THE BLIND PIG, HANDMADE CLOTHES & RESPONSIBLE FUN!

A conjectural project for a store in downtown Portland, OR.

By Dave Wong & Professor Kyuho Ahn

OPINION & CONCEPTS

Part 1:Grandma puts the commercials on mute. It’s a rule. This is mostly fine, but there are some seri-ous exceptions. One of these exceptions is Dean Winters of ‘I’m Mayhem’ for Allstate

Insurance. Those commercials where he causes vehicle damage. I like those ones, I’d say they speak to me. They understand me on a very, culturally deep level. So deep, actually, that I’ve stopped driving illegally (without license & insurance, oops!) and became an Allstate Insurance Client,

one of their consumers. I was marketed at and got got. What happened?

Part 2:

The Big Experiential Idea for The Blind Pig, Handmade

Clothes & Responsible Fun! is temporal. We live fast and shop like squirrels

in traffic. It’s embarrassing really. So let’s all just slow down a bit. That’s what this store attempts.

Part 3:

The Blind Pig, Handmade Clothes & Responsible Fun! sells

designs made by locals, by their own hands with high quality materials. The

garments are built to last, they’re sustainable, authentic, and honest.

The store’s design facilitates their integrity with careful simplicity. Spatially, all I’ve done is put a wall into the existing vacancy. It’s a sort of annoying wall that takes extra effort to

get around. But that’s the point. It slows & directs attention toward points of lasting interest. The wall slows our gait so we may perceive more.

End:

We at The Blind Pig, Handmade Clothes & Responsible Fun!

believe in the value of clean, wholesome entertainment for our friends’ (see how I said ‘friends’ and not ‘customers,’ that’s how we think) pleasure. We believe our friends would ap-

preciate a variety of stimuli in their retail environments. We believe they’d like

fresh coffee from Portland’s own Stumptown (for e.g.), or warm waffles

to munch on. But mostly, we believe retail should speak with, and not at. That is what’s really being sold here.

concerning poster ‘art’ & wall imagery

The posters are about communicating the store’s mood. It’s ‘world view.’ They are meant to be

silly, ironic pieces that capture (in a sort of ephemeral, gestural way), what being in The Blind Pig, Handmade Clothes & Responsible Fun! is about. They (try to) express the sort of cutesy, self-aware, perennial issues of young(ish) Portlanders today. I am not sure if they do this successfully.

One idea was to sell wall space or provide wall space for local artists to sell their pieces and de-fine the this ‘mood.’ For the purpose of this project, I pretended to be one of these local artists.

The images in renderings or shown later are examples of what could be on the walls in this sort of store. They were carefully thought-out & executed with masterly precision. They are there to support the store’s branding. Really.

facade

1 cash wrap

2 tunnel of product

3 main selling floor

4 other side

ENTRY

CASHIER

A TUNNEL OF PRODUCT

MAIN SELLING FLOOR

seating

fitting rooms

storage

bathroom

projector

horseshoe pit!

clothes lines

fire exit

pig trough

barn door

the land of crates & planks

waffles + coffee just for fun!

& the fast way to the bathroom

picture wall

moving picture wall!

cut 1

cut 2

primo display

seating

Plan @ 3/16”North is right

Opinion & Concepts

Part 1:Grandma puts the commercials on mute. It’s a rule. This is mostly fine, but there are some serious exceptions to the rule. One of these exceptions is Dean Winters of ‘I’m Mayhem’ for Allstate Insurance. Those commercials where he causes accidents. I

like those ones a lot, I’d say they speak to me. They understand me on a very culturally deep level. So deep, actually, that I’ve stopped driving illegally (without license & insurance, oops!) and became an Allstate Insurance Client, one of their consumers. I was marketed at and got got. What happened?

Part 2:

The Big Experiential Idea for The Blind Pig, Handmade Clothes and

Responsible Fun! is temporal. We live fast and shop like squirrels in traffic. It’s sort of embarrassing. So let’s all just slow down a bit. That’s what this store is about.

Part 3:

The Blind Pig, Handmade Clothes & Responsible Fun! sells designs made by

locals, by their own hands with high quality materials. The garments are built to last, they’re sustainable,

authentic and honest. The store’s design facilitates their integrity with careful simplicity. Spatially, all I’ve really done is put a wall in, a sort of annoying wall that takes extra effort to get around. But that’s the point. It slows & directs atten-

tion toward points of lasting interest. The wall slows our gait so we may perceive more.

End:

We at The Blind Pig, Handmade Clothes and Responsible Fun! believe in the

value of clean, wholesome entertainment for our friends’ (see how I said ‘friends’ and not ‘customers,’ that’s how we think) plea-

sure. We believe our friends would appreciate a variety of stimuli in their retail environments. We believe they’d like

fresh coffee from Portland’s own Stumptown (for e.g.), or warm waffles to munch on. But mostly, we believe

retail should speak with, and not at.

Concering Poster ‘Art’ and wall imagery

The posters are about communicating the store’s general mood. They are meant to be silly, ironic pieces that capture (in a sort of ephem-

eral, gestural way), what being in The Blind Pig, Handmade Clothes and Responsible Fun!‘s is about. They (try to) express the sort of cutesy, self-aware, perennial issues of young(ish) Portlanders today. They were carefully planned & executed with painstaking precision. Right?

14 by BOCCI. Seamed glass sphere, frosted for diffuse ambiant lighting. Low-volt-age 12V.15W LED.

Warehouse Pendant by Nuvo Lighting. 100W incandes-cent.

Avanti by Design House. 4’ track lighting w/ 75W in-candescent

2 Lamp linear fl uorescent. 32 W for bathroom and stor-age.

RCP @ 3/16”

cut 1

cut 2

On the farm, we use makeshift objects for everyday needs! See how these milk crates were ‘borrowed’ from the fine folks at Darigold to support wood-en planks ‘stolen’ from my neighbor’s fence! Now we have rustic tables for our displays! Thinking on our toes and cutting down on the cost of design! That’s smart business!

These suspended tables perform all the functions of normal tables, displaying marchandize open-ly and honestly on their otter-belly surfaces. But unlike other horizontal tables, these ones dis-play/carry all while floating with magic ease! by ropes attached to the ceiling.

Feel like watching Jack Nicholson go straight men-tally ill in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining? Well throw it on! Projectors are devices for putting TV on walls. The Sony VPL-VW600 will get the job done and have customers sticking around until ‘Wendy? Darling? Light of my life. I’m not gonna hurt ya...’

Custom store fixtures & details

Horseshoes that is! Portland people are the descendants of farm andlogger people and everybody knows farm & logger people love the outdoors and love to play horseshoes. A promotional device to turnheads, something to do, & good clean fun.

Not just for fun! though. Waffles are delicious, cheap, and dis-tinctive-looking. People will see other people holding & eat-ing them and be curious. Coffee makes us energetic & witty, more likely to interact & be in a good shopping-mood, or just a regu-lar good mood. And Portland is coffee crazy!

Wall Imagery, Sig-nage, & Branding

END.