Macy’s Inc.
Cosmetic and Fragrance department in store graphics and directives
Macy’s Inc. is an American department store chain founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It is the largest department store company by retail sales in the United States as of 2015. Macy's currently operates with 508 stores in the United States.
I joined the Macy’s Inc. cosmetic and fragrance department as the graphic design manager in 2005. I was responsible for the design, production, and printing of all collateral for the cosmetics and fragrance departments in 657 Macy’s stores nationwide.
Responsibilities
> In-Store Weekly Vendor Graphics
> Cosmetics and Fragrance Gift With Purchase
> Custom Fragrance Launch Graphics
> Weekly Directives
> Vendor Correspondence
> Maintain Macy’s Brand Standards
> Approve Proofs and Samples
> Manage Freelance Graphic Designers
Custom Fragrance Launch Graphics
A typical fragrance visual set up included a 1x2, 4x4 and a 3x3 block graphic along with a merchandising tower.
Creativity was encouraged for highly anticipated fragrance launches such as this Lady Gaga Fame example. Rendered below is the proposed visual display for the Macy’s Herald Square flagship store in New York. The rendering includes light box graphics, a custom black runner with two gold pedestals, a large fabric graphic, die cut bottles and mood lighting.
Other stores received a tower wrap with a cut out window for the bottle, printed floor mat, bottle die cuts, ledge block graphics, and banners.
Directives
A very important part of visual merchandising is communicating clear directions with the store level. I was responsible for weekly communication directing stores how to merchandise their fixtures and where graphics were to be placed. These directives included set-up and take-down dates, detailed merchandising instructions, a rendering of the set-up, and whether or not the store should save the graphics to use again.
Below are additional examples of renderings.
Corporate Programs
Corporate programs are events that conveyed a theme without calling out specific vendors. This allowed each vendor to highlight their own products in that category. Pictured here are the graphics for a foundation event. This included a floor decal, 1x3 fixture graphics and a customer card. I also designed custom a plexi card holder that attached to the front of the 1x3 fixture to hold the cards.
Photo Direction
Cosmetic and Fragrance gift with purchases were my responsibility to photograph. I worked with contracted photographers shoot and image that matched the look of the supplied corporate direction. Other times, I was tasked with creating a concept of a photograph, which then would be shot by the corporate marketing department.
