Brand Experiences

Trends

Brand Experiences

Milan Design Week, which attracts about 500,000 international visitors every year, remains a major space for flexing creative brand muscles and, increasingly, strategic commitments. With fashion, automotive, sports, tech and fragrance brands joining the core furniture focus, we spotlight the most inspiring spaces and experiences via trends including ultra-nature, high vibes, sensorial flux and the synaesthetic mind, and experiential artificial intelligence (AI).

1. Experiential AI

2. Feelgood Factor

3. Urban Reflections

4. Eco-Conscious

5. Multi-Sensory

Explorations in Experiential AI

Tapping into the mania surrounding new forms of AI creativity, agile brands, including Dutch furniture label Moooi and Italian sportswear retailer Fila, experiment with AI-amplifying physical settings and experiences – from personalised fragrance to artwork rehashing heritage.

Moooi x EveryHuman’s AI-Powered Personalised Scent Making:

Moooi collaborated with Dutch “algorithmic perfumery” EveryHuman to allow visitors to create personalised home fragrances. Guests generated profiles by answering questions on mood, sensations and personal experiences, from which the scents were manufactured onsite.

High Vibes: Channelling the Feelgood Factor

Brands that channel the feelgood vibes are still much sought-after by pandemic-unleashed audiences. We look at examples of intelligent collaborations, sizing, vibrant colours and vivacious patterns.

Tod’s Supersizes Its Hero Handbag:

A giant leather handbag (the Di model) was part of Italian luxury house Tod’s The Art of Craftsmanship photography exhibition with acclaimed British fashion photographer Tim Walker – an image-maker known for his fairytale-esque works – celebrating (ironically) made-in-Italy designs.

Urban Reflections

Offer literal, dialogue-sparking reminders to visitors to be less myopic in their daily routines and actively seek out the joy in their surroundings. We look at the use of reflective materials in installations, ranging from large cubes and supersized mirrored dominoes to subtler, more delicate spatial concepts.

Ingo Maurer’s Public Art Generates Atmospherics with Light:

German lighting manufacturer Ingo Maurer’s open-air installation Floating Reflection consist of a net of reflective foil squares suspended 30m above a fluorescent painted carpet and rope that becomes illuminated at night. The brand’s intention is to create “reflection, dialogue and atmosphere”.

Confronting Eco-Conscious Futures

We look to brands like Nike and G-Star Raw, to see how they confront the issue of climate crisis and sustainable futures directly, with experiences that spotlight circular design and counter overconsumption.

Nike’s Circular Shoe Production Project:

Nike’s Ispanificio space is devoted to its Ispa (Improvise, Scavenge, Protect, Adapt) project. Ispa shoes can be fully disassembled for recycling. Within its factory-like setting (including defunct equipment, such as assembly lines), visitors explore the life cycle of Nike shoes and new eco-friendly production techniques, such as using algae ink glue.

Senses in Flux: Fuller-Body Experiences

Brands experimenting with ultra multi-sensorial experiences, to create a more complete sense of stimulation and/or achieve deeper wellbeing, including allusions to synaesthesia, whereby one sense is perceived via another (e.g., hearing music stimulates seeing shapes).

Google Design Studio’s Experience Celebrates Water:

Google Design Studio collaborated with Los Angeles-based water, light and sound artist Lachlan Turczan on a three-room installation Shaped by Water. The artwork Sympathetic Resonance features mirrored steel basins filled with shallow pools of water, which vibrate to create mesmerising patterns and sounds that fluctuate according to visitors’ proximity. Meanwhile, Wavespace – a pool of water in a darkened room (to intensify the sound) – reacts to music’s vibrations and projected patterns onto the walls and ceiling. A separate space hosted Google’s products (such as its Pixel watch), apparently informed by studies of water.

Delicate Encounters

Countering the bold designs of Powerful Nature, but still attuned to a nature-loving sensibility, we look at brands cherishing fragility with installations that aggrandise delicate structures (coral reefs, glass forms) to supersized proportions.

Kohler x Janet Echelman’s Graceful Aerial Knits:

American sculptor Janet Echelman partnered with US bathroom brand Kohler to exhibit her dynamic aerial sculpture Noli Timere, as part of the manufacturer’s female-focused The Creator’s Journey series. Intricate, vibrantly coloured knits pay homage to water hovered above pools to produce mesmerising reflections.

Future Insights

Embrace Local Surroundings

Installations encouraging visitors to re-examine their surroundings with fresh eyes are a notable trend. Take note of the many uses of mirrored surfaces and objects – often suspended – that both play with people’s sense of space and let them discover their cityscapes in new, surprising ways.

Harness Experiential AI

Reflecting a wider focus on AI opportunities, harness AI to design more engaging physical experiences, be it tech-augmented scent-making (Moooi x EveryHuman), or communicating with avatars (Lapalma),

Go Full Sensory

Evolve multisensory engagement and design spaces influenced by synaesthesia (when one sense is experienced via another, such as hearing shapes or seeing a colour in response to a name) by creating sensations that appear to come with sensorial overlaps.

Celebrate Nature’s Power

With the climate crisis deepening, take nature-inspired engagement to a new level by incorporating powerful depictions that elicit a sense of awe, urgency and respect.

Thank you for reading.

Opinion, 7 min readLindie KramersMay 16, 2023IgnitionComment