Retail Display Sense

Having the space to spread your products far and wide can quite often produce excellent results in the retail world. Creating an airy sense of space and freedom. Making your customers feel less likely to get cornered by an employee.

In most shops however, this luxury of space is often at a premium. Having good retail display stands help to ensure you don't clutter your shop unnecessarily - displaying products in a clean, clear and efficient way can make all the difference when you are short on floor space. Magazine display towers and display racking with Italian styling and practical design is a good place to start. Check out http://awards.designweek.co.uk for some great inspiration.

Keeping your office in shape

When it comes to plan filing choosing the right option can quite often be a minefield. Do you need horizontal paper storage or vertical paper storage? Do you need a lockable plan chest or a plan hanger stand? Metal or wooden? Bright and colourful or brown and beige straight from the 80's?

Despite the dreams of most architects to impose the perfect paperless office on us all, the reality is that most offices cannot escape it. Certainly large format plans and blueprints need to exist in a drawing office and so also need storing safely and neatly.

Most drawing offices tend to go down the route of plan holder systems as jobs can be grouped together into a single plan hanger. This is doubly useful for site offices where plans are readily needed on a building site.

Orchard Mirrors the Fashion World

Mirroring Fashion


As far as the world of fashion is concerned, if drawing boards do have their place then its only in the design studio. Last summer something extraordinary happened as drawing boards and fashion were brought together for a world class display of male suits in Somerset house in London.

Esquire Magazine led the drive to showcase 18 of the finest garments the worlds leading fashion houses and designers had to offer. Teamed up with major artist the goal was to create an artistic vision which demonstrated superb styling with an exquisite attention to detail. Each vision was then presented in full splendor next to a fully mirrored Orchard drawing board with polished chrome stand.

Granted, not all of the suits on display were practical, but the designers were able to let their artistic juices flow and catch the eye of the worlds media as the opening night was star studded with the likes of Graham Norton, Bonnie Wright & George Lamb.

Keeping the wheels turning

The British Grad Prix is one of the most iconic events on the F1 racing calendar. The historic track is brilliant for drivers and with most teams based in the UK it's also the 'home' Grand Prix for many of the teams.

With the huge logistical challenge in setting up the UK Grand Prix at Silverstone, its a small wonder the whole country doesn't grind to a halt in order to make it happen. 12 teams, each with an army of people and equipment all of which need on site catering and facilities. The world's media descend on Silverstone with a vengeance combined with a crowd expected to exceed 400,000 over the course of the race weekend.

The cleaning and catering effort in itself is epic let alone all the fixtures, fitting and equipment required to make the Grand Prix machine run smoothly. The only way you can be assured of a seamless race weekend is if people have the information they need the moment they need it. This is no more apparent than in the world of TV media and race commentary.

For instance take these presentation pedestals designed to get information to the commentators without interrupting them. Not only do they look the part in the glitzy world of F1 but they are highly practical.

Display stands like these and many others used all around the Silverstone site provide a vital way to get information across in the most effective way. From sponsor billboards to leaflet holders for menus, promotional material or free maps.

Optimising your potential to have a blue sky water cooler moment

Space Saving Solutions

Getting the most out of your work space can be challenging at the best of times. Even with a tidy work ethic the combined efforts of you and your colleagues can sometimes lay waste to your office.

Eliminating this problem entirely is certainly an achievement but to do it in style is another thing altogether.



Since Stark made his orange juicer and Kamprad screwed the leg off his table and called it IKEA, designers have been working hard at their drawing board to make your office a pleasant place to be.

The 'paperless office' thing has always been the holy grail but realistically humanity can't cope with it just yet. Paper storage and plan filing solutions exist in their droves allowing you to efficiently organise your paper sensibly.

Educational environments suffer from the same problems. Design studios and art rooms use copious amounts of paper all of which needs organising and filing. Space is often also at a premium so having multipurpose furniture can really help to get the most out of the work space.

Reversible desks are a great space saving solution for schools and colleges. Providing a normal school desk but featuring an integrated desk top drawing board for graphic and design work.

Predicting your customers.

Being one step in front of your customers - knowing what they want before they know it themselves has to be the holy grail of retailing.

Systems have been developed which gather the information which when used correctly can second guess your customer and make the most out of  a shopping opportunity.

Store cards build comprehensive picture of shopping habit. When coupled with face recognition software customers can be targeted with tailored adverts and promotions in harmony with past purchases. For some time now online adverts have been using this technique - bespoke adverts based on sites previously visited.

Although there is an obvious Big-Brother-Is-Watching issue with techniques like this, most people don't particularly like advertising. If they must be advertised at then making the adds relevant is surely a good thing for both the customer and retailer.

To make the most out of a retail display, eye tracking software has been developed to actually monitor where a customer fixes their gaze and how they visually interact with display stands and adverts.

Visual Stunner

Shine on

The big lights of Vegas are one of the many tried and tested mechanisms which draw crowds in droves.

Replicating this in your own restaurant of bar may be a little impractical but you can certainly go some way towards packing a visual punch for the all important first impression. After all it can make the difference between fine wines being poured in your bar or the next bar, so why not.




Back-lit menu boards provide great interaction with potential customers; catching their attention and drawing them in with vivid colors and approachable information display stands.

Italian design ensures they also look great in daylight. The easy-open acrylic frame makes it simple to swap the artwork and as LED back-lit display frames run on low voltage it makes them both efficient and safe.