If Dockwood Furniture were to become a “brand” in the current sense of the term, it would want to be a lifestyle brand.
We were deeply inspired along these lines by a recent tour of the brilliant exhibition at the Center for Modern Italian Art, here in New York City, of the work of the Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero. Not only was Depero one of the greatest in the Futurist genre, but his genius spilled over into many creative fields, including graphic design, furniture, architecture, and set design.
The thing that struck us so strongly in this exhibition were the examples from a new genre that he had created from scratch, which he called “Architectural Advertising,” which, in simple terms, employs the visual elements of an architectural execution as graphic communication of a selling point or brand.
In all our years in the creative arts we had never heard of this field. So we decided to try to apply it, on a conceptual level, to the marketing of our little business as a lifestyle brand. Here are some rough sketches of a Dockwood Beach Club and Showroom:
If you find yourself in New York, it’s highly recommended that you visit the exhibition (on until June 28, 2014) to see Depero’s phenomenal range of work: from painting, sculpture, tapestry, furniture, to the wonderful “bolted book,” a typographer’s delight!
We’d like to thank the Center’s Executive Director, Heather Ewing, for helping us to understand the wonderful concept of Architectural Advertising. And thanks, too, to the good people at the Smithsonian/Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum for arranging our wonderful tour.
http://www.italianmodernart.org/
Dockwood Furniture 