The Corona Diaries: Designers Bring Color to Retail’s Darkest Days

On a recent afternoon we found San Francisco’s Union Square nearly empty —  not a single pedestrian, car or bus —  the streets so eerily silent that all one could hear was the spirited chirps of sparrows. Yes, birdsong in the heart of the City.

The crossroads of San Francisco’s luxury retail is empty and forlorn, with hoarding covering virtually every storefront.

Across the United States, vast swathes of urban downtowns are boarded up in an apparent effort to discourage looters during the COVID-19 quarantine, but it made us wonder why so many retailers made no effort to do more with the plywood sheets they so hastily installed over store windows.

The Louis Vuitton boutique attempted to be a bit more cheerful with orange painted boards, along with a rather bleak proclamation applied to the surface: “The journey that was paused will eventually start again, Louis Vuitton wishes you and your loved one’s health and safety.”

A Valentino boutique features the same sheets of plywood as its neighbors, while the Louis Vuitton store in Union Square added an awkwardly-worded message of hope to its boarded windows.

In the Pacific Northwest, however, architecture and design employees at Gensler had an entirely different idea.

The Seattle branch had already been working on a project they call Color Speaks, designed to study “how color can bring hope and optimism to the future of our cities.” The COVID-19 pandemic became an opportunity to put their idea into action.

At top, Giselle Sheeran (Gensler Portland) works on transforming the Kate Towers Studio + Shop, while Belltown’s Bar Roquette got some Deco-inspired panels by Krista Reeder (Gensler Seattle).

They reached out to all of Gensler’s U.S. offices to encourage their design teams to transform those blank storefronts into bold messages rendered in rich colors and patterns.

It’s already had a tonic effect in some of Seattle’s neighborhoods, where many businesses look so much more welcoming – even if they’re closed.

The team has even created a downloadable paint-by-numbers guide that helps artists navigate the process of developing a design and obtaining permissions from merchants.

Capitol Hill’s Hillside Bar benefitted from Sara Thompson’s creativity, with her message of “Keep your head up.”

We think it’s a genius idea, not only for the businesses, but as an outlet for the many talented people at this global firm whose job it is to envision a brighter tomorrow.

And isn’t that what design is all about?

Gensler photos courtesy of Krista Reeder, Sara Thompson, Giselle Sheeran, and Ryan Collier.

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