passionate about the past. They want to come, they want to see the old trams and the old buses and the old trains and it is quite interesting because that is one of our USPs, we can't deny that. But at the same time, we are there to tell the story of today and we work very closely with TFL to do that. We are out there as I mentioned before reaching out to different schools and ensuring that our children of today understand the history as well as the future so to us that work is very important and for the museum itself it has been a while since we have had a major redisplay but at the same time that is something we are working on and we want to ensure that we bring all the stories right up to date and there is so much to tell and even now, today, we have the Elizabeth Line story in there and people are still fascinated because even as Londoners, like myself, I don't actually travel on the Elizabeth Line but it still feels quite fresh tome and we know with the new Picadilly Line coming out there is a lot of excitement around that as well but the challenge is very much bringing that story to people and being able to tell it in a way that they can engage with it. For us its is not just about telling the old but it is the present and the future as well and, for that reason, we know that we need to work hard in ensuring that our galleries and spaces, the stories are up to date, so we do work with a lot of different partners, with TFL, with other communities to ensure that our stories are always relevant.
John: That's very good. James, you are coming at heritage in a slightly different way because obviously you talk about the National Gallery, obviously heritage int hat respect, but also heritage with things like Harry Potter aren't there because it might be a more recent heritage but certainly for me, I remember it coming out for the first time, but that, I talked in my intro about how Harry Potter fans, for example, know everything about the story so you have got to be very careful haven't you that if you have this most incredible making of experience like the one in Leavesden and then there is a sort of fairly standard gift shop at the end it is going to feel underwhelming and it might actually affect the whole experience. You talk about secondary spend but not only that people would think oh you can buy a jumper at the end or a wand but tell me about how you have approached it, it doesn't have to be Harry Potter particularly but that is just an example, how you try to integrate that heritage in the looses possible sense into what you do to make the retail experience not just exit through gift shop.
James: Well we are exactly trying to fight that idea in a way that it is exit through the gift shop. I think everything that we do is about trying to understand the core of the collection or the sole of the experience that people are coming to see and then extending that into the shop so that you almost never feel like you have left the whole show that you were there for in the first place and with Harry Potter, obviously, the film makers that worked on that film I have the luxury of being able to work alongside them when we first started working with Warner Bros on the creation of the original tour and it was really understanding where they picked their references from. They didn't invent anything it was all based on British history, British architectural history, design history and distilling that down into a way that they would then add the magic on top. Again we take that very similar approach through what we do with Warner Bros bit also for other clients and when we worked with the National Gallery here in London the first step there was to really get to meet the wider museum teams and try to get them engaged with what we were doing so we were fortunate enough to go and meet the conservation team at the National Gallery and go and see how they protect the paintings and restore the paintings which was an incredibly interesting process and actually inspired the design of the shop itself so that was a space that most visitors don't ever get to go and see but we used that and that drove the colour of the interior, it drove how we displayed the images in that space but also thinking about a largely international audience and how they come and engage with the National Gallery, how do we minimise signage so we don't overuse translation, how do we celebrate the art works. We actually came up with a design that celebrated some of the best selling artworks but using high resolution photography that revealed the techniques and the textures in the canvas, the brush strokes and used that as a way to guide people to their favourite paintings that they had come to see. I think that you mentioning Harry Potter but a lot of the principles are the same for every destination that we work with, it is how do we, to your point, I find everything that we are trying to do is inspire young minds and inspire even older minds to make and create and do their own exciting work, so exciting ideas.
Sau-Fun: It is interesting what you say about working and looking at the internal teams, how they preserve the paintings, pride is such an important part of the organisation and it is not just about what we design or deliver to our audiences but actually having that internal price of the teams that are producing and being able to talk about it as well I think something that Dan mentioned but being able to tell others and their version of the story as well, I think that is a really important part of the process for us as designers not just us coming up with the lovely final design but really understanding their thoughts.
James: So the London Transport Museum, is it sort of like a brand ambassador for TFL in general, is that my understanding?
Sau-Fun: We are an ambassador in terms of preserving its history and representing what it is today. So we are quite unique, of course everyone likes the say that but we are unique because we don't run transport and we are a separate charitable organisation so we do do our own fund raising and we are supported by our parent company but not for everything so a lot of our income comes from ticket sales, commercial venue hire, so we have to work very very hard and I think people do misunderstand that we are completely supported by TFL, it is not the case at all.
James: Buy your tickets now!
John: Dan you talked about, Sau-Fun said you talked about how actually the cabin crew for BA are part of that experience almost, in that
Dan: As I was going on about earlier it is very much about if a brand experience if it is done absolutely brilliantly is a personal connection, it is not the wider seat, its not the fastest car, it is a personal connection to that brand but we will draw you back to that brand again and again. So when we were thinking about this new first class our starting point was actually it is about the service, its not about creating some magical amazing seat, it is of course that is what we are being paid to do but the main thing is creating a back drop for the amazing first class services so designing in a way and thinking about that service routine, the experience, what happens at the different points in the flight and how we can facilitate that and help the crew deliver the most amazing service they possibly can an, you know, kind of play second fiddle to what they are doing but trying to provide lots of things.
So I said I have never flown first class but I have watched an enormous amount of Youtube videos of people travelling first class on different airlines to understand what that service is like and watching what is going on we noticed a few things that were happening with the British Airways service and we thought well wouldn't it be better if there was a surface there that they could do that, could that, rather than serving you from the side over your shoulder and you are sort of awkwardly look up could that be brought round in front of the passenger so that they are facing that they are looking at the amazing service like you would expect in a restaurant or hotel so when we designed the BA suite we purposely moved the door to the front of the suite, you will have to use your imagination but normally when you enter the suite from the side and you are sort of at this side of a passenger and I would reach across you awkwardly and you would have to crook your neck, so we move the door right to the front which wasn't easy but what it meant was that their crew were serving from in front of the passenger which seems like a small detail but I think actually in terms of the experience that the service is quite transformative.
John: And it creates that personal connection I suppose, which I suppose James what you
James: I think it is really interesting to hear how your talk about how you approach it because we have a really similar approach, even if we are commissioned just to do a shop or just to do a restaurant or whatever it might be we can't help ourselves, we have to think about the whole red thread that runs through every moment of the experience. So even before, what drives somebody to make the decision to come to a museum and spend their day there and what are they expecting to see at every single moment all the way through to the area that we are actually responsible for. I think that is something that more particularly in the museum world is becoming a much more important thing now because we always treat those spaces as a certain extension of the gallery, the retail space in theory should be the most forward looking part of that experience because it is often the last thing that people come to see but it is also that bridge to the outside world and can often look at trends in design or product or sustainability or learning or whatever it might be in the most contemporary way, and you will know a lot about this that keeping a museum fresh and keeping that experience on the cutting edge moment is often easier through the commercial than it might be through the
Dan: I've never thought about it but it is actually, it is always the last stop isn't it, you have gone through this beautiful experience and then if the shop is not so great that is the one, that is the lasting
John: that is the bit that the parents are always trying to scoot their kins through as quick as possible. I know I talk about the Harry Potter one quite a lot but it is just because I think it is so cleverly done because it is part of the experience, I think you said that and I am sure it is true of all of your different things, you can try the wand, there will be somebody demonstrating the different wands to you and their different magical powers and all this sort of thing so it really feels like you are still in the whole experience.
James: It is also the authenticity, so doing it in the right, in a way that is true to the destination is really important. With Harry Potter its through a lens of filmmaking because that is what is unique to Warner Bros, it is all about the craft of filmmaking and design and all of those sorts of sorties we can tell but for the London Transport Museum it is totally different.
Sau-Fun: Absolutely, and in fact I was just going to say as well as it being important as part of the experience, so you don't come out of the door of the museum and suddenly you are just in a shop, it has to work the other way round as well, because especially with our location being on Covent Garden Piazza, we are very lucky that we do have a lot of people that are just dropping in, not even maybe aware that we were there in the first place, but that experience has to start right from the point where they enter the door of the shop. We want to be able to convert those customers, the shop customers, so that they are enjoying the shop so much that they want to go into the museum and not just the other way round where they are just kind of guided into the shop but it has to work both ways and that is something we want to be looking at and changing but I think for us certainly the experience cannot stop at certain doorways, it has got to be the full journey as soon as they walk through your door.
James: That is kind of what I was saying about using commercial spaces as another way to engage with the audience. When we worked with the M+ Museum of Contemporary Visual Culture in Hong Kong that was a key part of the brief. The museum team there wanted us to use the retail spaces as another front door to the museum in a local community who are more comfortable spending their free time in shopping malls, Hong Kong has an incredible world class shopping and they were more used to spending time in so it is how do we bring them into a museum environment using great commercial and there we came up with a concept that was centred around different pavilions where you could have brand collaborations, pop-ups with local artists, we had a pavilion that was all about self-discovery and workshops and readings and all the sorts of things that you don't normally expect in a museum shop but actually take it to the next level.
John: My other hat that I wear at this firm is that I am also head, with a colleague, head of our retail sector and it is very interesting to see what is happening to retail at the moment generally and how it is transforming, obviously prompted a little bit by covid but prompted by the internet and all the rest of it what is retail going to look like and it feels more and more it is about the personal experience.
James: Again London Transport Museum has an incredible legacy, design legacy, incredible brand to work with and can be quite playful with that which a lot of museums would be quite envious of, but in the same way I think the high street and main stream retail sector is always trying to create a soul or create some sort of spirit about these brands that all the museum sector and the visitor attraction sector already has often the challenge is how to use that content in a way that engages.
Sau-Fun: Yes I think we are very lucky in that we are able to use artworks, designs from our own collection and really be able to showcase that in someway and that is what it is. I think the shop itself is almost like your next level of showcasing what the content, the stories are and doing that in a creative way with products that you have a win win situation but I think certainly I do feel that we are lucky in that we do have a wide collection of poster designs, original art works, maps, you name it, we have explored different ways of bringing that into some product and development that people can actually take away. It is about taking away that memory and its not just a souvenir, but it's a memory of their day and it could be a memory of their childhood, something they remember travelling on when they were in London decades ago but being able to take a piece of that with them is what makes people happy I think.
James: I was going to say with British Airways, you mentioned earlier about perhaps some reservations about looking to the past, but for me that is some of the strongest parts of British Airways identity and the sort of glamour of travel and comfort and being looked after.
Dan: Yes but also they want to be an innovative brand, they want to be leading as they always have been.
John: But as you said it is possible to do both. I mean you can have the comfort, you can have modern standards of whatever the TV size now needs to be or whatever, all that stuff can be very affective whilst actually still having
James: A little nod to the past as well, whilst putting in the absolutely latest technology. My career started in high end watched for a Swiss brant Tag Heuer, but one of the other brands, their motto is before you, to break the rules you have to first know the rules, I can't remember, I think whatever it is but it is in that world you had to be very, particularly Tag, they are always trying to innovate and be, every year there is a new concept watch pushing things as far, but it always has to be with a nod to the past. So I think, Swiss watches is a really good example of everything, its all very classic but at the same time they are pushing things, I mean it is all old fashioned but at the same time it blends with carbon fibre and stretch Kevlar and all the rest, it is a strange sort of juxtaposition of heritage and innovation.
Sau-Fun: I suppose that comes from trust, I suppose seeing this and thinking about the watch, like BA, it is trusting that brand so does it really need to be completely new design, probably not and maybe people are just looking for a variation of style to suit whatever the trend is but I think that trust is really important and it is like many things in London that it is well know for, the red buses, the black cabs, all of those, people know what to expect, there is an expectation.
James: Brands have power when you trust in them that I might not know much about this bag but I know this brand always delivers a really high quality bag so I trust in them and it is worth what they are asking to pay for it. If you have never heard of that brand or you don't know who you are purchasing from unless you know absolutely everything about what you are buying it is very difficult to know that what you are getting is value.
John: Absolutely, I mentioned at the beginning that I lead our brands and designs team and brands, these two are very closely linked. In the old days design was very much of the patent people, it was all about creating things and putting a shape on it but now design is integrally part of brand much more than it is the other way around and the thing they always say about brands is it takes years and years to build up the brand, why do you have a particular affection for a particular water brand, why do you have a particular affection for a high street retailer, why do you have a particular affection for a series of books, whatever it is, well the odds are probably formed by your childhood or your parents' childhood or your grandparents' childhood. Shops like john Lewis do extremely well because there is an inbuilt loyalty amongst a certain section of the UK population in a way that they have to keep, I'm not picking on them particularly, but you have to keep earning that, building on it, but you maybe don't have to try quite as hard because people will give you the benefit of the doubt to start with but for example if British Airways had totally ripped up the tradition and had gone to a sci-fi style futuristic cabin it might have been ok if you were a newcomer on the scene to do that but people would have gone oh that's alienated, not very British Airways, of even if that wasn't, people were like how cool they have gone completely modern you aren't reminding people of that heritage in that respect as to why they love you in the first place. You know you have got to keep reminding people of those decades of built up trust. I think that it all goes together.
James: I think for me as well trust is anything to do with experiences about time and you have got to trust in the brand that you are connecting with to want to spend the time with them and particularly air travel, if you are stuck on a plane for 15 hours or whatever it was or whatever it might be at great expense then you need to know you can (a) trust the brand but you actually want to (b) be on that experience for that length of time, and the same with what I do, you know it really is if you don't think about the wider experience and the red thread that runs through everything and there is a moment that allows your visitor or your consumer, whoever it might be to disengage, just for a minute, even if it is just a minor distraction then it is really damaging to that overall experience and can
Dan: Yes you only need to unpick one of those stitches of that red thread and the whole thing sort of falls and
James: Particularly in a museum as well you had to think about every single touchpoint and every single moment because anyone of those little things could be something that really begins to erode that trust, so even down to the loos, you have got to have great loos.
Sau-Fun: Yes, we are working on that one. I can't claim we have great loos but that will happen very very soon. But you know it is interesting about the brand and trust and when you see big organisations when they do a rebrand and sometimes it becomes unrecognisable and you do wonder for their consumers what happens to that trust. It might be the same organisation but suddenly some CEO might come in and say I want a new look and feel
James: Are you thinking about Jaguar?
Sau-Fun: Possibly, but also in my head I am also thinking about Apple brand, one of my favourite brands and how that has evolved over time but it is always recognisable. So whether you trust it or not, I am very biased to Apple products but it retains its personality, its look and I think that is another important part of design and how they marry together so as well as retaining that trust from your consumers but ensuring that it doesn't suddenly turn into something quite different that people question whether the actual product itself has changed as well.
John: I think that's right. Going to your point about spending time tough I think actually that is quite an important point for all design because I was thinking about it actually earlier when you were talking about the National Gallery and how you had the brush strokes and things because actually you are quite often probably trying to get a whole group of people to want to stay in the shop because if the kids are bored out of their trees and want to go or the parents are like oh god quick get them away from all the toys you are going to get a pull factor away so you need something to keep everybody interested and that is very difficult and so having things like the brush strokes and things, something to literally distract people into wanting to stay there not just for the retail experience I think is incredibly creatively clever.
Dan: Well particularly in retail it is called, what you are trying to do is encourage dwell time and you would be doing the same thing in a museum experience as well but particularly in retail and F&B the longer people want to spend time in that space the more they are going to chose to spend so that is the mechanical side of it but for us it is more the emotional side and making sure that it is the sweet and the wrapper, so not only a great product range but a great experience that sits around it so that everything is considered and connected. Again you can have great product in a terrible retail space and you are going to impact your sales so you can't think about one without the other and that
James: What are the techniques for increasing dwell time?
Dan: I'm giving away my trade secrets. I feel like I have been victim to some that are very bad.
James: From my perspective I actually when I was at college I studied theatre design for a little while and then I actually went in to studying museum and exhibition design which is why I love what I do because it is the connection between the two but for me it is about putting on a great show so yes you are in the shop but how can we really get people excited and enthusiastic about the experience they are having. Not everyone likes to shop. I don't really like to shop, not in main street retail anyway so it is thinking about how can I create experiences that engage with a diverse an audience as possible. Yes you have got all the kids products at one end of the shop that you will probably be trying to steer your kids away from but if we can create a space that also engages with the other audiences, particularly enthusiasts and I think all three of us probably deal with a lot of enthusiasts in our work. I know Sau-Fun does but how can you make sure there is something for everyone which is a challenge but I think we have the luxury of working with some incredible brands and destinations where there is always a different angle you can come at and again we don't try to replicate what is happening in the wider experience around our spaces, we try to find something new and different that complements the overall museum or gallery or visitor attraction, whatever it might be but
John: I think your points that you are making are just as relevant to product design as they are to what you are talking about. I said at the beginning that design comes in many different forms and we are talking more about experience today but a lot of what you have said is absolutely right for products as well. You know you want to create products that are ones that people want to use and want to engage with and that will somehow make their day a little bit better be it everything from something you actually want to spend money on or a toilet brush. The two extremes you have got to make sure that you make the experience of using that product as pleasant as possible and I think a lot of it is to do with even more with products is to do with trust, you will buy a product more likely if it is a product that works well for your needs but you see a lot of companies, we have had Joseph Joseph on this podcast before talking about how they approach their product design and it is about making very, if you like, ordinary products, like kitchen utensils or bathroom products or whatever, its about making them in a way that just makes life a little bit easier or a little bit more pleasant or whatever it is and they only need to be little things sometimes but just somebody has thought about it and somebody goes that is actually really neat and I imagine it is pretty much the same for your guys, its that thinking about trust, to make sure obviously it works because it would be great to have a great made product but if then breaks as soon as you use it then you are going to kill that trust that we were talking about but also about ensuring that people actually enjoy it.
James: I mentioned enthusiasts just then but online also for us there is a lot of unboxing is a thing. Have you ever watched the unboxing video.
Dan: I try not to but I know they are a thing.
James: The pleasure of saving up your money and purchasing something that you are really excited about and then receiving it and then for our sector can you make that unboxing experience also connects back to the destination in some ways, what is the packaging, what is the kind of the thing that is going to remind you that, oh this time I didn't visit the museum in person but I love that museum so much and I love what they stand for and I know I am supporting that museum or destination by purchasing from there and it all connects up and people do think about their decisions and their purchasing decisions even more. I am a big fan of the London Transport Museum and if you every want to get some socks go there because they are fantastic.
Sau-Fun: Yes, we are very lucky in the products and the variety but just going back to a point you were making John you know products are not just about making it useable but for me personally and I am a big shopping fan I have to admit, but making something simple beautiful I love that, it could just be a very normal utensil but actually the colours and just the form and the shape to me that sells it to me all the time and just going back to something you mentioned James about making a show and I always remember when my children were much younger and walking past Hamleys and trying to distract them to look the other side of the road so that we are not dragged in and yet I do love that store and it is all because it is so, there are a lot of things going on, there were shows,
James: So magical
Sau-Fun: Its magical, yes, I think that is the word, it is making that experience magical.
John: I think it goes the same for when you are on a great airliner, you know, I've never flown first class but I have been lucky enough
Sau-Fun: We need to understand it better don't we?
James: If we can do some testing for Dan, but I think he was literally redesigning it. From my perspective I do see it as part of a show as well because it is that moment of choosing to go with that particular air line, every minute passing through that airport terminal and whatever it might be and then the actual feeling of being, spending time with that brand for me is all part of the show as well and if I connect in some way I am going to become a repeat visitor and come again and particular airlines I think I am quite selective of who I want to travel with unless you are limited in choice but so often happens.
John: So design makes things magical.
I am conscious of time, we might need to wrap this up now although we could keep talking for hours I expect. There is an interesting question that Sau-Fun mentioned earlier on that I think we might be a good one to finish with. I t might be a tricky question for you but see what you can do with it and we have talked about the interlink between designs and brands and bringing this theme together. What would you say, how do you reconcile the need for a brand to be both consistent and adaptable, so when you are looking at this for your, obviously you could look at it through the lens of design but what do you think Sau-Fun, you are the one who suggested this excellent question?
Sau-Fun: I mean I think it is the simplicity of design that really helps it to progress and develop into the different audience needs. I think anything that is highly complicated or when you are making that change it makes it unrecognisable that becomes very difficult to evolve it but I think certainly in at the London Transport Museum having the Roundel as our logo the benefit is that simple form and it allows us to make it into or use it in many different messages, events but it never loses its form and I think it is down to the simplicity of it that gives it that flexibility.
John: Thank you, excellent answer, no pressure guys, who wants to go next? James you got the short straw.
James: Well no, I was going to say the exactly the same thing actually. For me its flexibility, the more baked in, particularly with what we do, the more baked in a use or a need or whatever it is to the final result, the less flexible it is going to be in the future and particularly in the sector that I work in a lot of these places use sorts of levels and investment only come round every ten years or so, so you have really got to look to the future and think about what is the museum or attraction of 2035 going to look like now. Again when we worked with MOMA in New York we were very much thinking about what is the future retail and the next ten years away going to be like and actually for me again it comes back to experience and bringing people together which actually doesn't really change this innate need for us all to just come together and spend time with each other is universal and I don't think will ever go away so it is just how do you create great platforms for flexibility.
John: Dan any last words?
Dan: I suppose in terms of a product if you are trying to be adaptful that the product, perhaps you are trying to get people to use a product in a new way, perhaps it is a new kind of product, then I think you probably need to leverage some of that brand and some of that loyalty, some of that trust, you mentioned that a little earlier when I think there aren't that many brands that could introduce a new product in the way that Apple can because their brand value is sky high, people trust and they would say this is the new thing that we are all going to start using, its all going to make our lives better, you think, well if they are saying it it probably is true. If it was an unknown brand from wherever you might be yeah we'll see how that goes and maybe I'll buy the third generation but I guess you can be adaptable but you have to leverage the trust of the brand.
John: so somehow you have to tread that difficult line of doing both at once.
James: I think the interesting thing there for me on that one is once a brand has built that trust then they can start to be almost curators as well particularly in my world because you know great museum retail you are essentially bringing together a curated range of products of if it is MOMA the very best design objects in the world that reflect not only their collection but also what they see as the very best contemporary and innovative design so get that brand loyalty correct and then you can start to be more playful, like Apple, like some of these great brands.
Sau-Fun: I think that is actually true, I think with anything, whether it is products, whether it is the shop itself it is not about modernising it by erasing the past it is bringing the past into the present and I think that is what we have to think about through any of our design projects.
John: What a great way to end, thank you Sau-Fun that was brilliant and thank you all for answering that very difficult question so well.
Thank you for listening to our podcast, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, we could have carried on talking for another hour I expect but unfortunately that is not the way these work so thank you very much and if I could just remind you again to log on to gowlingwlg.com/designsforlife where there is this and many other podcasts to listen to.
Thanks
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