Final Project

Short Introduction

Brand Culture

Carhartt was founded in 1889 in the industrial city of Detroit, originally designing workwear for workers. In the early 20th century, influenced by popular culture, it merged with street culture and transformed. Today, it is loved by more and more young people and people from different social classes. Its cultural symbols are resilience, functionality first, street style, and authenticity.

Design Features

Based on Carhartt buyers’ preferences, the retail store is divided into three main spaces:

• Mainstream Product Display Area

• Vintage & Brand Story Area

• Interactive Game Area

Design Concept

The theme revolves around the transformation of human civilization’s aesthetics and ideologies from the past to the future. The three spaces each represent the past, present, and future. Through clever layout and visual guidance, they provide users with the feeling of traveling through these three time periods.

Target Audience

Primarily aimed at young people with certain purchasing power.

Colours & Main Materials

The color palette is based on Carhartt’s brand identity, using low-saturation browns, greys, and beige tones to highlight an industrial and textured feel. Main materials include wood, marble, aluminum, acrylic, and flax, emphasizing durability and a natural touch.

Mainstream Products

Features preview tables and display walls for seasonal bestsellers and classics, with a retro + minimalist theme.

Brand Story Area

Showcases brand history, limited editions, and collaborations in cool tones, with overhead lights that illuminate “stars” as more visitors enter.

Installation Concept 1: “Collapse and Birth”

Inspired by the life cycle of stars: stars are born, collapse into black holes or neutron stars, and new stars emerge. This reflects the 21st century as a time of both crises and opportunities. The installation uses infrared sensors to detect the number of people in the area and control the lighting of “stars” in real time. Each visitor lights up one star upon entering; when they leave, the star goes out, leaving two stars to maintain illumination.

Interactive Game Area

With a futuristic theme, this area allows users to rest, play, change lighting effects via coins, or participate in prize draws. Prizes include drinks, badges, skateboard stickers, and more.

Installation Concept 2: “Back to the Future”

Uses geometric shapes to symbolize the evolution of civilization: square in ancient times → hexagon during the Industrial Revolution → circle in the future, representing exploration and progress.
Interactive Realisation:

• The user inserts a token, which is read by an RFID scanner

• A Raspberry Pi controls the prize draw system, randomly selecting a prize

• Simultaneously triggers a lighting animation, radiating from the cashier to the rest of the store

User Journey Map

Illustrates the full process from online discovery → entering the store → browsing products → interactive experiences → checkout and leaving, with emotional changes, needs, pain points, and design responses marked.

Design Sketch

Includes hand-drawn sketches and 3D previews of the installation’s appearance, internal structure, and functional layout.

Mood Board

Presents visual styles, material references, color palettes, and atmosphere aligned with Carhartt’s brand spirit, emphasizing the fusion of industrial character and cultural storytelling.

Sustainability

Sustainability is integrated into the design through:

• Material selection that minimizes energy consumption

• Use of environmentally friendly materials such as natural logs and foam

• Energy-efficient lighting design, combining natural light with LEDs

Appearance rendering

Rendering of the popular product display area

This is my first space design. It represents the "past" in my theme and adopts a retro style. During the design process, I used squares and circles to balance the space. The color scheme mainly uses brown and wood is the main material.

Rendering of the brand story area

This area is mainly gray and black, representing modern colors and street elements. Users can browse limited editions, vintage or co-branded products and other rare products. The device inside is based on an embedded interactive light, which lights up when the user walks in. The inspiration comes from stars, because there are always stars collapsing or being born in the universe, which means that the world also has a new and old alternation. The younger generation will gradually change the world. There will always be people who are old and young.

interactive game area

This area is an interactive game area with the theme of the future, representing modern people's outlook on the future. I express the development of human civilization in geometric forms. I believe that the ancient times were square, the industrial period was hexagonal, representing the shape of gears, and the future period was circular. Therefore, in terms of shape, I designed it to change from square to hexagon to circle, representing the development of human civilization. In terms of color, I used red, yellow, blue and green as the theme, representing the most basic colors, because almost all colors can be mixed with these colors. Inspired by Mondrian's art works

Design plans, elevations and sections

Design sketches and stage change

During the drafting phase, I went through many changes. Initially, I wanted to use the arrangement and stacking of pure squares of different materials to represent the evolution and progress of civilization, but eventually I evolved to a differentiating form, uniting the materials but varying the shapes. During the layout phase, I first created a bubble diagram to intuitively determine the area divisions and user flow, and then planned the final floor plan based on the bubble diagram.

https://youtu.be/ImQOSM6Zunc

Learning

This was my first time completing a complete interior retail space design project. During the process, I not only mastered spatial zoning, traffic flow planning, and the conversion between bubble diagrams and floor plans, but also learned how to integrate brand culture and thematic concepts into spatial narratives. Through modeling and repeated revisions, I became familiar with the coordination of materials, colors, and lighting, and experimented with the integration of sensors and lighting in interactive installations. My mindset shifted from a purely formal approach to prioritizing user experience and storytelling, then focusing on form and detail. This helped me understand that design isn't about piling up elements, but about using space to convey emotion and information.