My name is Jerry Foster. I’m an industrial designer who specializes in merchandising design and product development. Have a look around. If you need creative help on a project, I’d be delighted to hear from you.
A few years ago, we partnered with a prominent agency to craft a modular merchandising display for a leading cannabis brand. They wanted affordable, eye-catching displays that perfectly mirrored their colorful, mystical identity. Our challenge? Infuse sustainability seamlessly into the design for an eco-friendly appeal.
I'm not familiar with what goes on in clubs these days, but this project educated me about the fact that it is now apparently commonplace for the waitstaff to parade bottles of booze around the clubs like servants carrying their exalted king through the streets of an ancient city, except with accompaniment of deafening music and LED lighting. Hey, who am I to judge? In any event, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to design the modern late-stage capitalist version of the ancient royal sedan chair and incorporate a blinding amount of lighting so that modern club goers could have their retinas damaged in equal measure to their ears and livers. Ah, youth is wasted on the young. What do you think?
In 2021, I was tasked with crafting a cutting-edge modular display system for a top-tier tools and accessories manufacturer. Our goal was to redefine the way they showcased their extensive product lineup.
The challenge was to seamlessly blend security, flexibility, cost-efficiency, and visual allure into a singular, impactful display solution. After familiarizing myself with the product line and the desired requirements, I proposed a solution consisting of a small number of components, both functional and decorative, which would make it quick and easy to build an eye-catching and efficient merchandising display for a wide range of in-store situations. The client loved it, leading us to further refine functionality and reduce costs. What do you think?
In 2020, we revolutionized retail for a top cannabis brand, crafting a bespoke toolkit that elevated their in-store game. One highlight? A stunning floor display showcasing their premium line of cannabis oils. Tired of generic off-the-shelf displays, our client wanted a custom touch to match their vibrant brand. Thrilled to dive into the challenge, we brought their dynamic brand identity to life in these innovative display concepts. Explore a sneak peek of the groundbreaking designs below!
This brand of wine has the kind of identity that a designer can really sink their teeth into. Bold colors, strong patterns, and distinctive shapes gave us a lot to work with, so we really ran with it. We collaborated with the client’s own design team a lot on this project, interpreting some of their rough sketches into 3D, while providing ample creative input and additional ideas of our own to really fill out their presentation. The results were well-received.
What a fun brand! Think prohibition, gangsters, and speakeasies. A lot of creative possibilities in this one. The client really wanted to work in an old car somehow without breaking the bank, so we worked in a wire outline and some lasercut silhouettes. A third idea explored a copper-look still with integrated shelving. There’s nothing like a well-defined branding theme to get the creative juices flowing. The outline car was my favorite. What’s yours?
I thought it was a good time for a summer post, and what signifies summer better than Tiki Torches? Back in 2013, a customer asked to come up with some eye-catching temporary pallet displays featuring Tiki Torches and their associated products. We were limited to printed corrugate for the structure, and in such cases it’s the graphics and die-cutting that brings these displays to life. Which one do you like best?
Doors tend to be very large and heavy objects, so as a product they pose an enormous challenge for display designers. How do you show off as many doors as possible in as small a space as possible? How do you make it flexible/expandable to fit properly in different stores? How do you make it strong and stable?
Back in 2005 we were asked to take the flat art from an international ad campaign and transform it into some large in-store displays that would work in both small and large formats. It can be challenging to make two-dimensional art and photography work well in three dimensions, especially when you must also consider the structural requirements, cost, and the potential limitations of printing and die-cutting on a large scale. When it all comes together, though, the effort required can be fun and rewarding.
This client was looking for a floor display to showcase shoes. They needed it to be relatively inexpensive to produce, but also flexible in a way that allowed for a variable number of shoe samples to be displayed. Our solutions utilized modular shelving with a range of attachment methods, as well as interchangeable graphic panels so they could be updated for different product lines in the future. Powder coated metal and laminated MDF structure made them cheap to produce and KD construction kept shipping costs low. What do you think?
Sometimes a client’s parameters are quite broad and they just want a bunch of ideas as quickly as possible to inspire innovation. The project below is a good example. We were asked to explore the integration of eye-catching new technology and lighting into battery displays on the store endcap, floor, and shelf. After a bit of research, we did a variety of quick color sketches showing how they might look with holographic displays, projectors, LED lighting, transparent LCD display boxes, touchscreens, plasma tubes, and even magnetic levitation. Fun stuff!
When providing creative options, it’s best to make each one as different as possible from the next. This isn’t always easy when you have to stick to tight parameters in a brief. On the other hand, working with no parameters at all can be overwhelming. For a designer, something in the middle is where the magic happens. Of the two concepts below, the client ultimately chose the first one for its playfulness and visual impact. The second concept was much more space efficient, but in this case visual impact was judged more important than efficiency.
We created these display concepts for a popular sparkling wine brand back in 2010. They needed a permanent floor display and an accompanying solution to elevate their mass displays for grocery. We incorporated screened and frosted acrylic, black and gold powder coating, and glossy gold elements to catch the light and provide the sparkle. What do you think?
Back in 2010, we were asked to design permanent endcap displays for a major manufacturer of scented products for the home. After several rounds of sketches followed by extended refinements in 3D, we arrived at the solutions depicted below. Translucent acrylic touches, plenty of color, and injection molded components made the displays unique and eye-catching while providing high product density for maximum sell-through.
It’s that time of year again, when designers the world over try to find new and exciting ways to attach a Christmas theme to every product under the…snow. This popular brand of beer is the perfect example. A stack of beer cases is not exciting by itself (unless you have a problem), so let’s dress it up with some splashy graphics so that passing consumers will be so overwhelmed by the visually cozy Christmas feeling that they simple have to take it home with them as the perfect accompaniment to the cozy Christmas pizza rolls they picked up in the decked out halls of the freezer section. Cheers!
A major manufacturer of personal audio products needed a flexible counter display which would showcase their bluetooth speakers and headphones in big box stores. We integrated lighting, backlit graphics and/or interactive LCD information, and proposed a system which consisted of a base unit with swappable modules which would enable long-term flexibility and reduce cost.
We designed this multi-brand mass wine display for a client back in 2008 to help drive sales during the holiday shopping season. The purpose was to accommodate a multitude of brands, convey the warm and welcoming feeling of Thanksgiving, and have interchangeable graphic areas for optimum flexibility. We chose to go with an arbor theme, incorporating wood lattice, powder coated tubing with a copper finish, and various decorative elements consistent with the theme. Happy Thanksgiving!
Designing a display that organizes hundreds of pens and encourages the consumer to try and buy is no simple feat. For this challenge, we did a few rounds of sketches first to get a feel for how we might break up the available space in an interesting way before finally deciding on a direction. The 3D modeling phase allowed us to dig deeper into determining the optimal layout so that capacity targets could be achieved without compromising the desired look. Structure consisted of laminated MDF panels, vacuum-formed pockets, die-cut styrene graphic panels, and a large central vacuum-formed consumer information panel.
Back in 2007, we were happy to provide display concepts for a popular spirits brand. Since the unit would be placed behind the bar (often referred to in the industry as a “back bar display”), we were free to incorporate lighting to make it more eye-catching. It was a colorful brand, so we decided to uplight the bottles on pedestals with LED lighting projected through the brand’s native Central American iconography.
For the concepts below, we explored a colorful structure of tubing and wire inspired by this brand’s typography featuring touches of acrylic and large graphic panels to tell the story. The first concept made it to production and was successfully rolled out nationwide.
