A Bookshop to Save the Bookshop

With bookshops closing down faster than ever before, design alone will not save the bookshop and with numerous new creative opportunities emerging that combine the virtual world, branding, mobile technology, and pop-up with retail, many retail clients are left wondering ‘where do we go next?’ Customers are becoming less predictable and more volatile, which is shifting the retail experience to have a new focus not about product, but about the overall experience and level of service. Thus creating the need for a unified approach to the virtual and physical shopping experience that truly delivers something better.​​​​​​​ Just such an opportunity arose when The Economist’s sister publication, Intelligent Life, approached me to design a hypothetical bookshop geared for survival in the digital age. My vision completely reinvented the bookshop, encouraging literary sampling of all kinds: grabbing a paperback, browsing in a cosy chair, building a customised reading list, self-publishing an essay, attending book clubs or author events and digital download. The initial story was told through my sketches on a long roll of tracing paper. After publication in Intelligent Life, the following video was created to animate the story.