“Have you been to Rituals before?”

“Have you been to Rituals before?” is the question that staff at Rituals welcomes customers entering their store. I usually visit Rituals when I shop at Westfields. I enjoy shopping at Westfields. It might be because that’s the way I used to shop in Prague when I lived and studied there - going to a shopping mall where you have everything you need under one roof. I’ve never warmed up to street shopping so popular in London: Regent’s Street, Carnaby Street, Neal Street and the posh venues around Sloane Square…Hmm, maybe one day…

But shopping malls have their down-sides: they’re overcrowded and noisy. Entering Rituals in the middle of a crazy arena is like landing in an oasis after walking miles in a dessert. It’s peaceful, quite, with a spa-like feel to it. It feels very refreshing and special. The whole experience.

“Have you been to Rituals before?” The question is just a slight variation to the standard: “Hello. How can I help?” that you receive everywhere else and that makes you feel a bit hunted; especially if you don’t really know what you actually want or what the store has to offer.

“Have you been to Rituals before?” opens up a conversation. “No, I haven’t” invites Rituals’ staff to give you a tour of the store. In a soft and totally natural way.  ”Yes, I have. Thank you.”  draws a friendly smile on my face  and makes me feel welcomed somewhere where it makes a difference if I am a returning customer.

Just a slight variation to the standard….

Innocent Drinks

Recently I visited this talk by Richard Reed, founder of Innocent Smoothies. Richard talked about how to grow a small company into a million pound business with 70% market share.

Richard doing the intro

Richard summarised the advices into a few classic tips and in-between lines said that Innocent is loosing money since 2008. That was quite an interesting information so I raised my hand and asked why this is and where the problem is.

The answer: price of fruits went up, people stopped buying smoothies during recession, Innocent is spending huge amounts on advertising to secure their position before other competitors will enter the market.

Then he said that people won’t pay more than £1.79 for his small bottles of smoothies which does not cover the costs of  making them. The trouble I see is that I personally would think twice about spending £1.79 for a bottle like that but wouldn’t if the price was £1. I asked around in the office and the team agreed they felt the same. Hmmmm….

Anyway, I now feel like buying at least one of those small smoothies to support Richard’s business. It’s only £1.79 and £1.50 of that will most likely go to advertising so that’s OK - I’ll be supporting my own industry

Now, I have to comment on Innocent’s website. For those of you who don’t understand: It’s part of my job to analyse websites every day so why not to share my insights, right?

Innocent's website

I think Innocent’s website is cute and suits the brand. The shaking style of the top navigation would be unthinkable for any other website but seems to work for Innocent. I like the fact that there is not too much content on the internal pages; it shows the producers have thought of what they are going to say and why. The almost hand-drawn illustrations are fantastic, creating a lot of the “innocent” atmosphere on the website. The internal navigation between pages is a bit confusing and some pages have totally different layout to one another but overall, a good job!

Importance of design in every day world

An interesting statement came from the president of world’s famous food chain, McDonald: “People eat with their eyes first. If you have a restaurant that is appealing, contemporary, and relevant both from the street and interior, the food tastes better.”

This follows new McDonald’s strategy to win further share in consumer market by leading a way through modern designs of their stores. More on this here.

I applaud them for it and am impressed to see once again that company that is on the top of the game does not rest its case but constantly pushes itself to even higher standards.

The strong and public recognition itself - design of products and environments is important to humans - is a fantastic news for a designer like me. Living in London, in a creative hub of Europe and an important design centre of the world, I do not need to fight an ignorance that design is not important very often, fortunately. However, it always pleases me to see that design has been publicly acknowledged once again and by a company that seemingly does not have much in common with design or advertising at all.

Another company that does a great work in promoting high-quality designs and thus training an ordinary public in appreciating well designed products is, of course, Apple.

People can love these companies or hate them. But if you are a designer, you simply must stand up and applaud them.