In the Spring of 2019, I had the pleasure of participating in a collaborative studio in which I worked on a team with two interior designers. The studio was aimed at redefining retail and was sponsored by VMSD magazine.

Each team picked an online brand and envisioned what the brick and mortar store experience would be. My team selected tentree, which is an online brand that produces their clothes with sustainable materials and plants ten trees for every product purchased. Our retail concept focused on "sprouting the future," which meant that we wanted to educate the consumer on the product and mission, with a focus on instilling a level of care for the environment in children. We did this through a "educate by play" area on the first floor. Because of this, the entire first floor had no products for sale (which is obviously odd for a store), but this was our vision for the future of retail--an engaging and educational experience. We also wanted to continue the experience once the customer left the store, and we did this by implementing seed paper tags to the clothing so the customer could partake in planting their own tree in addition to the one’s tentree plants. Additionally there is a pop-up tentree truck that would travel to various places where people are enjoying nature such as parks.

As a Visual Communication Design major, this studio was unlike any that I've taken before and I thoroughly enjoyed breaking out of my comfort zone.