Role
Creative Director
Agency
Imagination Shanghai
Architect
Betwin
Presently for those of us in the western world, ‘vivo’ may not be one of the first brands that springs to mind when considering top mobile handset market share. Should you be in China or India however, it is a very different story with vivo often occupying the second or third place in overall volume. Growth in the mid-range segment was creating a challenge for the brand’s flagship products, which suffered in terms of consumer perception when competing with luxury brands such as Apple. As part of an overall brand refresh, vivo created it’s first concept store and experience centre in an iconic building set within the bustling Shekou district of Shenzhen.
I designed and led the transformation of the experience focused second floor, creating 10 unique installations which introduced fundamental concepts of photography (Photography, Games and Music being the technological pillars of the vivo brand) to guests in an approachable and shareable way.
Despite many hurdles the finished concept store has been received enthusiastically, with a 5 star average visitor review on Dianping (China’s equivalent to Yelp/TripAdvisor).
Feel The Sound
Because I felt my programming skills were getting a little rusty (three years of managing a large creative team in Shanghai didn’t afford me much time to play), I decided to develop one of the installations personally by building a TouchDesigner media app driving a sculpture of LED arrays controlled by vivo NEX handsets (running an Android app built in Processing). Each handset modified a collection of instrument tracks which contributed to piece specially composed by my very good friends at Ker Sound. The resulting frequency responses were mapped to the spine of the sculpture, which was flanked by mirrors in a room I had designed to have a cathedral effect. I had way too much fun making this one, it has certainly proven to be one of the more popular subjects for guest photography. Thanks to Jessica, Petrel, Ivan and Edouard in particular for supporting this piece.
