By David Kepron
5
1414 ratings
The podcast currently has 76 episodes available.
ABOUT SAMAR YOUNES:
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samaryounes/
Websites:
bio.site/samaritual
www.samaritual.com
Bio:
Samar Younes is a Beirut-born hybrid artist, futurist, and creative catalyst whose work embodies a transcultural approach. As the visionary behind SAMARITUAL, a multidisciplinary creative studio, she weaves multidimensional narratives at the intersection of humanity, technology, and nature. With over 20 years of experience as an artistic director and brand strategist, Samar blends generative AI with artisanal craftsmanship and ancestral wisdom to create immersive experiences that challenge stereotypes and envision nuanced futures.
A Central Saint Martins alumna, Samar's work explores global south futures, otherworldly narratives, and interspecies harmonies through three interconnected spheres: Creator, Catalyst, and Cultivator. As a Creator, she crafts visionary artworks and installations that blur the lines between art, fashion, and architecture. In her Catalyst role, she provides strategic foresight and cultural alchemy for organizations navigating our evolving world. As a Cultivator, she nurtures future creativity through her Imaginalogy hybrid future edu lab, empowering individuals with tools and perspectives to thrive in an ever-changing creative landscape in the age of AI.
Samar's transcultural perspective allows her to seamlessly integrate diverse cultural influences, creating a unique aesthetic and transcultural language symbiotic to her diasporic and third culture experience. Using a neuroaesthetic lens, she celebrates kaleidoscopic identities that resist binary categorizations. Through SAMARITUAL, Samar fosters interconnectedness, radical imagination, and visionary world-building, inviting us to participate in crafting inclusive, sustainable narratives that bridge ancestral wisdom with speculative futures.
SHOW INTRO:
Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.
Well here we are…SEASON 6…our 70th episode. And we’ve had some great interactions in the first 69.
This season will be no less engaging.
In the coming weeks we’ll have artists, architects, authors and educators. We dig into tech issues with people who make crafting a digital future their lives work. Scientists who will expand our understand of the way we work and how the environments around us work on us.
These dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human’s influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.
The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD Magazine part of the Smartwork Media family of brands.
VMSD brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience place makers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant.
You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.
Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience.
SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.org
In this 70th episode I talk with Samar Younes is a Beirut-born hybrid artist, futurist, and creative catalyst whose work embodies a transcultural approach.
Samar blends generative AI with artisanal craftsmanship and ancestral wisdom to create immersive experiences that challenge stereotypes and envision nuanced futures.
First though, a few thoughts…
* * *
At the core of this podcast is the idea of fostering “dynamic dialogues on data DATA” an acronym to include Architecture, Design, Technology and the Arts.
Of course, the idea of talking about DATA is that it's a double entendre that allows me to dive into subjects about the impact that a data-driven society has on a myriad aspects of our human experience.
Since writing my book “Retail Revolution: Why creating right brain stores will shape the future of shopping in a digitally driven world,” I've had a persistent interest in studying how technological advances are reshaping the way we interact with each other and the world around us.
The impact on various industries - commercial enterprises like the retail and hospitality worlds where I have built a 30 year career. And I've often chosen to discuss how artists and creators of all kinds can wield this amazing tool of data as a new medium for the creation of places where we can interact and connect in relevant ways.
At both a city level or small footprint retail store level, I've looked at how digital technologies have grown beyond touch screen interfaces and wayfinding devices to fully immersive environments that deeply affect the way we experience a brand, a product assortment, entertainment venues, a night out for dinner a hotel museums or libraries…the list could go on.
In many of my discussions with guests in previous seasons, when we've talked about the emergence of digital technologies, there have been the obvious concerns about how AI and super intelligence could begin to replace humankind.
While I don't discount the possibility of those dystopian views being possible, I've tended to land on the side of thinking about technology and its extraordinary capacity for creating and making - or for ‘making right,’ some of the things that design, even though some of the things that we have designed into the world have been extremely successful in supporting human advancement, have resulted in other challenges that we now face like the global climate crisis.
We've looked at how technologies have been used for pure entertainment as well as applying technology to new approaches in farming. We’ve had guests with whom I have talked about how technological advancements in neuroscience have allowed us to understand more about how the human brain's capacity to spontaneously create, as in a jazz improvisation, and how that is even possible.
Across the 70 episodes that we've published we've intentionally cut across a wide range of subjects. That has been intentional because I happen to believe that everything is connected to everything - that we live in a world of intricate interdependencies where nothing exists in a vacuum and everything in some way either directly, physically, or energetically impacts everything else.
And so, when we talk about things like artificial intelligence, we don't do that in a vacuum either. My guests tend to understand the interrelationship of these extraordinary advances in technologies and that they are derived from a human hand or a human brain.
This idea of the touch of a hand is important to me because I've always believed that there's something magical in making.
That one of the clear defining features of humankind is that we are makers - that we make things that make other things.
I've said this often before - birds make nests and so do the great apes but they don't make nests that create other nests on their own.
I think that when we look at AI, there's often this idea that artificial intelligence is this deep dark cold entity. Perhaps we tend to paint it that way in dystopian movies the capture our imagination and our strange propensity for thinking about destroying ourselves - but I'd rather talk about how artificial intelligence and the hand of the artisan can collaborate to make things that have never existed before and how that collaboration is a critical component to envisioning the new possible.
If you begin to interact with things like ChatGPT and Dall E or Mid Journey, creating visualizations of things that you initially write as prompts, you begin to see what is possible from machines hallucinating but the even those outputs don't exist entirely on their own. They require a human to start the ball rolling.
Sitting a the keyboard, I need to be able to initially imagine something and then write a text-based prompt that will effectively give instructions to the AI upon which it builds an imaginary reality.
And so, it's not exactly true that there is some robotic process at work entirely devoid of emotion and feeling when using Ai tools as way to generate inspiration.
We can introduce emotion - one of our foundational human qualities - into Ai created content and see what emerges from the machine when asked to represent the emotional experience of a place or things.
Ask Mid Journey to create a light blue box and it will do a spectacular job. Ask the ai to create a visual representation of the emotions felt when opening a gift from Tiffany and that‘s an entirely different output.
We can infuse the prompts with emotional content and when we do, the output can be really fascinating.
I think we've often turned to art and in its many forms as expressions of emotion. Sometimes the things that we can't put into words are somehow better expressed through dance, music, painting or other graphic visualizations. And yet when we think about places of human experience it seems that art is often considered decorative rather than part of the strategy.
Now… I know that that's not entirely true and cannot be used as a sweeping generalization because certainly there is architecture that in its detailing is considered high art and that the artful design of places it is very much part of the overall experience.
Think of places created for the purpose of the enactment of religious rituals or other public or cultural institutions.
Remember the Mies van der Rohe quote “God is in the details.”
I think there is something magical and mystical about the maker who take materials and transforms them into places and things that have not been before. And now we have new materials in our palette of things to use.
Data is a new medium, yet it doesn’t exist alone in the tool box. When we combine “hand intelligence” with artificial intelligence, the skill of the craftsman with the collective intelligence of the masses, we are in for some really interesting creative futures.
This is where my guest Samar Younes comes into the story…
Samar Younes is a Beirut-born hybrid artist, futurist, and creative catalyst whose work embodies a transcultural approach.
As the visionary behind SAMARITUAL, a multidisciplinary creative studio, she weaves together multidimensional narratives at the intersection of humanity, technology, and nature.
With over 20 years of experience as an artistic director and brand strategist, Samar blends generative AI with artisanal craftsmanship and ancestral wisdom to create immersive experiences that challenge stereotypes and envision nuanced futures.
Samar explains that her work explores otherworldly narratives, and interspecies harmonies through three interconnected spheres: Creator, Catalyst, and Cultivator.
As a Creator, she crafts visionary artworks and installations that blur the lines between art, fashion, and architecture.
In her Catalyst role, she provides strategic foresight and cultural alchemy for organizations navigating our evolving world.
As a Cultivator, she nurtures future creativity through her Imaginalogy hybrid future edu lab, empowering individuals with tools and perspectives to thrive in an ever-changing creative landscape in the age of AI.
When seeing Samar’s work, I am transported to a new place where imagination plays. She is a creativity maven who wields the tools and touch of an artisan and the deftness of a data scientist in making the new possible.
I was lucky to sit down with her at the SHOP Marketplace show to talk about the worlds of artisan craft and its new creative partner in artificial intelligence…
* * *
ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:
LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b
Websites: https://www.davidkepron.com (personal website)
vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645 (Blog)
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: DavidKepron
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/
NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/
Bio:
David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why’, ‘what’s now’ and ‘what’s next’. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe.
David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott’s “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels.
In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies.
As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace.
David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation’s Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.
He has held teaching positions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.
In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.
The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound.
The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.
Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.
ANGELA'S BIO:
Angela Gearhart, known for creating transformational brand experiences, tackles mission-critical challenges facing brands today. Where there is a gap between brands and their customers, they risk both revenue and relevance. Angela's deep understanding of consumer behavior and her ability to harness the synergy between marketing, sales, and technology, allow her to develop strategies that bridge the gap, igniting growth and fostering brand loyalty.
By optimizing the human-physical-digital experience, she enables brands to disrupt and connect across consumer touchpoints. During her tenure as VP of Connected Brand Experience at Sleep Number, disrupted the mattress category, driving the company's growth from $300M to over $2B, with her team earning over 30 retail design, innovation, and technology awards.
As a trusted advisor and influencer in the retail industry, Angela has earned accolades including recognition as a CSA Top Woman in Retail, Remodista Women2Watch in Business Disruption, Retail Innovator by Retail Touchpoints, and Design Influencer by design:retail Magazine.
Angela is a Founding Partner at Media Maxx, which specializes in accelerating brand growth through ecommerce partnership marketing and retail strategies. Additionally, she serves as Executive Practice Director at AAG Consulting Group, where Angela leverages her insights into buyer dynamics and retail technology landscapes to deliver effective positioning strategies for B2B retail tech firms. She also contributes her expertise to advisory boards for Retail Touchpoints, Goldstein Museum of Design, IRISCX, and Digital Signage Experience.
SHOW INTRO:
Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.
These dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human’s influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.
The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD Magazine part of the Smartwork Media family of brands.
VMSD brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience place makers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant.
You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.
Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience.
SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.org
In this episode I talk with Angela Gearhart a retail industry leader who spent 20 years at Sleep Number Corporation as the VP of Connected Brand Experience changing the way co nsumes shopped for beds by integrating relevant technologies to enhance the shopping experience and foster deeper relationships between the brand and its customers.
First though, a few thoughts…
* * *
Off the top of our discussion, this is the sentiment that my guest Angela Gearhart expressed as we dug into a conversation about the nature of retail what it is really about.
No doubt, when you think about retail there is indeed buying involved, but it is so much more than that. In the exchange of goods and services there is an intangible factor to long-term customer life-time value… a relationship.
Shopping is less about stuff than a deep interpersonal connection built on our need to be in social groups. The sense of belonging and that the relationship establishes context and meaning to our lives is key.
Is that too much to put on the back of a retail experience?
I don’t think so.
For millennia, shopping has been connected to the sharing of ideas as well as the exchange between parties, you give me something and I in return I give you something.
Shopping is ultimately more than getting stuff.
While I think it's certainly true that factors like price point and overwhelming product assortments and some logical sequence of getting people into the store moving them through departments exposing them to products and getting them to buy has been a prominent way to think about, retail I think that it's ultimately more than that.
In a world where shoppers don't have to go to the store because of the modern emergence of digital technologies allowing for convenience shopping from any place anytime from the palm of your hand, the question becomes what is it that drives people to go to the store?
I don't think it would be that just price or having lots of it whatever it is I want would be the only motivator.
I think what customers really want will be for their products and services to be imbued with both utility and significance.
The design of entire experiences will become a critical factor in making shopping places relevant in a world where you have ubiquitous access and abundant choice. But beyond providing products, services and experiences that are beautiful and maybe even transcendent, I think shoppers will desire, as they have for centuries, the feeling of connection, a relationship, being valued and that they can find meaning in the shopping aisles as well as the dry goods and sundries.
In the end we are social beings bound to an innate need to come together in community to cooperate, to share and to use our imaginations to create. Over millennia, these parts of us really haven't changed but the ways we satisfy these needs have been in continuous evolution.
Advances in technology have modified the speed of change moving it from a generational evolution and incremental steps to something more akin to revolution - something that happens very quickly. The pace of change these days is exponential.
So, the way we see technologies and its relationship to interaction and engagement in retail places will be a fundamental driver to how we now expect experiences to unfold.
We have these devices in the palm of our hand and we will likely continue to expect that what we do from the power of our palm - which gives us a sense of agency and control over a developing customer journey narrative - will be something that we also want to do while I'm in the store.
Emerging customers want to interact with technology in a way that is relevant to them - to engage in a way that changes the experiences so that it's focused on them.
Personalization and customization will be key drivers to how we end up creating meaningful retail places in the near future.
This is super important to understand because an entire generation of emerging shoppers who are digitally enabled and very savvy are interested in creating brand relationships that reflect their own personal ideologies.
It won't just be whether or not the things they can get will be inexpensive or easy to access. Ease and convenience will simply be table stakes.
Shopping or the idea of trade and commerce have been simply embedded in our evolution.
Over twisting trade routes across continents, through sprawling bazaars, across the counter at a general store, through the mail or making a purchase with your smartphone on a street corner, shopping has always given us away to make meaning of who we are, how we interact and how we live.
So yeah, I think shopping experiences have always been more than simply getting stuff. Shopping has at its core is an exchange forging trusting relationships and connecting to the world beyond us.
Shopping whether it was in the intersections of silk trade route, the Greek Agora or in today's mega shopping malls has given us a way to connect to our families, our communities, our nations and the world and in doing so we add ourselves to that intricate weaving of our personal and cultural human tapestry. Shopping is part of our cultural orientation.
I think we can look at places like the Greek agora as an ancient version of a social networking site.
When you were going down to the market to get eggs and bread you were likely passing people on the way and overhearing conversations about what was happening in your community. The town crier did not stand out in the middle of a field some distance from the city he was there on the proverbial soapbox informing people of the important information of the day in the town square - in the cultural epicenter of the town surrounded by…shopping.
Great retailers have it embedded in their corporate DNA that people drive their business and that their business is equally promote ideas and ideals.
I think more so than ever before it's become critical to understand that for brand to remain relevant it's not just about what you sell but it's about what you stand for that is most important.
So there's meaning attached to the stuff we buy it says a great deal about who you are and how do you feel about social or environmental policies. What we take away from the shopping experience is far more than the stuff but a profound and intangible element of interaction which we've come to call the ‘experience’…a body memory.
Stores have naturally become the three-dimensional embodiment of the brand and a venue for interacting and emotionally connecting with people.
So how people feel about the time they've committed to shopping in a retail place is a best indicator of whether or not they'll in fact make a purchase and be committed to come back over and over again. In the end it's not so much about the stuff they get but the positive feelings they hold about the people they interacted with and that helps to make shopping experiences more memorable.
I know that I have had, and I'm sure that you likely have had too, experiences where a great interaction with the sales associate has helped you either make a decision about buying something or making you feel fabulous in that new black dress or that outfit.
Positive memories of shopping also enhance the willingness to share that story with other people and become advocates for the brand.
In the recounting of the experience you share feelings about the people you interacted with - how kind they were - how they seemed to tune into what your needs were in the moment.
And in the best case scenario, it's more than just following a well crafted customer engagement protocol where a script is laid out about how to speak to a customer. There are some brands where the associates simply have it in them to know how to connect and make you feel great once you've arrived in the store.
And of course this is not a new idea in the creating a great shopping experiences but this intangible nourishment of their relational right brain through personal connections helps promote the likelihood that customers move from shopper to customer and it also fosters a willingness to keep on coming back.
If you're in the retail design space - for years we've used Apple as the example of it not necessarily being about this stuff.
The experience is not about an inexplicably broad assortment of products in Apple stores. They have very few products displayed on any of the iconic Parsons tables. The key driver to the Apple shopping experiences about the interaction you have when you walk through the door and you meet someone in a blue shirt who asks you how they can help and their then technology facilitates the relationship.
And that is a key part about the integration of technology and retail stores. Technology in retail stores needs to be in the service of something that I call “TECHNEMPATHY” - the use of technology in the service of empathic extension.
If you're not using technology to build the relationship then it's digital wallpaper and not really of much use.
Now… it is true that immersive digital experiences can be exceptionally captivating and I do think that we will eventually end up with stores that are somewhat like the holodeck using AR and VR.
I also think that digital experiences will somehow reflect back to us my personal emotional neuro-biological - inner mind-body state. But technology can't only be for wow factor. It has to be for engaging people in relevant ways where it facilitates a relationship between me, the product and the store and the brand.
And this brings me back to the beginning of this introduction to talk about my guest Angela Gearhart who spent 20 years with Sleep Number Corporation changing the entire paradigm for how we bought beds.
Sleep number doesn't just have great technology in the beds that they sell you shifting your purchase from some commodity that you spent eight or so hours a day on, but to selling the idea that sleep was geared towards health and well-being. The benefits of a good night sleep – and how their bed could provide it.
According to Angela Gearhart technology needs to have a purpose in a retail store.
That could be to simplify the process and reduce friction or to have a wow experience but in addition to that, technology needs to help retailers understand more about their customer and connect to them after the purchase so that there is a continuous cycle of exchange of information where the relationship continues on beyond the time you spent working out the details of how your bed needs to be custom made to you.
So for about for Angela, the value equation needs to include things like ease and convenience but it also has to have meaningful benefits. The experience also has to be meaningful in terms of how the environment and the product come together to sell you more than just the product.
She also agrees that affordability will never not be part of the equation but if you can move people to understanding the deep benefits of the product beyond its functionality you're driving towards a different kind of relationship
In my conversation we touch on a number of factors for what Angela believes are the critical components for retail innovation where technology is a key determinant of building the relationship.
Angela Gearhart, is known for creating transformational brand experiences and tackling mission-critical challenges facing brands today.
Her deep understanding of consumer behavior and her ability to harness the synergy between marketing, sales, and technology, has allowed her to develop strategies that bridge the gap, igniting growth and fostering brand loyalty.
By optimizing the human-physical-digital experience, she enables brands to disrupt and connect across consumer touchpoints.
During her tenure as VP of Connected Brand Experience at Sleep Number, her work changed the mattress category, driving the company's growth from $300M to over $2B.
Her team earned over 30 retail design, innovation, and technology awards.
As a trusted advisor and influencer in the retail industry, Angela has earned accolades including recognition as a CSA Top Woman in Retail, Remodista Women2Watch in Business Disruption, Retail Innovator by Retail Touchpoints, and Design Influencer by design:retail Magazine.
Angela is a Founding Partner at Media Maxx, which specializes in accelerating brand growth through ecommerce partnership marketing and retail strategies.
And…adding to that already impressive list of retail activities and accolades, she serves as Executive Practice Director at AAG Consulting Group. In that role Angela leverages her insights into buyer dynamics and retail technology landscapes to deliver effective positioning strategies for B2B retail tech firms.
Let’s dig in…
* * *
ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:
LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b
Websites: https://www.davidkepron.com (personal website)
vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645 (Blog)
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: DavidKepron
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/
NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/
Bio:
David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why’, ‘what’s now’ and ‘what’s next’. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe.
David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott’s “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels.
In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies.
As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace.
David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation’s Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.
He has held teaching positions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.
In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.
The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound.
The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.
Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.
JAMES' BIO:
Senior Executive and Consummate Business Leader who drove major change across the consumer retail industry by leveraging the power of design thinking as a strategic advantage, delivering economic success. Trusted advisor committed to creating purpose, achieving profit through performance for sustainable growth. While at Best Buy James and his group led innovation and new concept stores making them the most profitable in the history of the company to date. During his time the Store count went to 1400 from 275 and the stock soared from $7 a share to $110.
James is a Design Thinking practitioner, Creative Strategist and Motivational Speaker at International CEO Summits, illustrating how to create a Customer Centric Culture through Design Thinking where Culture precedes Strategy, creating growth through an integrated, collaborative, interdisciplinary process.
BOARD LEADERSHIP
As Chairman of the Board for Buffalo Wild Wings from 2008 to 2017, helped to shift corporate focus to an employee and customer-centric culture with the goal to become the ultimate social experience for sports and gaming fans. This strategic shift accomplished through alignment of the board with management enabled an extraordinary run of top quartile performance delivering an 850% return to shareholders.
STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP THROUGH CREATIVITY
Drove culture of innovation within Best Buy and consequently transformed the 'Big Box' consumer electronics retail format. Pioneered company’s “new store” experience by integrating creative visual merchandising and design into the overall corporate vision. Instrumental in expanding BestBuy from 275 to 2,500 stores. This experience based strategy was instrumental in driving revenue from 8 billion to 50 billion in a 12 year period, attaining status as a Fortune 50 company.
SHOW INTRO:
Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.
These dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human’s influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.
The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD Magazine part of the Smartwork Media family of brands.
VMSD brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience place makers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant.
You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.
Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience.
SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.org
In this episode I talk with James Damian a retail industry leader who was mentored in the fine art of visual merchandising and display by one of retail’s icons, Gene Moore of Tiffanys. James has had a brilliant career leading major transformations at Best Buy where he was SVP and Chief Design Officer of Experience Design Group, the Chairman of the Board of Buffalo Wild Wings and now shares his experience and passion for retail as a consultant with GAP international.
First though, a few thoughts…
* * *
In 1994 I was working in my hometown of Montréal as an architect and at the same time teaching was the director of the interior design program at College Interdec at LaSalle college.
One day my friend and colleague Monique Piroth invited me out to lunch across the street from the school for a sandwich we talked about the world of visual merchandising, the program that she was the director of and where our careers would take us.
She explained that the college wanted her to go to Singapore to step into the role of the director of the visual merchandising program at La Salle international Fashion School in Singapore, an affiliate of LaSalle College, because our friend and colleague Guy Lapointe had to return to Montréal to tend to his ailing father.
She effectively said that she didn't want to go and I immediately offered up the option that I would instead.
This was one of a series of fateful moments of serendipity that would shape my career for the next 30 years. I never planned to be in retail... It just happened.
I wasn't out looking for it, but it somehow found me.
And so, after that somewhat joking, off the cuff remark, I was on a plane for Singapore not much more than two weeks later.
At that point, my life shifted and instead of practicing architecture in the way that I thought that I would, I shifted into the world of visual merchandising and store design.
While running the Visual Merchandising program at LaSalle International Fashion School, I was asked to do a presentation on visual merchandising trends at a Retail Asia conference.
To be honest, I had very little insight what trends were shaping the retail world since the whole thing was new to me. I was reading everything I could in retail design magazines and trying to learn about who the voices were in the industry and what they were talking about.
I scoured the magazines trying to determine who were the thought leaders in the industry and compiled a short list of people who I thought had great insights and sent out invitations, by fax, for them to provide some insight on what they considered to be major trends in the industry.
One of those individuals was a gentleman named Tom Beebe who at the time was the visual merchandising director for a men's fashion store in New York called Paul Stewart.
Tom was an enthusiastic participant and when at the end of my one-year tenure in Singapore I arrived in New York I made sure to make a point of connecting with Tom.
Tom was gracious and enthusiastically set up meetings for me to meet people in Manhattan so that I could start off on the right foot in a new city and upon a path of the new career.
One of those individuals was Gene Moore.
Gene was the visual merchandising maven that shaped the visual display direction not just for Tiffany's, where he was the master of storytelling in the small windows on 5th Avenue, but he influenced an entire generation of what were then called window trimmers later being called visual merchandising and display people.
Genes work elevated the making of stories in store windows into an art form.
I was lucky enough to be invited to spend an afternoon with Gene Moore in the Tiffany display studio on 5th Avenue. It was truly a memorable moment of my career but I confess that at the time, I had very little idea about who Gene Moore was and why I might have otherwise treated him with extraordinary reverence.
I think the few hours that I spent there were kind of like when you meet someone who's famous but you actually have no idea who they are and so the conversation is casual and unpretentious, and you don't spend time worrying about what you're saying or trying to play to their preferences.
Gene didn’t have to take the meeting. But he did and shared his delight and passion for his profession with a total newbie with nothing but questions and awe for making magic in retail stores.
What an honor…
Another of the introductions that Tom Beebe made for me was to the late great Peter Glenn.
Peter invited me into his home on Sniffin Court on 36th St. east of Madison where he talked about the world of retail stores and customer experience – his specialty - over a freshly brewed pot of English tea.
I look back now at how fortunate that I was to meet these two luminaries in the most early days of my retail career and grateful I am to have had an industry friend like Tom Beebe who, out of the goodness of his heart and genuine love of retail and visual merchandising, shared his passion for the industry as well as his connections to some of the great influencers of the day.
Over the years my path has crossed with Tom.
His passion hasn’t waned neither for the world of creating compelling retail places with stunning and cleaver visuals nor his love of one of his mentors Gene Moore. Tom gave a compelling and impassioned retrospective presentation on Gene Moore, with another industry friend and colleague Eric Feigenbaum, at the International Retail Design Conference in 2023.
Both of them aficionados and ombudsmen for the world of visual presentation – Eric being the New York Editor for VMSD magazine and a standout writer and educator in the field.
In New York I settled in as the resident architect at a small 3-4 person consulting firm called New Vision Studios lead by another industry icon Joe Weishar. Another strange serendipitous occurrence since I had read Joes book “Design for Effective Selling Space’ while in Singapore and had canvassed Joe for a trends report for the Singapore presentation but… he was a non-responder.
Ironically I end up working for him.
Joe Weishar truly taught me what I know in the retail design and visual merchandising world bringing together the art and science of visual presentation in the making of great stores.
In the late 90’s, and into the next decade, the world of retail and visual merchandising was magical.
The Christmas season in New York meant the NADI show, showroom parties that were spectacular and windows on 5th Avenue were a must-see event.
During those years there were a number of people in the New York area who were making things happen in the retail design space. These were the people who were a few years ahead of me in their careers and unbeknownst to them, became my mentors from a distance. James Mansoor, Tom Beebe, Eric Feigenbaum, Linda Fargo, Judy Bell, Ellie Chute and Denny Gerdeman, Ken Walker…
A bit later, in the mid 2010’s there was Christian Davies, Harry Cunningham, Ray Esheid, Anne Kong and Elisabeth Jacobson, Bevan Bloomendaal, Ignas Gorischek, Linda Lombardi, Bill Goddu, Christine Belich, Tony Mancini - All who had begun to create a wave of new thinking about retail stores and how to design them.
And there was James Damian…
I knew James Damien more by name and for the fact that at that time he was the head of Design at Best Buy.
Things that were happening at Best Buy were extraordinary.
The creation of magnolia, the introduction of Apple shops - within an electronics mass merchant - and the complete rethinking of that category of Retail stores was about.
But more than that it was a presentation that I saw James giving at the International Retail Design Conference in Atlanta in 2005 or 2006 that completely left me awestruck.
I can't truly remember what James was talking about, but I distinctly remember him becoming emotional on stage and needing to take a moment to gather himself.
That moment of vulnerability began to change my thinking about being an impassioned, creative an emotional leader.
If a senior leader at a major electronics company could become ‘Verklempt’ on stage… I don't know… it just captured my imagination and I have not since forgotten it.
It turns out that, and maybe not so surprisingly, James Damien and Tom Beebe are deeply connected as long time industry friends and colleagues but also grew up in the retail industry under the mentorship of none other than... Gene Moore of Tiffany's.
Are you getting all these weird crossovers of interconnectedness?
I don't even think that there's 7° of separation here I think like there's this interconnected interwoven set of interdependencies and crossing paths that keep on surrounding my retail career.
In any case, James Damien was another one of those names, luminaries of the retail industry who I, from a distance, would admire and borderline stock over the years watching and following what he was doing in hopes that I would learn what the secret sauce of creating great retail spaces was.
And so, it may also not seem as a surprise that I would eventually find my way to getting James Damien as a guest on this podcast and that it would be a delightful conversation that unfolds with ease and mutual admiration.
Which to me, makes it all the more special.
I have held such great respect for James over the years and that unbeknownst to me he shared the same feelings. I'm not sure whether it's because I followed him, and the others I've mentioned so closely, that my ideas about great retail space, visual merchandising and leadership are so similar or that somehow, independent of each other, we both grew to believe in the same things.
In any case, the points of connection are plentiful.
James came up in the world of Retail in the windows. Really from the artistic side rather than the corporate leadership side and I think that gave him a different sensibility that is emotionally closer perhaps to what happens on the sales floor.
He took a risky step out of the windows into the machine of corporate retail in a somewhat unlikely segment – consumer electronics – with Best Buy. While at Best Buy, James and his group led innovation and new concept stores making them the most profitable in the history of the company to date.
James drove a culture of innovation within Best Buy and consequently transformed the 'Big Box' consumer electronics retail format. He pioneered the company’s “new store” experience by integrating creative visual merchandising and design into the overall corporate vision.
During his time the Store count went to 1400 from 275 and the stock soared from $7 a share to $110.
While there James, evolved into a Senior Executive and consummate business leader who drove major change across the consumer retail industry by leveraging the power of design thinking as a strategic advantage, delivering economic success.
Through his own moments of serendipity, James’ skills, experience and passions landed him the role as Chairman of the Board for Buffalo Wild Wings from 2008 to 2017.
While in this role, he helped to shift corporate focus to an employee and customer-centric culture with the goal to become the ultimate social experience for sports and gaming fans.
James Damian is a Design Thinking practitioner, Creative Strategist and Motivational Speaker at International CEO Summits. In his talks he illustrates how to create a Customer Centric Culture through Design Thinking where Culture precedes Strategy, creating growth through an integrated, collaborative, interdisciplinary process.
James knows the power of a good pause… he can tell a good story and he has had some remarkable experiences to share.
I have hung on every word in his presentations that I have had the good fortune to listen to and our talk was no exception.
* * *
ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:
LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b
Websites: https://www.davidkepron.com (personal website)
vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645 (Blog)
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: DavidKepron
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/
NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/
Bio:
David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why’, ‘what’s now’ and ‘what’s next’. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe.
David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott’s “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels.
In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies.
As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace.
David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation’s Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.
He has held teaching positions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.
In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.
The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound.
The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.
Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.
NICOLE'S BIO:
A 2019 National Women's Hall of Fame inductee and recent Presidential appointee, Colonel
Nicole M. E. Malachowski (USAF, Ret.) has over 21 years of experience as an officer, leader, and fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. Upon her commission into the military, she was competitively selected to fly combat aircraft and embarked on an adventure among the first group of women to fly modern fighter jets. Nicole served as a mission ready fighter pilot in three operational F-15E squadrons and accumulated over 2,300 flight hours, including 188 hours in combat. She has had the honor of commanding a fighter squadron, flying as a USAF Thunderbird pilot, serving as a White House Fellow and as an advisor to the First Lady of the United States. Nicole has forged a successful path through immense cultural changes in the military as well as significant adversity in her personal life. Following her medical retirement from the Air Force due to the severe impacts of late-stage Tick Borne Illness, Nicole reinvented herself as a highly successful entrepreneur, professional speaker, and leadership consultant. She’s been happily married to her husband Paul, an Air Force veteran, for over 22 years. When not hurriedly chasing their thirteen-year-old twins around, she finds immense meaning in traveling and advocating for those impacted by Tick Borne Illnesses. (©️2024 Nicole Malachowski & Associates, LLC-All Rights Reserved).
SHOW INTRO:
Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.
These dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human’s influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.
The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD Magazine part of the Smartwork Media family of brands.
VMSD brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience place makers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant.
You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.
Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience.
SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.org
In this episode I talk with Nicole Malachowski a retired Colonel of the United States Air Force, an F-15E fighter pilot, who commanded a fighter squadron, flew as a USAF Thunderbird pilot, serves as a White House Fellow and as was an advisor to the First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama.
First though, a few thoughts…
* * *
It seems that I talk a lot about speed…
Its’ sort of a fascination…
…the pace of change and what it likely means for emerging markets, changing guest expectations, how we address new needs, how we transition through moments of uncertainty and ambiguity and how leaders shift their orientation from current, or past paradigms, that are no longer relevant or adaptable to the fast-paced world we are now living and working in
…and turn their attention to growing companies and workforces into flexible structures that are deeply embedded with the idea of change as a given - something not to be feared but seen as an emergent space of possibility.
And I gotta tell you, this change thing isn't easy.
It takes a persistence of thought and a modicum of courage to keep on looking into the void, unable to predict the distant future and maybe rely on shorter term gains in the near future.
Yeah, it's not easy.
Especially when you've spent most of your life believing that there was a path that you were supposed to follow. Something that was laid out and that you could rely on as being consistent. And predictable.
But it seems as though life keeps having its way of throwing a monkey wrench in that ideal and reminding me that very little is in our control.
And there is that old, I believe Hebrew, saying that “man made plans and God just laughed.”
Now I'm not sure who's exactly laughing at whom here but one fact remains… that uncertainty is a certainty. I think based on the speed at which our technology and societies are changing that uncertainty will be the name of the game for the future.
Of course, there are some inherent challenges in taking that position in leadership because generally speaking, no one wants a leader who seems to be uncertain about where to go next.
My hunch is though, that leaders who are able to say that they're not exactly sure where things will lead might likely be not only more realistic about possible future outcomes but more endearing to an emerging cohort of customers or employees.
This may seem to go totally counter to the idea that we like our structures and the paradigms that we build our emotional and business selves around…
…but it seems to me that we’re increasingly in need of strategic positions that plan for things being upended.
It's almost like having a ‘continuous contingency plan’ in place - if this then that and then if this then that and so on and so on.
Recently I took on a role advising a group of students who were given the design challenge in a competition to build the hotel of the future... For opening sometime in 2050.
It seemed to me that I was having trouble predicting the next five years rather than the next 25 years and I mused out loud that I don't know how they could predict anything that was that far ahead.
The strange thing is, that it's not actually that far ahead.
It is very much in front of us - right now - if you consider that we'll be moving towards that time much more quickly it than we'll have ever moved before.
And so, with the group of students, I suggested that maybe what we needed was to consider that we engage in scenario mapping - planning a strategic platform within which many potential options could play out.
In this exercise it seemed to me that what we needed to do was to be able to provide for all sorts of contingency plans while at the same time having a structure to allow for various outcomes to emerge based on a host of changing circumstances.
There are a couple of ideas here that I frequently find myself thinking about:
One would be…
…that if ‘you know where you're going, you've already gone’ as the saying goes and the delta between now and then is simply about production. There is a certain comfort in the knowing… I know where we are going.. the end point is predetermined, it is predictable and I feel reassured in knowing the end game.
In this case, I think that the joy of discovery that you have when taking the ‘road less traveled’ is diminished, or disappears, and the work becomes transactional and geared towards efficiently getting to the outputs.
Discovery falls away in preference for getting it done.
I think that way about design as well… that it is often more process than product.
It is during the making of something where a lot of the magic happens.
My hope is that in those moments we have the collision of memories, emotions, ideas, the challenges of solving programmatic requirements, meeting the needs of end users, etc., etc. Design is a journey where all these things come together in a process where discovery leads us to a place of awe and reverence for the creative act so that we stand back from the things we have made in bewilderment that we are even able to do these things.
There should be a moment where you stand back from the thing that you created and revel in how it was that you even got there.
The second thing that also occurs to me about navigating into the unknown is that, at a brain level, we may have a certain level of being ill-at-ease about the unknown, we actually love the idea of novelty.
I know I've talked about this before but, these moments of novelty and discovery where experience doesn't align with our expectations - or the predetermined schemas for how things should be - that we have in our in our brains are where, in a sense, our brains wake up and pay attention.
We have predicted something to be a certain way and it doesn't happen and so things emerge from unconscious awareness into our consciousness – into a front row center level of awareness…
… the new experience releases dopamine and other neurochemicals that make these experiences both desirable as well as potentially being full of trepidation.
This is a neurobiological imperative that has been embedded in our neurophysiology for millions of years.
Seeing and being able to determine the novel in our environments was a crucial factor to our very survival.
In a way, this makes me think about how we might try to operate in a fast paced, changing world where every day becomes a continuous flow of fluidly changing experiences.
How do we adapt to not having long periods of times of consolidating and understanding experiences when we're quickly on to the next thing?
It seems to me like that would be a heavy burden on the brain and our emotions …living in the ‘new now’ might be exhausting.
And so, we face periods of Headwinds - moments where the proverbial weather shifts and we might feel that we are unprepared having left our umbrella at home.
Or other times when we might be carrying the umbrella, and the winds shift direction and blow it backwards making it entirely unusable.
It's in those moments where we are confronted with whether we have planned well and are able to fight, or flow, with the wind in these moments of adversity.
In those moments we need to be able to turn to teammates, close allies people who have got your back, who know you so well that they know what your next move will be either because they've simply been with you for so long or you were all following the same playbook … and running in the same direction…
Sometimes these moments are like being in a crucible where significant change is going to happen and, often with the support of allies, family members, good friends, mentors… we come out the other side changed
…we don't just bounce back to what it was, but we bounce beyond into a new way of being where we're transformed beyond our expectations.
In that process of transformation there is a need for trust… trust in the process, and trust in the people who you are surrounded by - that they will be able to nurture you through these moments of significant change.
Seems to me that part of a leader’s role is to know themselves, and to lead the team through these moments of unpredictability knowing that on the other side – if they commit the to work of transformation (that is not easy) and you have the courage of your convictions, that you'll end up being better for it.
When I think about positive leadership, it's not about giving false hope or making promises that you can't keep…
… because in many cases we simply can't predict the outcomes of things as well as we believe we could.
It's about mastering your self-awareness – tuning into how you are feeling in the moment - mastering your self-control and being really good at balancing both of these things because losing one or the other can result in losing your team's confidence.
And at the same time, to be authentic and transparent in your communication and naturally vulnerable so that your team sees you as human and that maybe you don't have all of the answers. But together you will find the ones where your leadership vision is not 20-20.
And this is where this episode’s guest comes into the discussion.
Colonel Nicole Malachowski – now retired from the US Air Force, is a former F-15E fighter pilot who knows how to manage speed.
Nicole has flown at twice the speed of sound and as I understand it, traveling at that velocity requires not just extraordinary skill but also “staying ahead of the jet” as she says and working multiple contingency plans when things don't go as expected.
… and as far as I can tell from our conversation, things very rarely go as expected. Especially one someone has their sights trained on your multimillion dollar aircraft and wants to shoot you out of the air.
In Nicole’s mind, your speed and decision making should vary based on your context but that in the end “speed is always something that gives you options.”
When traveling at twice the speed of sound your saving grace may be having been well prepared and knowing what your contingency plans are as you face headwinds, whether that's changing weather or enemy fire.
In those moments of extreme adversity, teamwork and trust are vital to fast decision making and potentially your very survival.
Nicole gathers all of these lessons learned from a brilliant career in the military and applies them to coaching, mentoring and giving capitivating speeches on an international stage where she shares her experiences.
Nicole Malachowski is A 2019 National Women's Hall of Fame inductee and recent Presidential appointee.
She has over 21 years of experience as an officer, leader, and fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. She put on her country’s uniform at the age of 17 and upon her commission into the military, she was competitively selected to fly combat aircraft and embarked on an adventure among the first group of women to fly modern fighter jets - fulfilling a dream she had since the age of 5.
Nicole served as a mission ready fighter pilot in three operational F-15E squadrons and accumulated over 2,300 flight hours, including 188 hours in combat.
She has had the honor of commanding a fighter squadron, flying as the first female USAF Thunderbird pilot, serving as a White House Fellow and as an advisor to the First Lady of the United States – Michell Obama.
Nicole has forged a successful path through immense cultural changes in the military as well as significant adversity in her personal life.
In a poignant twist of ironic fate it wasn't enemy fire that retired her from active duty in the US Air Force. Instead, it was something that sat on the head of a pin.
In a “blink of a bite” as she says, her career at the stick of an F-15E fighter jet was shifted to struggling for her life with advanced tick-born illness, at times suffering from locked in syndrome unable to move or speak.
Following her medical retirement from the Air Force due to the severe impacts of late-stage tick borne illness, Nicole reinvented herself as a highly successful entrepreneur, professional speaker, and leadership consultant.
Nicole Malachowski knows speed, adversity and navigating the unknown. She is a captivating and inspiring speaker who I was honored to have a conversation with.
* * *
ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:
LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b
Websites: https://www.davidkepron.com (personal website)
vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645 (Blog)
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: DavidKepron
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/
NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/
Bio:
David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why’, ‘what’s now’ and ‘what’s next’. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe.
David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott’s “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels.
In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies.
As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace.
David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation’s Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.
He has held teaching positions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.
In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.
The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound.
The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.
Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.
linkedin.com/in/maya-colombani-0a118369
Websites:[email protected]Laura Inserra
MAYA'S BIO:
Maya Colombani - L’Oréal Canada - Chief Sustainability & Human Rights Officer
Maya Colombani has been appointed Chief Sustainability and Human Rights Officer of L'Oréal Canada in April 2022. With an international career of over 20 years at L'Oréal, Maya is distinguished by a rich and comprehensive professional background. She began her career in France, working for leading design and advertising agencies such as Dragon Rouge, Publicis, and Euro RSCG. She then joined L'Oréal's Professional Products division in 2001. There, she held positions in operational marketing and DMI (Direction Marketing International), for Kérastase and L'Oréal Professionnel. She carried out assignments in India and in the Western Europe zone, before moving to Brazil in June 2010 where she worked in marketing functions. Since the end of 2016, she has been Director of Sustainable Development for Brazil.
In this role, she profoundly transformed L’Oréal Brazil’s approach to sustainable development and human rights. She has implemented actions that inspired the L’Oréal Group and positioned L’Oréal Brazil as a national benchmark. L’Oréal Brazil is indeed regularly cited as an example and is used to fuel new reflections, both on environmental issues and on human rights issues, as well as with respect to the relations with the indigenous people of Brazil.
Her projects have been rewarded by the best rankings such as Guia Exame 2017/2018/2019; recognized as the best company in climate change as well as biodiversity management; and has received the WEP gold award 2021 on women empowerment supported by ONU Women and Compact Global.
In 2022, thanks to her strong inclusive social programs for indigenous and communities, the GLOBO recognized L’Oréal Brazil as “The company that makes the difference in term of inclusion and diversity.”
In Canada, Maya’s mission is to increase the positive footprint internally and externally in terms of sustainable development and human rights, and to accelerate the actions carried out within the framework of “L’Oréal For the Future.” Among her first projects, she has already focused, with the Canadian teams, on achieving the company’s full carbon neutrality on all its sites, as well as accelerating ambitious targets on water management and implementing cleantech partnership and eco-design business with committed brands.
Thanks to impactful projects in Canada, earned her the prestigious “Canada’s Clean 50” award that "recognized the most impactful 50 individual LEADERs that have demonstrated measurable leadership in fighting climate change and helping Canada transition to a low-carbon economy." Another important achievement for Maya is being named President of the “Positive Impact Club” of the French CCI in Canada, to have a positive impact on our society and reinforce the bond between France and Canada.
Maya graduated from Reims Business School and completed an MBA semester of International Business Strategy in Victoria University, Australia. She now lives in Montreal, Québec, Canada with her family.
SHOW INTRO:
Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.
These dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human’s influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.
The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD Magazine part of the Smartwork Media family of brands.
VMSD brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience place makers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant. You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.
Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience.
SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.org
In this episode I talk with Maya Colombani Chief Sustainability and Human Rights Officer of L’Oréal Canada. Maya is one of the most passionate proponents of rethinking sustainable business practices and supporting human rights that I have ever met. Her energy is infectious and her passion is a positive push to do more in support of people and the planet.
First though, a few thoughts…
* * *
Certain themes keep on emerging in my discussions with my guests. Health, wellness, and sustainability frequently come into the conversation regardless of whether or not I'm speaking to a designer, a neuroscientist, an artist or obviously someone who's work life is focused on sustainable design Practice within their business.
We are more aware today of the influence of the built environment on our mind body state, our very psychology and neurophysiological makeup. I have often referred to this as ontological design - The fact that the things we design and bring into the world design us back.
The field of neuroaesthetics that have come up in previous conversations with Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross in the ir book Your Brain on Art or with Tasha Golden in my discussion with her and the work she does at the Arts and Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins have pointed out that the psychological effects of bad or simply banal buildings is part of our potential mental health crisis.
Advances in neuroscience driven by technologies is allowing us to see into the human brain and understand the interrelationships between its functional areas and it's and our connection to the environment in a way that we have not been able to do so before. And because of this new ability we are more able to determine, with a very high degree of confidence, what goes on in our inner world when we are immersed in our outer world.
We've talked about color and its influence on our mind body state with Valerie Corcias and we've talked about music and how the arts having a deeply resonant place in our collective experience of our social groups and culture.
Sustainability keeps on emerging as an obvious focus in the guests that I speak to whether it was with Bruce Mau and talking about his book MC24 or Martin Kingdon and his relationship to the store fixture manufacturing world in Europe and then there was Denise Naguib, of VP of Sustanability and Vendor Diversity at Marriott International, who I won't soon forget reminded me that the planet will be just fine without us and that we just have to decide whether or not we want to live here.
When I go to conferences and I listen to the subjects that are often talked about by keynote presenters, panelists and just the everyday conversations that happen outside of the lecture room, sustainable design practice quickly surfaces and becomes a focal point.
I think to most of us now, we are aware that we are facing an existential crisis that will shape the course of humanity in the near future. There are some that say we are already too late that reversing the effects of climate change maybe a losing battle.
There are others that soldier on believing that it is the responsible thing for us to do and that changing our approach to living, manufacturing, building and other human endeavours needs to be reconsidered so that we change to protecting the planet from ourselves, not so much for the planet itself but for the fact that if we want to live here we need to be able to preserve Mother Nature and be good stewards of the gift that we have been given.
When you consider the length of time that this little blue dot has been spinning around our sun, somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.5 billion years, and you consider the amount of time that humans have been occupying the earth, it should be setting off alarm bells that in just a couple of centuries we've begun to destroy the ecosystem that was here long before we arrived.
And that frankly will be here a long time after we are gone.
The challenge is that I don't think we're going to be able to get off this planet and get on an interplanetary transport to Mars and build colonies there before this earth go through some significant changes that will affect all of humankind.
Is it too late?
It may be but one thing is for sure, if we don't change our practices and think about regenerating nature along with driving capitalism forward we will most definitely end up in a climate disaster. And so, this is why it is so important that the practices and policies that are being pushed forward by people like my guest on this episode, Maya Colombani, are so critical to the course of humanity.
One of the obvious things is that sustainable design practices are not just about saving the planet and providing a viable environment for humans but they also happen to be good for business. One of the opportunities here is to change our thinking about how we see innovation in the sustainable design space and make sure that we consider that it is something that brings value for business and societies.
Retailers and manufacturers have a responsibility with the power they wield to address innovating our way into a sustainable future that addresses directly the effects of climate change.
Part of this of course is going back to our roots - meaning engaging indigenous communities in understanding how to treat the planet better. A westernized mentality towards dominating the planet and its people have put us on a collision course with a disastrous future. If we could fully realized that indigenous communities can teach western societies a great deal about how to manage our resources we would ultimately be much better off.
One school of thought is that we have created this problem and we can therefore therefore fix it, but my hunch is that we are not going to be able to continue to be so arrogant as to believe that we can do it on our own.
Large corporations need to turn to the ancient wisdom of indigenous peoples and engage them in a collaborative process of sustainable and social responsibility which should be, in the end, at the center of all of the decisions that we make.
L’Oreal Canada along with Maya Colombani wants to be a laboratory for good and they want to reinvent retail and corporate manufacturing policies that are good for society with the added benefit of it being also good for their business. That involves engaging the corporate structure including suppliers in the process of rethinking how they bring goods to market.
Maya Colombani will say that it's not good enough just to fight climate change… what we have to do is regenerate nature and part of that is that sustainability is not about having good intentions it's about action and measurable outcomes.
This of course requires a significant shift in mindsets which is very difficult, kind of like changing the direction of the aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean because in the end the future belongs not in the hands of major companies but in those of the citizens of the world who have, through their buying power, the ability to vote for companies who are doing the right thing and to do so with their wallets.
Maya Colombani would say that in sustainable development there is never an individual victory but only great collective victories that push us to grow further every day. Having won a number of awards for her efforts she sees these recognitions as an invitation to work even harder and faster to face the unprecedented global humanitarian and climate crisis that we are currently embroiled in.
Maya Colombani was appointed Chief Sustainability and Human Rights Officer of L’Oreal Canada in April 2022.
In her more than 20 years with the company prior to her current role, she had carried out assignments in India and Western Europe and then moved to Brazil in 2010 where she worked in marketing functions.
In 2006 she was the director of sustainable development for Brazil. While in this role of she transformed L’Oreal Brazil into a national benchmark for how to rethink both environmental and human rights issue as well as our respect for relations with indigenous peoples.
She has received many distinguished awards being recognized for her passionate approach to people and the planet. In Canada, Maya's mission is to increase the positive footprint internally and externally in terms of sustainable development and human rights and to accelerate the actions carried out within the framework of “L’Oreal For The Future.”
She has been focused on achieving the company's full carbon neutrality on all of its sites as well as accelerating ambition targets on water management and implementing clean tech partnerships and eco design businesses with committed brands.
Thanks to the impactful projects in Canada she earned the prestigious Canada's “Clean 50” award that recognized the 50 most impactful individual leaders that have demonstrated measurable leadership in fighting climate change and helping Canada transition to a low carbon economy.
When I met Maya Colombani at the Bensadoun School of Retail Management Retail Summit in the fall of 2023, I was immediately struck by her energy and passion for this subject.
I think you'll discover in this episode that to say that Maya is passionate about people on the planet might be an understatement.
ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:
LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b
Websites: https://www.davidkepron.com (personal website)
vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645 (Blog)
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: DavidKepron
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/
NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/
Bio:
David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why’, ‘what’s now’ and ‘what’s next’. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe.
David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott’s “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels.
In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies.
As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace.
David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation’s Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.
He has held teaching positions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.
In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.
The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound.
The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.
Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.
LinkedIn profile: linkedin.com/in/laurainserra
Websites:[email protected]Laura Inserra
Laura's Bio:
Laura Inserra is a world-renowned leader in sound healing - a sound alchemist, multi-instrumentalist, educator, and multimedia producer. She lives and creates at the confluence of global music, ancient wisdom traditions, and cutting-edge technology.
She grew up on the volcanic island of Sicily and has been exploring the power of sound since her youth. Her work is rooted in 30+ years of global cross-cultural studies and initiations in ancient traditions and modern schools of wisdom, as well as the direct observation of nature.
A world-renowned Hang musician, Laura plays hundreds of ancient and modern instruments from around the world, including many made by her. She utilizes cutting-edge technology to augment the natural sources of her instruments, creating Chambers of AWE - multimedia productions featuring ceremonial instruments and field-recordings, enhanced with 360o visuals andAI-generated content rooted in ancient wisdom.
In these settings music becomes experiential - the body and the mind merge with the sound, traveling beyond the fields of cognitive perceptions, to enhance profound shifts of consciousness, deepen our relationship with nature, and facilitate inner transformation and healing.
SHOW INTRO
Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.
These dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human’s influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.
The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine.
VMSD is the publisher of VMSD magazine and brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience placemakers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant.
You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.
Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience.
SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.org
In this episode, I talk with “Sound Alchemist” Laura Inserra about the deep effect that music has on our sense of well-being, sound journeys and energy we share with each other and ancient musical instruments and shamanic practices. And, make sure you listen right through for a special treat… But first a few thoughts.
****************
I am increasingly convinced that I am moving away from the idea that ‘there are no accidents’ as simply a quaint phrase to it being a foundational principle in the nature of things.
In previous episodes I've probably described that most of the major life changes that have reshaped my career and life path on the planet have emerged through what I used to simply think was serendipity.
A career change that led me halfway around the world to live in Singapore, to a meeting at a conference that took me from 20 years designing retail stores to working in the hospitality industry and many other occurrences that seem to be unexplainable but nevertheless happen, it seems, purposefully.
And so, it also was with meeting my guest in this episode Laura Inserra whose path I crossed at the Intentional Spaces Summit in Washington DC in the fall of 2023. I'll get to talking about Laura in a moment.
But first I just gotta say, I love music.
I remember as a youngster being enthralled with musicians and watching variety shows on television where I imagined myself being one of the band. I have a clear memory of rewriting lyrics for a song to the 1968 tune of “Spinning Wheel” by the bandBlood, Sweat & Tears, written by Canadian lead vocalist David Clayton. I think my parents humored me at the time with ‘that’s nice sweetheart.’
In high school my best friend Jeff and I bought guitars, strummed our way through James Taylor and Eagles tunes. I bought a harmonica and thought I might be a Blues harp player. But Jeff became the better musician playing piano and performing at a piano bar in a local Italian restaurant.
In my early days of college when I met my now wife of 35 years, we were both interested in sports and being in the great outdoors, but it was music that brought us closer together. She was a Toronto Royal Conservatory of Music graduate and piano teacher in her late teens and early 20s and when she sang she sounded like Karen Carpenter.
When we played Neil Sedaka's “Laughter in The Rain” I fell hopelessly in love and I waited for the lyric “…after a while we run under a tree, I turned to her and she kisses me…” Because ya know, if the lyric says it, well…
Music was everywhere in our relationship.
She introduced me to jazz a genre where she really found her tempo (yes pun intended) as a musician in the high school jazz band. Where she incidentally always won awards for being a stand out pianist. Through her, I learned about Chic Corea, Coltrane, and the Canadian flutist Moe Kaufman’s “Jungle Woman” became signature tune of our relationship.
My wife wrote the music for our wedding ceremony that was sung by the FACE Highschool choir and “How do You keep the music playing” by James ingram and Patti Austin was our first dance as husband and wife. Oh and when James and Patti modulate about three quarters the way in…still today my chest fills with pleasure, pain, longing, hope, inspiration, love and the mysterious power of music taking me to another plain all together.
When our first son was born we listened to Debussey in the delivery room and then through his first few years turned to big band and danced around the column in the basement of our condo. When son number two was born his older brother came into the hospital room and exclaimed “hi baby brother! I’m going to teach you how to dance to jazz music!”
Our first son grew up to play with the inaugural National Youth Jazz orchestra as the drummer, opening a European tour by playing first at Carnegie Hall. Our second son was indeed taught by his big brother to love music and he has evolved into an exceptional jazz pianist, composer and he actually wrote, performed and engineered the theme music for this podcast.
They are both deeply connected to the music, composing, and playing every day. I hear music at home until 11pm most nights.
When I think back to it, almost every significant life event has been connected to music.
During the pandemic when uncertainty was all around us and I hadn't picked up my guitar in years, I instead picked up paintbrushes and began to do portraits of jazz musicians and other musical icons.
Listening to hours of music while painting has become a profound influence on my sense of well-being and managing the unknown but more than that, it simply gives me a deep sense of peace. There is a palpable joy that comes to me while painting and listening to hours of the music of the musician I am working on.
Music energizes, soothes, and transports us back to significant moments of our lives. Music releases energy locked in our bodies and unearths emotions - joy, sadness, fear, longing, anticipation…
Music has healing power in our own bodies and joins us together in sympathetic resonance between our collective bodies. Rudolph Steiner was quoted as saying “the science of the future will be based on sympathetic vibrations” and since all things vibrate, it seems like music is both art and science.
To prove the point about music being both art and science, there is a somewhat niche field within physics and acoustics call “cymatics.”
Cymatics explores the visualization of sound through the patterns and shapes created by vibrations in different mediums like salt or sand. But it also works on heart cells. Certain sound frequencies played through these mediums cause them to arrange into complex geometric patterns which as far as I am concerned are equally beautiful pieces of art.
Study of cymatics suggests that these patterns exist in us when we pay or listen to music. As Einstein once said, “everything in life is vibration” or as the more recent physicist Michio Kaku put it “everything is music.”
Our bodies are resonance chambers that oscillate to frequencies right down to our very cells. It is not surprising to me that we are so deeply connected to music since “all things are part of real and rhythmic whole…” as Tesla suggested in 1926 when describing wireless technology.
We are almost 100 years from time that Tesla was quoted in Harpers Bazar magazine. The wireless technology he was referring to in telecommunication is now also deeply influencing the music we create. But digital music is different than the tones played on ancient instruments.
Digital music filters out tones that may not be perceptible by the human ear but nevertheless may be felt by the body. And so, we have a different connection to the sounds of an ancient Mayan flute or ancestral aboriginal drum than we do to the top 40 hits we play through our wireless Apple Airpods that we insert into our ears.
The music goes in our bodies differently.
And this is where my guest Laura Inserra comes into our story about music and its weaving into the history of us.
Laura Inserra is a world-renowned leader in sound healing. She describes herself as a sound alchemist and a multi-instrumentalist, educator, and multimedia producer. She lives and creates at the confluence of global music, ancient wisdom traditions, and cutting-edge technology.
Laura grew up on the volcanic island of Sicily and has been exploring the power of sound since her youth. Her work is rooted in 30+ years of global cross-cultural studies and initiations in ancient traditions and modern schools of wisdom, as well as the direct observation of nature.
A world-renowned Hang musician, Laura plays hundreds of ancient and modern instruments from around the world, including many made by her. She utilizes cutting-edge technology to augment the natural sources of her instruments, creating Chambers of AWE which are multimedia productions featuring ceremonial instruments and field-recordings, enhanced with visuals and AI-generated content rooted in ancient wisdom.
In these settings her music becomes experiential - the body and the mind merge with the sound, traveling beyond the fields of cognitive perceptions, to enhance profound shifts of consciousness, deepen our relationship with nature, and facilitate inner transformation and healing.
So… now going back to my lead-in to this episode about serendipity…
I attended the Intentional Spaces Summit in Washington DC last fall in 2023.
To start this two-day journey into the power of our built environment to influence human health and well being, a woman comes on the stage, places herself among a number of musical instruments and within minutes the audience is transported to another plain of being.
We collectively experienced a Laura Inserra Sound Journey.
I leave the auditorium after her performance, call home and describe what I just experienced to my wife, who exclaims that about 4 years earlier she had come across Chambers of Awe by Laura Inserra and had sent me the link to her website saying that this was something I had to listen to.
The universe had its own timing in mind when placing Laura and I in the same conference. We connected at a reception, and there was a sympathetic resonance leading to my invitation to be a guest. I am grateful that she said yes.
Laura Inserra refers to her work as “sound alchemy”… things coming together to make other things more precious than the original constituents and she describes her compositions as “structured improvisations.”
This conversation felt very much like that – we followed a structured baseline that allowed for the musical and mystical to create magical improvisational moments.
ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:
LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b
Websites: https://www.davidkepron.com (personal website)
vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645 (Blog)
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: DavidKepron
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/
NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/
Bio:
David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why’, ‘what’s now’ and ‘what’s next’. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe.
David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott’s “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels.
In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies.
As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace.
David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation’s Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.
He has held teaching positions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.
In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.
The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound.
The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.
Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.
ABOUT JEAN-PAUL MORRESI:
Jean-Paul’s Profile: linkedin.com/in/autsideWebsite: thinkautside.com (Company)Email: [email protected]BIO:
Jean-Paul Morresi is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of Autside, a retail focused creative agency in Toronto, Canada. Over 3+ decades, Jean-Paul has worked across 5 continents, run offices in Toronto, Stockholm and Dubai, overseen a Shanghai based creative team, and led projects teams across the Americas and Europe.
An Architecture graduate of the University of Toronto, Jean-Paul’s unique background weaves marketing, merchandising, design and construction into an interdisciplinary approach where creative, strategic and executional acumen conspire, delivering customer focused, performance driven retail and brand experiences.
A regular contributor to industry publications and events, Jean-Paul currently sits on the Retail Touchpoints/design:retail Editorial Advisory Board, the Advisory Board of retail technology company Virtual Visions, and Curriculum Advisory Committees for Humber College’s Interior Design and the Sheridan College’s Visual Merchandising Programs.
Jean-Paul & the Autside team are currently collaborating on the design of projects spanning the retail spectrum, branded corporate interiors, showroom spaces and a variety of in-store digital marketing and engagement tools.
SHOW INTRO:
Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.
These dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human’s influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.
The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine.
VMSD is the publisher of VMSD magazine and brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience placemakers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant.
You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.
Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience.
SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.org
In this episode I talk with Jean-Paul Morresi the the founder and Chief Creative Officer of Autside, a retail focused creative agency in Toronto, Canada about a creative career in the world of retail and design.
But first a few thoughts.
****************
It has seemed that during my career some of the really cool stuff, the things that change the path of my life, that took me to places around the world and introduced me to new ideas and people who challenged all the things that I believe to be true about myself and the world, came by way of serendipity.
I started a career as an architect in Montreal and got an invitation to go to Singapore and run an International School back in the mid 90s.
And that opportunity popped up at a lunch with a colleague of mine who said she was asked to do the job but really didn't want to go all that way.
I of course raised my hand saying yes I’ll do that and two weeks later I was living in Singapore and my life in the world of Retail Design started at that juncture.
I landed in New York a year later and spent four years working in the office of New Vision Studios with Joe Weishar.
We traveled the world teaching retailers how to merchandise their stores, how to use design principles and apply them to more effective selling spaces.
Those years were critical because I spent time on the sales floor moving fixtures around, stripping down shelving and re-stocking them at the same time as we were teaching various managers, department heads and sales associates the basic principles of visual merchandising.
Those years were foundational in my career because it gave me a different view on how to look at the world of retail design not from simply the point of view of the architect but as from someone who had worked the sales floor.
From the point of view of who had the sales floor experiences of about it was like to put merchandise on a table or shelf or a hanging rack
and how visual presentation and visual merchandising were critical components of the retail storytelling that happens inside stores.
When I think about having been pushing those store fixtures around on the sales floor I often wondered then what my parents, who had invested in my education as an architect, would be thinking that their son who was supposed to go off and build huge projects and save the world from itself through architecture was instead occasionally putting flower displays together and stripping down or merchandising store fixtures with baby booties, bras and panties, canoes, big ass TV's and rice steamers all on the same day.
My father wasn't particularly jazzed about the idea that I mostly truly interested in being a painter.
“Get a degree or get a trade that'll lead to you making a good job he used to tell me”
In the end he was probably right because the idea of being a starving artist was never particularly interesting to me.
I actually did end up in architecture having studied psychology beforehand and I oftner think about how interesting it is that a confluence of educational orientations and experiences all came together to study of architecture school at McGill University in Montreal.
I just about quit in second year, it was a tough , tough program, and almost applied into the Fine Arts department at another university.
But somehow I got myself a tutor who got me through the engineering courses and I ended up continuing my studies in architecture completing 4 year degree going on to getting in license to practice.
I’m proud of the fact that I'm an architect for the past 35 or 40 years of my professional career. It has served me well.
I also liked teaching a lot and was always in front of students whether it was as a ski school technical director teaching other teachers how to teach or being engaged in universities in both Montreal, Singapore, New York, Philadelphia and most recently teaching a course in cognitive science at the Columbus College of Art and design.
Teaching has always been part of what I've liked to do.
Teaching is a passion (as well as painting) and no matter where I've been at what phase of my career I've always included teaching in that process.
When I came back to New York from a year in Singapore, I didn't land in the big firm that I'd hoped to but in fact I ended up starting in a small firm.
In that basement office of a brownstone on 36th street just off of Park Aveneue, Joe Weishar, another merchandising pro by the name of George Homer, an interior designer and I were a four-person office with a big client list.
It was an amazing experience and I think it fundamentally changed the way I thought about store design.
I spent about 22 years designing stores and as another moment of serendipity crossed my path, or maybe I crossed its path, and I had an opportunity to shift away from retail, still staying in the world of brand experience placemaking, and joined Marriott as a vice president of global design strategies.
This was a pretty significant shift and people asked me how does retail affect the hospitality how are you gonna do that because I had never designed a hotel before in my life.
but I was confident in my design skills and that I had enough experience in understanding brands and people and making spaces for their interactions that hotel would be like painting with a different palette but I would never forget the rules of how to apply paint to the canvas. And so, for a number of years I was in the hospitality space which I have always loved and yet again, I began to forge a new path.
Often when I've had to describe my career to people when they've asked, as they usually do at a party or some event, what do you do? I sort of get stuck and say well I'm I'm not a one trick pony.
I have taken to describing myself as a hybrid professional which seems to fit because painting teaching podcasting architecting and working across multiple types of business segments has given me an amazing career with a wealth of different experiences.
I suppose you could say that they all fit into the world of design, architecture and placemaking but I've been able to exercise those passions in very different areas.
You could say that focusing on one thing and one thing only was not the way I decided to lead my career.
What I’ve really begun to understand that I was spending more time connecting the dots between all of the experiences that I had.
My fascinations gave me a broad mindset of multiple influences. I've often seen my job as finding the blank spaces between the notes and deciding how to fill them in.
The interesting thing about career path changes are that they're the ones that seem to present the most interesting opportunities for growth. For challenging the way you think about things and for giving you a different point of view. It's also allowed me to think about the idea of collaboration and how to do it well.
When working across multiple disciplines you end up having to put a number of different hats on each day. I suppose that is also true of designing multiple stores for different brands. I was never particularly interested in focusing on one type of retail design versus another.
For example, I never really thought that my world would be designing shopping malls or big box retailers or specialty jewelry stores.
I've always tried to find myself in an office where my curiosity and creative interests would allow for multiple expressions. I simply found that much more interesting than being singularly focused on one idea.
And this it brings me to a fundamental understanding about doing retail design that emerged out of my early years working in New York and that is:
…that ultimately, in the end, it's not about me as the designer it's about the product and about the brand and if I can get a little bit of me in there then I feel good about that.
I don't have to change the world like I thought at the onset of my career path but that it is often good enough to change a small thing that impacts many people in a small way and perhaps the compounding of those smaller individual experiences ends up creating something great.
But if it doesn't, that's OK too.
If it changes a single individual and gives them a better experience or allows them to see something a new way and learn , then I'm good with that.
Now in the world of advanced technology my passions for living a life in the time of Star Trek are coming to fruition.
AI, as well as all of the generative design tools and immersive digital technologies that we are now able to employ in the service of creating great experiences, are beginning to make real some of the things that a number of years ago I was always fantasizing about.
This brave new world we are entering into makes a career in brand experience placemaking super exciting.
Now, when I take a moment to think about each of these individual areas serendipity forging a path in retail - working the sales floor, thinking about art school versus architecture, teaching my whole life, working in the small firm and having opportunities to shift career paths to major corporations, developing an understanding about what makes good leadership built in trust, authenticity communication yada yada…
I end up bumping into an industry colleague at the SHOP Marketplace event a number of months ago. I had known Jean Paul Morresi from the industry though I have to admit we have never had time to sit down and talk. I recognized him at industry events. We would often say hello and we had industry friends and colleagues with whom we collaborated and against whom we often competed.
So, when I offered Jean Paul an opportunity to do an interview for the NXTLVL Experiences Design podcast, he eagerly accepted and we sat down to what became more like a fireside chat with a good Scotch in our hands sharing stories about how our careers evolved. And lo and behold, we discovered that in many ways our career paths had aligned with many, I mean many, of the same experiences, values and principles that led us from then to now.
Jean-Paul Morresi is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of Autside, a retail focused creative agency in Toronto, Canada.
Over 3+ decades, Jean-Paul has worked across 5 continents, run offices in Toronto, Stockholm and Dubai, overseen a Shanghai based creative team, and led projects teams across the Americas and Europe.
An Architecture graduate of the University of Toronto, Jean-Paul’s unique background weaves marketing, merchandising, design and construction into an interdisciplinary approach where creative, strategic and executional acumen conspire, delivering customer focused, performance driven retail and brand experiences.
A regular contributor to industry publications and events, Jean-Paul currently sits on the Retail Touchpoints/design:retail Editorial Advisory Board, the Advisory Board of the retail technology company Virtual Visions, and Curriculum Advisory Committees for Humber College’s Interior Design and the Sheridan Colleges’s Visual Merchandising Programs.
Jean-Paul & the Autside team are currently collaborating on the design of projects spanning the retail spectrum, branded corporate interiors, showroom spaces and a variety of in-store digital marketing and engagement tools.
This conversation with John Paul Morresi is a little bit different than the ones I've done in the past. Having met at the SHOP Marketplace tradeshow and decided to put a mic in front of each of us and have a conversation and record it, this talk didn't have a strong thematic orientation like in many of my other discussions.
Instead, I sort of let it unfold and what I discovered was a like-minded creative professional with whom I shared many life experiences on a parallel path.
It was kind of like getting to know an old friend all over again…
ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:
LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b
Websites:
https://www.davidkepron.com (personal website)
vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645 (Blog)
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: DavidKepron
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/
NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/
Bio:
David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why’, ‘what’s now’ and ‘what’s next’. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe.
David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott’s “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels.
In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies.
As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace.
David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation’s Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.
He has held teaching positions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.
In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.
The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound.
The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.
Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.
The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound.
The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.
Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.
ABOUT VALERIE CRCIAS:
Valerie’s Profile: linkedin.com/in/valerie-corcias-218b5a13WebsitesBIO:
Husband and wife team Valerie Corcias (Argentina) and Dominique Kelly (Brasil) possess a unique southern hemisphere perspective on trends and knowledge related to international visions of culture, ideology, and technology.
Dominique has worked on architectural identity for Luxury Brands such as Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Baccarat… Valerie has worked on product design and development for many brands.
In 2000, they created the PANTONE UNIVERSE consumer brand and signed a worldwide license agreement with PANTONE for conception, distribution, and communication of the Brand.
In 2007, they established Contramundo, an incubator for sustainable projects involving women and children’s education in a Brazilian fishermen's village, generating content based on sustainable values and integrating processes which provide solutions through art and notions of equity, sharing, and exchange.
From their experience with color and commitment to creating social, technological, and human connections, they have created mycoocoon, a worldwide project to improve well-being by balancing energy through color experiences and natural elements that awaken the senses.
The emotive elements of color have been our field of expertise for more than 30 years and have become part of our DNA.
SHOW INTRO:
Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.
These dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human’s influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.
The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine.
VMSD is the publisher of VMSD magazine and brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience place makers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant.
You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.
Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience.
SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.org
In this episode I talk with Valerie Corcias Co-founder, with her husband Doninique Kelly, of mycoocoon and the BrainBo App.
Based on chromotherapy, the Mycoocoon Color-Institute combines the ancestral beliefs about color with the aid of technology and immerses its users in a color bath that supports health and wellbeing.
First though, a few thoughts on color…
* * *
When I was young, my mom put me in a painting school.
She recognized that I loved to draw and every Thursday I would run down to a small painting studio about a mile from my home and immerse myself in the world of art.
For a lot of years, I did most of my early art experiences in black and white.
It seemed like the pencil felt comfortable in my hand and I loved exploring through drawings tonal value relationships, shades and shadows and creating textures.
But most of it was in black and white.
Drawing in black and white simply seemed to be easier and I always believed that color was a greater challenge.
I found color to be complex and to be honest, somewhat scary. I was often concerned that in mixing colors I would make mud rather than magic.
It wasn't until I got to architecture school and taking watercolor courses with a deeply influential person in my art life path - Jerry Tondino - that I began to understand color.
It seemed like a natural progression to understand light first and then move to color and color theory and how color could be leveraged to increase the impact and expressiveness of artwork.
Even now, with the paintings that I do all of my reference photos are in black and white. The color that I choose is of my own making.
I guess you could say I've become more comfortable with understanding how to use color.
That said, I think that my experiments are in still trying to understand colors – primaries and complementary colors - first or second or third order complementarities to the basic color hues that I'm trying to use in paintings.
I've also come to understand that I tend to gravitate towards a certain range of colors. Mostly in the fuchsias and purples and dark blues.
You don't often see many of my paintings in green for example. For some reason green just doesn't seem to go in my body well, even though I know that the color green has a relationship to emotions and well-being that are fundamental because we came from swinging through forests and living for much longer in a verdant green jungle than a concrete one.
When I'm using deep blues, purples and fuchsias I have a sense of calm. I'm not really sure why that exactly why that is but I appreciate that it is part of my color personality profile.
This doesn't necessarily mean that my entire clothing wardrobe for example is fuchsias and purples although I must admit those colors do pop up in patterns. There was a period of time where I was focused on buying shirts from designers like Robert Graham whose color and pattern were I believed extraordinary. I
'm also aware that many of the people in my industry, designers, architects and other creatives tend to wear black a lot.
I'm not sure where it is that black actually emerged as the uniform for creatives because it seems to be a color that is dead.
Or maybe it's the sum of a pigments combined together creating black. So, you could consider black as the sum of all color pigments as being ‘color inclusive.’
I know that color in light and color in pigments are different things but they still both are wavelengths.
Color pigments that we perceive in the world around us are wavelengths that are not absorbed by the molecules of whatever it is we are looking at and they are reflected back to us and then perceived as color.
Then there is color as light.
When you combine colored light you dont perceive them as black like those that are used in pigments but combined together to create white light.
Understanding the physics of light and color have been influential in terms of how I understand painting and reflected colors and how the colors of one object influence the surrounding objects.
A pink object in a white room necessarily makes part of that room pink, or some version of pink, as the wavelengths are reflected from the object and also influences its surroundings.
This brings me to the idea that color in our surroundings has a direct effect on how we feel.
If I happen to love fuchsia, purples and dark blues surrounding myself with these colors may also effect my emotional state.
It's often said that red for example stimulates love, hunger or aggression or it is a color that induces a sense of fear…
whereas oranges induces a sense of energy or happiness and vitality…
yellow also is a happy color with a sense of hope…
it also happens to be the color in the visual spectrum that is most easily perceived by the human eye. Think about it next time you're at a sporting event and look through the audience you'll likely be able to see the guy wearing a yellow shirt much more quickly than someone who might be wearing something like a deep purple or blue…
green has a sense of new beginnings or a sense of abundance and obviously nature…
and blue induces a sense of calm and perhaps often related to the idea of sadness…
hence the Blues as a music genre are connected to the lament of painful life circumstances as expressed through music…
purple has been related to creativity and royalty and creating the pigment purple was originally made from crushing seashells. It was so expensive to produce that it was often only available to aristocracies and royalty.
black connotes a sense of mystery to me and maybe even evil ..I was often not particularly fond and felt afraid of the dark…
but strangely, at the other end of the spectrum, it has a sense of elegance…
black tie events…
and not surprisingly, we often say that it's a gray and moody day when overcast and raining.
All of this leads to the idea that we have over time attributed certain values and emotions to different colors.
Therefore, it's not surprising that during the early goings of the COVID pandemic people were rushing out to renovate their homes, since they were spending more time in them, and changing the colors of their interiors some to be more uplifting by using brighter colors or variations on white…
there are hundreds of variations on white.
So this is where discussion of my guest on this episode comes in.
Valerie Corcias and her husband Dominic Kelly worked in the color industry for years with companies like Pantone and they developed a deep understanding about color and light and how these things affected our mood.
In recent years they've created a company called mycoocoon - spelled all in one word as my.. double C…double o …n and something called the Brainbo app.
Mycoocoon, has developed a color immersion relaxation pod, and has launched the Color-Institute App that features a simple test to determine a user’s personal color profile, which will then help them select a light immersion session to balance their energy needs.
The app can be used as a standalone application for color therapy combined with music, or as a remote control for the relaxation pod or Mycoocoon’s color walls.
Valerie Cocias explains in our talk that “…based on chromotherapy, the Mycoocoon Color-Institute combines the ancestral beliefs about color with the aid of technology.”
Ancestral beliefs about color combined with modern tech.
Mycoocoon taps into something that is deeply embedded in our ancestry.
You might even say that color is an emotion are just in our DNA.
For hundreds of thousands of years our visual system has been attuned to the world around us and all of its color. And those colors, as I mentioned, have come to represent certain emotional feelings.
It may be obvious that red for example would induce a sense of fear or anger because of say ancestral wars or the fact that a member of your ancient hominid tribe would have been carried away, bleeding, by a Saber toothed tiger.
And so these things are deeply embedded in us.
Mycoocoon’s product line includes the pods, which give clients a ‘light bath’ under biocompatible lamps.
And it turns out that the lamps are critically important in creating a visual environment where the mind the body is bathed in color.
One of the challenges with using modern technologies like LED lighting systems is that there is a flicker to the lamp we don't see. It’s happening so quickly that it blends into what we perceive as a as a persistent glow of a particular color from a lamp.
But if you use your cell phone and try to take a video of LED lights you will quickly see lights flickering. It also turns out that that flicker is disruptive in our brain and you can imagine why certain colored lamps in the LED technology world have a direct effect on compounding things like fatigue in workplaces and other potential emotional effects.
The lamps in the mycoocoon pod immerse the whole body in key colours, along with sounds to enhance the experience and can be used for meditation sessions.
The company also supplies Color Immersion Walls, which can be implemented in various room configurations and used with yoga, reflexology, or treatments for jet-lag, or can be installed in a relaxation room.
This idea of using color in rooms becomes an aha moment in my discussion with Valerie as I consider the implications of setting up office spaces and or meeting rooms with clients bathed in certain colors.
It could very well be that the color experience of a room prior to a meeting could set the meeting off on a good or bad foot. So next time you're thinking about having a meeting or maybe having to discuss a difficult issue with a client, friend or other significant relationship imagine what it would be like to be in a room where the color experience of that place is directly affecting our mind body state creating us more calm or enthusiastic and energetic and more willing to take risks and take on challenges.
The implications here are super important because we can begin to understand color as a mediator or activator of certain emotional states. And that has a direct effect on how we consider using color in the built environment.
One other consideration here would also be the proliferation of digital screens in our environments and the use of immersive digital experiences at an urban scale. Think about the color influence of standing in the middle of Times Square in New York and how that might elevate your sense of agitation or perhaps the fact that all of that visual stimulation and you were being blasted by color wavelengths from all angles also increases your sense of exhaustion.
Mycoocoon recently launched its products in Asia in partnership with VDL Cosmetics so consumers can select their makeup based on their colour moods after taking the Mycoocoon test and immerse themselves in the colour pods.
Another way to consider color would be to understand what people's color personality profile would be.
Meaning, I happen to like fuchsia purples and dark blues that says something about my personality. Now imagine you're also in a corporate meeting of some sort and or you have a company that has multiple brands. Often these different segments of businesses become siloed and also develop in a sense their own personalities.
It would be interesting to get members of different brands owned by the same parent company in workshops and begin to understand that even though they're working within different segments of the business their color personality profile actually makes them more connected to each other than they may think.
These are the sort of things that Valerie Corcias and mycoocoon actually do.
They speak at international conferences, run workshops for hotels and work with international brands to begin to teach people about the importance and influence of color has on our emotions and our sense of well being.
ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:
LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b
Websites:
https://www.davidkepron.com (personal website)
vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645 (Blog)
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: DavidKepron
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/
NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/
Bio:
David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why’, ‘what’s now’ and ‘what’s next’. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe.
David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott’s “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels.
In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies.
As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace.
David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation’s Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.
He has held teaching positions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.
In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.
The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound.
The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.
Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.
ABOUT KEN NISCH:
Ken’s LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/ken-nisch-a1922325BIO:
No one knows retail better than Ken. His resume includes brands big and small, local and global – with an award list to match. His consumer knowledge and entrepreneurial insights have been an integral part of the conceptual development and strategic image positioning for many retail operators, manufacturers and brand marketers in multiple verticals for more than 40 years.
Ken has been named a “Retail Luminary” and “Retail Influencer” by design:retail Magazine and currently serves on their Editorial Board. He was inducted into the Retail Design Institute Legion of Honor, recognizing his outstanding career achievement in the field of retail store design and also presented with the Asia Retail Leadership Award at the Asia Retail Congress in Mumbai, India.
Clients
Allen Edmonds, Blue Nile, Disney, El Palacio de Hierro, Five Below, Hershey’s, H&M, Mayo Clinic, Museum of Arts and Design, Paradies Lagardère, Signet, Sleep Number, Sundance, The North Face, Warner Bros., Whole Foods Market
Recognition
“Retail Luminary” and “Retail Influencer” by design:retail Magazine
Editorial Board for design:retail Magazine
Inducted into the Retail Design Institute Legion of Honor, recognizing his outstanding career achievement in the field of retail store design.
Asia Retail Leadership Award – Honored at the Asia Retail Congress in Mumbai, India.
SHOW INTRO:
Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.
These dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human’s influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.
The NXTLVL Experience Design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine.
VMSD is the publisher of VMSD magazine and brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience place makers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant.
You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.
Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience.
SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.org
In this episode I talk with Ken Nisch Chairman of JGA an internationally recognized design firm. Ken recently has also co-authored with Vilma barr a new book titled Sustainability for Retail: How Retail Leaders Create Environmental, Social, & Cultural Innovations.
It is a great global overview of retailers and brands who are leading the way on how sustainable deign practice will shape retail places in the new future.
Before we get into the talk with Ken a few thoughts on sustainability and retail place making.
***********
Over the past couple of seasons of the show I have had a handful of guests who have focused our discussion on sustainability –
the internationally acclaimed designer Bruce Mau, of Massive Change Network where we talked about his life and approaches to design and a number of the key ideas from his book “Massive Change”
Denise Naguib of Marriott International,
Christian Davies of Bergmeyer,
Martin Kingdon of Popai and how the sustainability issue is being addressed in the UK and Ireland,
architect Yasmine Mahmoudieh whose eco-centric mindset shapes her design approach with sustainable materials like mycelium
and a few seasons ago, Caspar Schols who created Cabin ANNA a truly innovative house design that literally transforms, opening up to the elements placing its inhabitants under the stars, should they want to be, while they sleep.
The conversations have covered a lot of ground ranging from talking about the impact of packaging covering the products we buy every time we visit a store. It doesn’t really matter what type, could be clothing, hardware or grocery, packaging figures prominently in all of them…
…to the footprint of a global hospitality behemoth with over 8000 hotels most of whom provide hotel guests with a couple bottles of water when they arrive – A nice amenity with a potentially huge ecological impact since, despite how much we may believe in recycling a lot of those bottles still end up in a landfill.
This by the way, is not simply a Marriott hotels issue, it applies to the hotel industry as a whole.
We’ve discussed the impact of the building industry at large with respect to its contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere and therefore th e global climate crisis. I
think that most of us who are connected to the building industry either as architects and designers, manufacturers, general contractors, installers and other suppliers to the built environment, are increasingly aware of the implications of putting millions of square feet of new buildings on good ‘ole ‘terra firma.’
It is estimated that about 40% of CO2 emissions are related, in some way, to the building construction industry.
When we think about being a good steward of this planet that we have been gifted, is not just about doing ‘less bad.’ It’s about a fundamental shift in the way we see ourselves in relation to this little blue dot.
I think it’s about appreciating that the planet has been here a long, long, time before we ever walked it and it will be here a long time after we are gone.
The irony is that when humankind leaves mother earth, as I suspect we will, evolving into an interplanetary species, she will be just fine without us. I don’t think she will pine like a parent after dropping her young adult off at college and eagerly await their return at the holidays.
There are some who say that it is already too late; that the current efforts to stem the effects of pumping toxins into the air and seas leading to climate change and the potential for an ecological catastrophe, are not going to reverse what is already well on its way.
But that would be to live without hope and so, there are those who hold to the idea that if we created this state of affairs, we can uncreate it.
That we have designed our way here and we can therefore design our way out.
And in that, I find the encouragement to continue on believing that design, while not the only contributing factor in solving the climate issue, is a fundamental piece in the solution.
Let’s assume we too will be here for a long, long time and that the cynical view of us leaving scorched earth behind as we rocket off to evolve into an inter planetary species, perhaps to do it again elsewhere, will not come to pass.
Suppose what is now a rumbling becomes a global cacophony of ‘hell no,’ we learn, and we collectively embrace the idea that our current path is unsustainable.
To get there, everyday people, governments, associations, brands and retailers need to do more and talk about what they are doing more. Policy and practice at the level of governing a nation, a business or your family needs to put the discussion at the head of the spear and keep it there.
Sustainability has become a defining feature of why a consumer will or will not align him or her self with a brand.
How the core ideological ideas around ESG and DEI that underpin a brand come to life in an experience place are critical determinants of engagement.
The principles on which a company stands related to sustainability can make or break the connection between a brand or retailer and a consumer. It’s not just what they say but what they do that makes a difference.
This is a two-way ‘putting your money where your mouth is.’
Businesses that invest in sustainability initiatives enhance the likelihood of consumers investing in them.
Emerging consumers want to know that companies align with their individual points of view on these issues for brand adoption to happen.
Consumes want to know if the brand promotes ideas, policies and practices that match theirpersonal positions rather than, as a consumer, they are attaching themselves to a brand to accrue a sense of identity or belonging to the brand’s platform.
This may seem like a subtle shift, but consumers show up already certain about their mindset on issues of sustainability and they quickly determine whether or not the brand is on their team – not the other way around.
And so, when you read a book like “Sustainability for Retail: How Retail Leaders Create Environmental, Social, & Cultural Innovations” by this episode’s guest Ken Nisch, you get an overview of how the sustainability issue is being highlighted by standouts in the retail industry around the world.
Ken and his co-author Vilma Barr provide a well-rounded summary of retail brands and companies who are ‘doing the right thing.’
Use to be that many of them didn’t wear their efforts on their sleave, they just planted trees or sustainably sourced materials or engaged in fare trade practices because they believed it was, well… the right thing to do. Seemed obvious to them.
As they pursued the sustainable path, not beating their chest, in self-congratulations, their efforts were certainly having positive impact on the planet but maybe not in heightening awareness and the urgency to act now.
Well… a lot of that has changed in recent years and customers want to know where brands stand on the issues. As awareness grows, change gets a foot hold and conscious awareness of the issues becomes increasing woven into how retailing is done.
When someone like Ken Nisch canvases the retail world to promote companies who are addressing the sustainability issue, he does it from a place of knowing who’s who.
His resume includes brands big and small, local and global – with an award list to match. His consumer knowledge and entrepreneurial insights have been an integral part of the conceptual development and strategic image positioning for many retail operators, manufacturers and brand marketers in multiple verticals for more than 40 years.
Ken has been named a “Retail Luminary” and “Retail Influencer” by design:retail Magazine and currently serves on their Editorial Board.
He was inducted into the Retail Design Institute’s Legion of Honor, recognizing his outstanding career achievement in the field of retail store design.
He was also presented with the Asia Retail Leadership Award at the Asia Retail Congress in Mumbai, India.
Ken Nisch has worked with Disney, Hershey’s, H&M, Mayo Clinic, Sleep Number, Sundance, The North Face, Warner Bros., Whole Foods Market and a host of other great brands.
In this discussion, Ken Nisch and I unpack a number of efforts being done on the sustainability front by companies in the retail industry.
There are certainly more than those I pull from Ken’s book for us to talk about.
What “Sustainability for Retail…”clearly establishes is the idea that the ground swell of initiatives that retailers and brands are taking on will likely grow changing the retail landscape.
Talking about these issues increases awareness.
The outgrowth of these concepts being at the forefront of our thinking as we create retail stores, is that places of customer engagement remain relevant as crucibles for more than simply the exchange of goods and services.
They are places where ideas and commerce are connected.
Stores are much more than a place to get something at a good price. They can be places where ideas that matter, that concern us all, come to life.
ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:
LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b
Websites:
https://www.davidkepron.com (personal website)
vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645 (Blog)
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: DavidKepron
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/
NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/
Bio:
David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why’, ‘what’s now’ and ‘what’s next’. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe.
David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott’s “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels.
In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies.
As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace.
David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation’s Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.
He has held teaching positions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.
In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.
The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound.
The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.
Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.
ABOUT TASHA GOLDEN, PhD:
Tasha’s Profile: linkedin.com/in/tashagolden
BIO:
Tasha Golden, PhD is Director of Research at the International Arts+Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University, and a national leader and consultant in arts + public health. Holding a PhD in Public Health Sciences, Tasha Golden has published extensively on the impacts of the arts, music, aesthetics, and social norms on health and well-being. She has served as an advisor on several nati onal and international health initiatives, is adjunct faculty for the University of Florida’s Center for Arts in Medicine, and recently led the pilot evaluation of CultureRx in Massachusetts: the first arts-on-prescription in the U.S.
Golden is also a career artist and entrepreneur. As singer-songwriter for the critically acclaimed band Ellery, she toured full-time in the US and abroad, and her songs appear in feature films and TV dramas (ABC, SHOWTIME, FOX, NETFLIX, etc). She is a published poet (Humanist Press) and founder of Project Uncaged: an arts-based health intervention for incarcerated teen women that amplifies their voices in justice reform.
Tasha’s diverse background drives her success as an international speaker and thought leader. She gives talks and facilitates workshops for artists, businesses, researchers, practitioners, and more—helping them enhance and reimagine their work. As a consultant, she helps leaders and organizations draw on the science of arts and health to further their goals.
This is one of those conversations that literally just scratches the surface of what is possible when considering how the arts influences our lives. It is an important conversation about why we need to put art back into our daily routines as a prescription to wellbeing.
SHOW INTRO:
Welcome to episode 61 of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.
These dynamic dialogues based on our acronym DATA - design, architecture, technology, and the arts crosses over disciplines but maintains a common thread of people who are passionate about the world we live in and human’s influence on it, the ways we craft the built environment to maximize human experience, increasing our understanding of human behavior and searching for the New Possible.
As usual, thanks go to VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media.
VMSD is the publisher of VMSD magazine and brings us, in the brand experience world, the International Retail Design Conference. The IRDC is one of the best retail design conferences that there is bringing together the world of retailers, brands and experience place makers every year for two days of engaging conversations and pushing the discourse forward on what makes retailing relevant.
You will find the archive of the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast on VMSD.com.
Thanks also goes to Shop Association the only global retail trade association dedicated to elevating the in-store experience.
SHOP Association represents companies and affiliates from 25 countries and brings value to their members through research, networking, education, events and awards. Check then out on SHOPAssociation.org
In a minute, we’ll dig into my discussion with Tasha Golden - Director of Research at the International Arts+Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University.
But first a few thoughts to set up our talk…
****************
Art and making is part of our human experience – it is part of who we are as a species.
I have had this feeling for a number of years, and probably expressed it on this podcast a number of times, that art and making are intrinsic to all of us.
There's something unique about the making of things that humans do that is different than other living creatures on the planet. Sure, some of the animals in our world make things too. Birds make nests and the great apes do as well, for some apes, new ones every night as I understand it.
But the defining feature between humans and the other creatures making things on the planet is that we make things that can make other things.
We are Homo Sapiens – “Man The Thinker” but we are also “Homo Faber” or Man The Maker. I think we're equally “Homo Ludens” – “Man The Player.”
I'm sure that there's some deep connection between the idea of the making of things and play that are also deeply connected in defining who we are and how we come to understand ourselves and navigate the world.
When I am deeply connected to the making of things, specifically when listening to music and painting, I am very aware of the fact that I am in a Flow state that feels like being deeply involved in play. Time disappears, dissipates… its otherworldly.
I think that making, whether objects, stories, music or other manifestations of our creative minds is part of who we all are. But I also think we have pushed it aside getting up in our rational heads believing that we could think our way through our lives rather than feeling, or maybe even creating our way through them.
Sir Ken Robinson had said something like ‘we are all born creative, and we have it educated out of us.’ That’s a tragedy with huge implications to our world when I think we really need super creative solutions to life’s pressing challenges.
It seems to me that creativity was a necessary skill to be developed as part of our evolutionary history. Being creative, a good problem solver, was an insurance policy for survival. This is also true of our ability to engage in empathic relationships in collaborative communities. When working together, we were much better able to survive. Millenia ago, being cast out of the group and having to go at on your own in the wild might have significantly reduced your chances of survival.
And so, making and creating close knit social communities and problem solving have been with us from time immemorial.
But beyond making tools, creating shelters and being creative in these ways so as to survive in an unpredictable and sometime brutal world, the arts, at least we call them now evolved as a way for us to express ourselves, our ideological orientations, our understanding of the world.
In some ways they were an attempt to understand and answer some of the existential questions of what it meant to be human and how we fit into the cosmological scheme of things.
The arts in its many forms; sculpture, dance, song, music, and later literature, brought communities together in shared understanding of the meaning of being individuals as well as members of a larger whole. The arts were a vehicle for the expression of ideas, the asking of questions and searching for answers.
In many ways the arts helped to express the ineffable.
The arts aligned with our penchant for using narratives to navigate through the world.
Stories put things into place, they described the why and how of things. Cognitive scientist Roger Schank has said “Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they’re ideally set up to understand stories.”
And many of the stories we tell are in the form of the arts. From the paintings on the walls of caves in Lascaux France 1700 years ago, to the contemporary dance of Martha Graham, to best-selling books (you pick the author) or immersive digital experiences of media artists like Refik Anadol, the arts have been, and continue to be, part of our lives.
Without the arts, life would be bereft of meaning.
I have often heard people say I can't draw or I've got no rhythm and can't dance or I can't hold a tune. These self-judgmental comments go completely contrary to what we know from science about the value of engaging in art or even doing simple things like humming your favorite tune and the positive effects it has on your mind-body state.
I find myself humming or singing to myself all the time – Christmas carols in the summer, old 70’s rock classics any day, doesn’t matter. Humming, an ancient artform, plays a key role in activating the parasympathetic nervous system – also known as your ‘rest and digest state’.
Because your vagus nerve, one of your neural superhighways connecting your brain to major organs in the rest of your body, runs through your larynx and pharynx in your throat, the vibrations that humming stimulates your vagus nerve and creates what's known as “vagal tone.”
Humming can also improve heart rate variability which is an important metric that shows how well you can recover from experiences of stress. So, when you hum you induce something called “parasympathetic dominance” which means that you move from a fight or flight state into one of increased relaxation.
The idea here is that bringing the arts into our lives even in the simplest of ways like humming, reconnects us to ourselves and helps support mind body health, an overall sense of well-being.
More and more research is pointing to the fact that engaging in the arts and having a sense of well-being can be directly connected.
In fact the whole emerging field in cognitive science called neuroaesthetics is geared towards the understanding of how the arts, in all of their incarnations, influences how we feel - not just when listening to a piece of music or staring at a painting on a wall in a museum - but how the overall built environment potentially influences our emotional state which may have a direct effect on our body systems potentially leading to disease.
So, there is a significant problem at hand when arts funding is slashed from school curricula thinking that it is less important than getting our school aged children ready to compete on the world stage by simply focusing on STEM based curricula only. Fully integrating the arts into the school, and even our workdays, increases learning and company performance.
As a personal example, I know I've described this in a number of the podcast episodes, and at the risk of being repetitive I'll do so now…
…during the pandemic between 2020 and 2022 and I poured myself into painting, writing and doing this podcast all of which would qualify as the arts.
I firmly believe that if it weren't for me finding a Flow state, a pseudo meditative experience, through painting and listening to music while doing it , that my experience of the pandemic may have been drastically different.
I think that in many ways, it might have actually been quite negative and that I might have been a very difficult person to live with.
Instead, art gave me a sense of agency to be able to navigate the ambiguity of an uncertain future. Engaging in the arts, if even on a small plain of my physical world in the form of a 36 by 48-inch canvas, gave me a certain sense of control.
I shifted the negative energy of anxiety and fear of the unknown into creativity in the form of a pandemic production of 25 canvases. I was directly exposed to the value and impact of how the arts could be harnessed to create a profound sense of well-being.
And this brings me to my guest Tasha Golden.
Tasha Golden, PhD is Director of Research at the International Arts+Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University, and a national leader and consultant in arts + public health. Holding a PhD in Public Health Sciences, Tasha Golden has published extensively on the impacts of the arts, music, aesthetics, and social norms on health and well-being. She has served as an advisor on several nati onal and international health initiatives, is adjunct faculty for the University of Florida’s Center for Arts in Medicine, and recently led the pilot evaluation of CultureRx in Massachusetts: the first arts-on-prescription in the U.S.
Golden is also a career artist and entrepreneur. As singer-songwriter for the critically acclaimed band Ellery, she toured full-time in the US and abroad, and her songs appear in feature films and TV dramas (ABC, SHOWTIME, FOX, NETFLIX, etc). She is a published poet (Humanist Press) and founder of Project Uncaged: an arts-based health intervention for incarcerated teen women that amplifies their voices in justice reform.
Tasha’s diverse background drives her success as an international speaker and thought leader. She gives talks and facilitates workshops for artists, businesses, researchers, practitioners, and more—helping them enhance and reimagine their work. As a consultant, she helps leaders and organizations draw on the science of arts and health to further their goals.
This is one of those conversations that literally just scratches the surface of what is possible when considering how the arts influences our lives. It is an important conversation about why we need to put art back into our daily routines as a prescription to wellbeing.
ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:
LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b
Websites:
https://www.davidkepron.com (personal website)
vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645 (Blog)
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: DavidKepron
Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/
NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/
Bio:
David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why’, ‘what’s now’ and ‘what’s next’. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe.
David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott’s “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels.
In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies.
As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace.
David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation’s Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.
He has held teaching positions at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.
In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.
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The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound.
The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.
Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.
The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound.
The content of this podcast is copywrite to David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design. Any publication or rebroadcast of the content is prohibited without the expressed written consent of David Kepron and NXTLVL Experience Design.
Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “Dialogues on DATA: Design Architecture Technology and the Arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too.
The podcast currently has 76 episodes available.