Combining Contemporary Art & Visual Merchandising

The connections that art has with the entire process of visually displaying merchandise are enormous. The way in which we set our store layout in order to optimize the shopping experience has a lot to do with creativeness and authenticity, some of the best strategies that everyone can apply, no matter if they have a big or a small store, no matter the budget.

Visual merchandising is the best way to promote our products even by ourselves, without the help of advertising and so on, but with a little imagination and a good knowledge of marketing strategies. We need to ensure our store the possibility to attract as many customers as possible, transforming passers-by in potential clients. This is the actual “duty” of visual merchandising. Not only that it can be effective in terms of increasing sales, but it also builds a strong relation between the customer and the store as “spokesman” for the entire brand.

So the best we have in order to lure potential clients inside our store is by investing some time and money in creating appealing displays, inside our store and “outside” it, when we think about window displays. Even though we’re selling common merchandise, or things that everyone buys, we need to understand the fact that we don’t own a monopoly or something on the market so that we have no need for advertising or promoting our products.

People are going to shopping and most of them perceive this activity as a hobby. The retailers and store designer’s job is to keep that experience as much enjoyable as possible because we might be in search for people who would like to return. We know that the more satisfied clients, the more the number of advocates that “work” in our benefits, indirectly, of course. The motto we should keep in mind is: Let them enjoy the experience of shopping!

Because we’ll always be in search of ideas, hints, tips for a better aesthetical layout, we need to concentrate first on the most important principles that we use in crafting the best displays.

We’ve already pointed out that what people enjoy most in terms of imagery is authenticity and creativeness. We also know that there is a huge potential to exploit, in terms of aesthetics, basically from any form of human creativity.

Because art is always at hand, let us see how it can help us in crafting intriguing and appealing displays. This time we deal with contemporary art, and the reason is connected with the fact that it is more accessible. We can dig more about it outright, go to exhibitions and create our own idea about the way in which it is developed. At the same time, making use of ideas that contemporary art is built on is a guarantee that we go along the trend and we will always find something new about it.

Along with its novelty, we can ensure an up-to-date display that will never fade, because people’s desire for new will never vanish. First of all, we need to understand the fact that contemporary art has a special place in the history of arts, not because is “the latest” thing in art, but because it dramatically changed its view. Contemporary art is basically conceptual, simple when it is perceived by an outsider, complex when seen from the inside.

The mutation that occurred in the meantime is connected to art’s desire to survive consumerism. As a consequence, art cast itself in elitism, ensuring that it won’t be understood by anyone, but by those who can appreciate it. The effort of bringing cognition in the making of a piece of art had an interesting effect: not only that there were created almost abstract, informal works, but it provided a new way of seeing things, open a gate to personally rendering elements taken from it only for the reason that they can be used in different purposes for their abstract aspect.

Contemporary art can be effectively used in displays as props, background images, or more complex, by applying some principles in your own way, like the concept of relational art, the series of similar items, kinetic approaches and so on. The connection between contemporary art and visual merchandising is very close: some contemporary artists created window displays, like Andy Warhol for example, and thirty years ago, even Salvador Dali.