That was epic - no other way to put it.
When I began working on New Year’s window displays, the design studio had already developed the pattern and approved the colours of the New Year’s campaign 2020. Here they are.
The most important request was to make the displays magical - and, of course, eye-catching.
With that in mind, they also needed to be coherent with Azbuka’s style and couldn’t be too contemporary. Which is why my ideas inspired by the world of fashion window displays were rejected for being too conceptual.
This is how Narnia appeared. I don’t know about you, but I adore all the books from the series. I couldn’t even say how many times I have reread them. And, for me, the events of the first book - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - are associated with Christmas and New Year. Which is why I started developing the story of our windows with this association. In some, you will definitely recognise some of the events from the book. Some, of course, were made up - but I do believe they could take place in Narnia.
This is what our first sketches looked like.
At the same time, I had an idea to add some animals and paint them the colours of our holiday campaign - and to make them polygonal to make a connection with a contemporary style, add a modern and fashionable touch to a rather classical story. Also, my colleagues and I created our own character - the Forest Gnome (Lesovichok). The first picture is the concept of our design studio. The rest - is how it was modified by our supplier, who spesialises in developing and producing polygonal figures.
At the same time, we continued to unravel the idea onto the other windows, so far - without the polygonal figures.
There were a lot of arguments and discussions. It is necessary that the installation attracts attention and looks harmoniously not only up close, but from afar, so that even drivers passing by couldn’t help but glimpse at them. And I never would’ve managed to complete this task without the help from the colleagues from our studio, including the production manager Anna. We even had to initiate the replacement and installation of additional spotlights for lighting, because what we had wasn’t sufficient.
Of course, there were many additions and changes made for the final result - for example, after establishing the budget. There’s probably no company that has unlimited resources.
But I can say with confidence that we have successfully dealt with this window display decoration project - this is the first one for me that was so big. I even have a letter of appreciation from the mayor of Moscow for contributing to the holiday decorations of the city in my drawer.
And I just can’t help but say that this is all thanks to a huge number of people, including our whole design studio of Azbuka Vkusa and our suppliers who worked on the project with us. I would like to give a special mention to the Only Treez company - they are great guys who I had worked with on wedding projects, and who decorated the most memorable window displays.
If you have any questions - ask me, and I will answer them gladly.
