NXTLVL Experience Design

• EP.77 UNCOVERING BUILDINGS’ STORIES THROUGH A WALK WITH A SKETCHBOOK with Charles Leon, Author, Illustrator, Publisher of Local London Sketch Journal

  ABOUT CHARLES LEON:CHARLES' LINKEDIN PAGE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chleon/COMPANY WEBSITE: charlesleon.uk CHARLES' BIO:Writer and Illustrator of Sketch Journals, including The Kew Sketch Journal. International Speaker and Trainer on the Creative Process and how Applied Innovation actually works. With more than 30 years experience in design, and an extensive knowledge of neuroscience and the working of the creative mind, I bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to helping Organisations and Individuals overcome Innovation Stagnation and achieve Creative Breakthrough.SHOW INTRO:Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.EPISODE 77… and my conversation with Charles Leon. On the podacast our 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.    he 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 On this episode I connect with Charles Leon who has 30 years experience in design, and an extensive knowledge of neuroscience and the working of the creative mind.We’ll get to all of that in a moment but first though, a few thoughts…                 *                                  *                                  *When I was nine years old my mom put me in a after school art program in a small little studio a few minutes walk from my school. Every Thursday afternoon, after my regular school classes were done, I would walk down the street, sit in an art studio and learn how to paint in oils. For the next 10 years this was a welcome change in my daily routine that became in some sense a safe place. A place where all the world's troubles or the typical challenges I was having as a teenager would disappear and I would spend a couple of hours focused on painting. My mom had recognized early on that I was pretty handy with a pencil and very interested in creative expression. She did her very best to make sure that I was continually engaged in creative processes whether it was doing Ukrainian Easter eggs or sketching and drawing or baking creative Christmas cookies.She was always there pushing the go button on creativity. As it turns out, she was actually a pretty good artist herself and later in her life she began doing decorative painting which she became exceptionally adept at and the house was full of wonderful pieces of her craftsmanship.My interest in art followed me through the first few years of high school and finally landing in a place where it was just time to decide where I was going to university and to which program I would go.My mom, recognized that I was firmly sitting on either side of the creative and scientific fence, 1 foot firmly in both worlds, and she suggested architecture since it seemed to combine both of my interests.While I was studying to be an architect I took every single drawing and painting course that I could possibly take, whether they were weekly freehand drawing studios or evening classes or sketching schools.These courses during my university years were a safe place there I had more confidence than in doing pretty much anything else.But it really wasn't until those years in university under the tutelage of a great art teacher Gerry Tondino that I really began to understand drawing and painting.It wasn't so much that I was learning technical aspects of drawing or painting but that I was more learning how to see rather than simply look at things.Gerry would say, ‘once you learn to see and draw what you actually se, rather than what ou think you see, the drawing takes care of itself.’I had deep respect for Gerry Tondino and I think I really finally learned how to deeply appreciate the world around me to see the color, texture and value relationships. To understand how objects exist within a context and it wasn't specifically the thing you   looking at but everything around it that helped to define its edge.In college I would continue to take afterschool watercolor courses thinking that it was more convenient than painting in oils since there was a technical challenge of oil painting taking much longer to dry.There was something about the immediacy of watercolor that I liked. You had to think fast and plan. Watercolor was the process of painting in the shade and shadows leaving the white of the paper as the light and highlights. In oils, or now acrylic which I use almost exclusively, you are starting from the dark tones and building in layers to bring out the light.In watercolor there was equally some unpredictability and a learned skill of being able to get certain effects like running a clean wash of graduated blue for a sky over a background or how some pigments we opaque and others transparent, or how colors would interact with each other as water spread across the paper.I was taking workshops once and the teacher said to me “well it's clear you can draw and you've got, you know, a good hand, but I guess the question really is what do you want to say with the work that you create”That was a whole different way of thinking that I'd never really spend time with prior to that moment. I painted and drew simply because it was fun.What did I want to say?...And so I began to think pretty significantly about what message I wanted to convey or rather what stories the things that I drew or painted I might want to share with other people.It was interesting when I began to study architecture and think about design of places and things that I was drawn to the same question about what the architecture meant and what stories it would hold over the years that people would use it.I was always fascinated with traveling and standing within old buildings and wondering what the people wore when they were visiting here hundreds of years ago.What would they talk about. What was the news of the day or the politics what secrets were being not told as people visited and who came and went from within a building’s walls.As I moved along my career, thinking about the stories that buildings would hold, it's perhaps not surprising that I somehow serendipitously end up in the world of brand experience place making,that the places that I would create for retailers would be imbued with a brand narrative and that somehow the buildings, stores or hotels would need to be able to demonstrate that subplot about who the intended user was, what their story was and how the place was a physical expression of both the person and the brand.Another experience while an architecture school was with a visiting professor and while I don't remember the exact project we were working on, I do remember her saying a phrase including the word “hodological”Hodological refers to the study of pathways or connections. It's used in fields of neuroscience sometimes thinking about the pathway and connections between neurons and synapses how signals move from one place to the other how information is shared across brain functional areas – In psychology it talks about things like paths in a person's life space and in the world of philosophy it might be considered to take in things like the interconnection between ideas a pathway between thought exercises and where one thought leads to another and what conclusions we might draw from that that decision making treein terms of geography it’s really is about actual paths, walking paths for example, connection paths between geographic locations thing like trade route pathsThe interesting thing about the word hodological is not just that all these years later I clearly recall that word but that it also seemed to me that the idea of ‘transition’ - moving from one place to the other - was very much a part of experience - that we don't stand still in buildings or public squares or on streets, we move and as we move, we naturally have a different experience at every moment.Sure, there's a gestalt experience of being in Times Square for example but every time we take a step our perspectival view of the context around us ends up changing and every moment technically speaking is also new,We're are clearly taking in some constants in sensory input but our point of view within that context ends up changing.I love this idea of walking through space and experiencing it differently with every step. Every step is a different vantage point to learn something new to see something from a different angle. In a broader sense, my fascination with the nature of change totally aligns with the idea the early -learned term – hodological.Pathways of change. Change through experience or experience through change. We may think that buildings don’t change, but they do, albeit in some cases slowly. And over their lifetime they may be experienced be multitudes each one leaving and taking away a story.Transitions are important. I might suggest that all the good stuff happens in the in betweenness of moments in time, places and things. Transitions are where learning lives.Transitions become important as experience makers. So, things like stairs become fascinating places for architectural study. It's not surprising that many of the great architects also spend time designing stairways so that transitions between floors were less about a practical matter of moving your body up to a different level, but could be seen as an opportunity to experience new things along the way. An experiential moment that requires the person’s commitment, to willingly give them self over to the idea of change. Cities have memories and our bodies have memories of cities. Buildings have memories and our bodies have memories of buildings.I have expressed before that I believe that there's very much a ‘give and make’ of experience - that we interact and share with the built environment around us and it affects us as well. We and the environments we spend time in are deeply connected and our experience lives within us, within our bodies, not just within our heads. Our experience of building leaves within us a body memory, a narrative residue of how we felt while in one place or another.If you look at buildings overtime and understand that they've been used for years, they too have held countless numbers of stories of people that used them. Where they came from. Where they would go back to. Maybe they were transitioning through for a moment. Maybe they were lost and ended up taking a wrong turn and discovering something new.Those stories of buildings are interesting because it gives a life to architecture beyond stone, steel and glass. And this is where my guest Charles Leon comes into the story. Charles is a writer and illustrator of Sketch Journals, including The Kew Sketch Journal. He is an international speaker and trainer on the Creative Process and how Applied Innovation actually works. With more than 30 years experience in design, and an extensive knowledge of neuroscience and the working of the creative mind, Charles brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to helping organizations and individuals overcome Innovation Stagnation to achieve Creative Breakthrough.During the COVID pandemic Charles had a challenge simply staying inside while all of us were held up in our homes for months. With sketchb  ook in hand, Charles saw London England as a hodological space – one to be experiences not in the scientific, objective and measurable sense of streets of a certain distance ad width, buildings of a certain height, pathways connecting purpose driven users or as seen from a 3d person sense but more in the Jean-Paul Satre sense aptly described in Satre’s essay, "Sketch for a Theory of Emotions," where his city was to be experienced in a lived-existential subjective sense. One in which he would travel daily, which sketchbook in hand, not always sure about the destination but certain that the path would be one of discovery, connection, and collecting through drawing and painting the memories of the buildings he encountered along the way.The output of these wanderings yielded 5 volumes in drawings and paintings of learnings about the buildings, their architectural details as well as the stories they revealed from within their walls…                 *                                  *                                  *ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582bWebsites:  https://www.davidkepron.com    (personal website)vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645  (Blog)Email: [email protected] 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.

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  1:43:50
• Ep. 76 BUILDING A BRIDGE BETWEEN NEUROSCIENCE AND ARCHITECTURE with Natalia Olszewska Co-founder & Chief Scientific Officer @ IMPRONTA

  ABOUT NATALIA OLSZEWSKA:NATALIA'S LINKEDIN PAGE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalia-olszewska/COMPANY WEBSITE: improntaspace.com EMAIL: [email protected]'S BIO:Natalia is a versatile professional with a foundation in medicine and neuroscience, dedicated to applying neuroscientific principles to architectural design. She adeptly connects these two realms, striving to improve our built environment by making it more human-centered and conducive to well-being. Furthermore, Natalia is an accomplished researcher and practitioner in the field of neuroscience applied to architecture, specializing in evidence-based and neuroscience-informed design. She garnered invaluable experience during her tenure at Hume, a pioneering architectural and urban planning firm founded by Itai Palti, where she led the 'Human Metrics Lab.' Natalia lent her expertise to design projects for prestigious clients such as Arup, Skanska, HKS Architects, EDGE, the Association of Children's Museums, the Harvard University Center on the Developing Child, Google, as well as numerous individual clients.Her interdisciplinary approach transcends boundaries, allowing her to craft built environments that foster individual well-being across various dimensions - social, psychological, and cognitive. Natalia's co-founding role at IMPRONTA, a consultancy specializing in health and well-being design, underscores her commitment to leveraging neuroscience and applied sciences in architecture. Since 2020, she has also been contributing to the NAAD (Neuroscience Applied to Architecture) course at IUAV University in Venice.Natalia's educational journey is characterized by a distinctive blend of backgrounds, encompassing medicine from Jagiellonian University and Tor Vergata, neuroscience from UCL, ENS, Sorbonne, and neuroscience applied to architectural design from Università IUAV.SHOW INTRO:Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.EPISODE 76… and my conversation with Natalia Olszewska. On the podacast our 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.orgOn this episode I connect with Natalia Olszewska is a versatile professional with a foundation in medicine and neuroscience, dedicated to applying neuroscientific principles to architectural design. We’ll get to all of that in a moment but first though, a few thoughts…                 *                                  *                                  *For a while now I have had a fascination with the connection between buildings and brains. While I loved psychology, and studied it before getting into architecture school, it occurred to me in the middle of the 20-teens that buildings, or the environments we design and build, have a direct effect on our psychology. There are places in which we feel good or bad or uneasy or exhilarated, or a sense of awe or agitation. There are places where we feel calm, and others that make me feel ill at ease. And all of those feelings have a body sense to them as well. Heart rises or decreases. I sweat more or less. My chest feels tight or relaxed.  Cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, and other neurochemicals and hormones are released and coursing through my body as I experience places. And many of these hormones and neurochemicals being released into my blood stream I have little control over. My brain-body reacts to environmental stimuli and biochemistry does its thing.Buildings may make me feel certain way, induce certain emotions, that we may think are just about your thoughts, brain activity, but at the core, our body too is in a relationship with conditions in the environment.We feel architecture with our bodies, we don’t just intellectually experience them in our heads. The experience of buildings, and our emotional reactions to them, is as much a ‘bottom-up process’ - our body’s sensory processes taking in stimuli from the environment - as a ‘top-down’ process – our brains processing that sensory information and making decisions about who we should behave in response to them.Our bodies and brains are in continual dialogue with the world around us. In fact, through a process of neuro plasticity, our brains are wired partly in response to our experiences. Yes we are hard wired through our millions of years of evolution to have what we consider innate responses to the environment and then there are those neuronal connections that area direct result of experiences in the here and now. As you listen to this podcast, your brain is creating new wiring shaping the neural pathways that allow for learning and behaviors.And as we repeatedly experience something, those pathways are reinforced facilitating understanding. Those pathways recognize patterns in our experiences, and they are codified so that when we experience them again our brains are not continually trying to decipher every element anew. If it weren’t for our brain’s ability of recognize patterns and anomalies in them, we would live a life of extreme ground hog day and would likely be immobilized with the processing necessary to analyze every element we encounter every moment of every day. Over millions of years some of these patterns have become deeply ingrained in our neurobiology. They are part of our brain structures that allow us to react instinctually. You might say that some of them operate ‘below the radar’ of our conscious awareness. But because they are not front row center in our awareness doesn’t mean that they don’t have an influence of our mindbody state.Colors, lighting, materials, geometries, visual patterns and spatial arrangements, to name of few, have an effect on us. We might not necessarily pay attention to these elements of our environment as we move through it, but they have an effect on us. We may not consciously feel the influence of these things, but the effects are there, nevertheless. Acute angles, loud sounds, bright fluorescent lights, certain colors and texture patterns, repetitive and banal patterns, things devoid of detail and out of scale with our human body all have an effect on our sense of well-being. University of Waterloo cognitive neuroscientist Colin Ellard has worked for more than three decades in the application of psychology and neuroscience to architectural and urban design. His work illustrates the impact of ‘boring buildings’ on how we feel and our sense health and well-being. We humans, it turns out, function and feel better in environments of physical and visual intricacy. We seek our variety and complexity, layered environments that pique our curiosity and sense of intrigue. And yet…far too many of our built environments at simply banal.Ellard says the  - “The holy grail in urban design is to produce some kind of novelty or change every few seconds,” “Otherwise, we become cognitively disengaged.”Imagine for a moment what is happening inside our mind-bodies when we live 8 + hours in a sea of detail-less white cubicles under a blanked of fluorescent lights. We might think this is an efficient office space, but we are creating brain numbing environments and at the same time asking people to reach optimal performance in the workplace. We may wish hotels guests a good night sleep on a heavenly bed and then we fill the room with light that completely counteracts the production of melatonin telling our brain that it is still daytime and to stay alert.And… we have built city block after city block of repetitive, banality. Efficient to build, very economical yes, but a boredom inducer for the brain.Now this doesn’t mean that every environment needs to be a rollercoaster for the senses nor be pristine and bucolic. In fact, some environments are better because they are well…messier. Charles Montgomery, author of Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design suggest that successful design is about “shaping emotional infrastructure.” Montgomery argues that some of the happier blocks in New York are “kind of ugly and messy.” The energy of New York can be both energizing and exhausting.It would be perhaps unfair to heap the responsibility for inhabitants’ psychological and physical well-being entirely on buildings but given that we now spend the overwhelming proportion of our days enclosed in them, it stands to reason that they have a clear effect on how we feel. For whatever it’s worth, Aarhus, Denmark is the world’s happiest city, according to the London-based Institute for Quality of Life’s 2024 Happy City Index. The Institute for the Quality of Life identified five categories it believes have the most direct impact on happiness, including citizens, governance, economy, mobility and environment.Based on these factors, Aarhus, Denmark, achieved the highest score, particularly excelling in governance and the environment. I think Copenhagen also held the title at some point I believe due to its building stock being human scale, detailed and varied engendering intrigue and visual delight.And this is where this episode’s guest Natalia Olszewska comes into the story.Natalia went to medical school but always had a fascination with architecture. When on a trip to the Venice Biennale it clicked for her that she could combine both of these interests considering that neuroscience could be linked to how buildings make us feel.The rest as they say is history…Natalia adeptly connects these two realms, striving to improve our built environment by making it more human-centered and conducive to well-being. Natalia is an accomplished researcher and practitioner in the field of neuroscience applied to architecture, specializing in evidence-based and neuroscience-informed design.Her interdisciplinary approach transcends boundaries, allowing her to craft built environments that foster individual well-being across various dimensions - social, psychological, and cognitive. Natalia’s co-founding role at IMPRONTA, a consultancy specializing in health and well-being design, underscores her commitment to leveraging neuroscience and applied sciences in architecture. Since 2020, she has also been contributing to the NAAD (Neuroscience Applied to Architecture) course at IUAV University in Venice a city that is most definitely not boring…                 *                                  *                                  *ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582bWebsites:  https://www.davidkepron.com    (personal website)vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645  (Blog)Email: [email protected] 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.

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  1:25:48
• EP. 75 TIKTOK CONTENT CREATION AND ACCESSIBLE ARCHITECTURE CRITIQUE with Louisa Whitmore TikTok Content Creator and Documentary Host

  ABOUT LOUISA WHITMORE:TIK TOK: LOUISA'S BIO:Louisa Whitmore is an architecture content creator on TikTok with over 350K followers, as well as the host of the cable television documentary series “The Nature of Design.” A former commentator for the USModernist podcast, Whitmore has also worked as a live radio host and PSA producer at CHMA 106.9FM, the local radio station at Mount Allison University, where she’s currently an honors student studying international relations and French. She enjoys telling stories, and is passionate about sustainable design.SHOW INTRO:Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.EPISODE 75… and my conversation with Louisa Whitmore. On the podacast our 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.    he 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.orgLouisa Whitmore is a TikTok creator phenom whose content is about architecture. With almost 400 thousand followers her no holds-barred, straight from the heart and to the point commentary about the buildings she loves and loves to hate, brings a user experience point of view and accessible critique into the mainstream.We’ll get to all of that in a moment but first though, a few thoughts…                  *                                  *                                  *The great thing about doing this podcast is it gives me an opportunity to rethink some of the assertions that have held to be true and cross check whether in fact they are immutable or whether there is room for challenging myself and maybe digging into some subtleties and nuances… and seeing things a different way.Like for example the idea of criticism – who does it and its value…I have to admit I haven't been particularly fond of the idea of critics for a very long time. This would be generally true of the kind who dole out the negative kind of commentary.Years ago when commenting on something, I think it was some art piece, and my son said to me “…dad why is it that you never really say you hate anything…”which I sort of thought was kind of funny then. I think I responded “…well because I don't really hate anything… I try to always view things from the other side - a different point of view. I try to get beyond the visceral reaction and look to design principles and comment from a place of applying principles to the work and see how they line up…and then make a comment that is based yes on whether I simply like it, the colors, shapes, energy, feeling , may be a message it is trying to impart AND  whether I can see the value in it based on principles determined to be generally accepted by experts in the domain…” so yeah I don’t really hate things…If I apply the idea of casting judgement on art, music, architecture… it got me thinking… again…What is the value of judgement? Is it to determine the appropriateness of something to a particular context or challenge?I have my favorite architects and artists and musical performers, I like different styles and periods. But I don’t listen to heavy metal (though my sons love it). I don’t know that I can say that I hate it. Perhaps I just don’t understand it and maybe if I did, it still wouldn’t jibe with me.It just doesn’t go in my body well. It’s a sensory mismatch.I don’t hate it – It makes me agitated. So, I just don’t listen to it. And I guess you could say the same thing for certain genres of art.For example… I'm not particularly crazy about a lot of contemporary art.I have a hard time understanding a performance artist dipping her hair in paint and swinging aloft from a rope while her hair drags across a canvas and the painting while on lookers wrapped in dimly lit light bulbs stand slightly by  selling for millions of dollars… it isn't something I quite get. And I know that authorized replicas of the Marcel Duchamp sculpture called the “Fountain” - which is a urinal - sell for somewhere between 3 and $4 million each and here's the kicker... apparently because the original has been lost the financial the value of the original piece is unknown and might be considered as being priceless. I don't know… it sort of leaves me just trying too hard... knowing I'm falling profoundly short of ascending to the intellectualized rarefied air that somehow makes this sort of thing makes sense. And I also suspect that if I'm voicing these concerns or questions that I am likely to get a lot of people commenting that my remarks point out my ignorance, that I just don't understand and I would …well…agree with them.I’m ok with that. Really.And I think I'm not alone in this category of not understanding contemporary art and the extraordinary prices that contemporary art paintings fetch at auctions and then again maybe if I did, I still wouldn't spend $25 million on a Rothko painting.The thing about critics, I think, is that we entrust these individuals with being in the know, of having deep insight, knowledge or experience into the making of the art. That these are people who understand its value and relevancy to culture and somehow able to unfold the deep meaning in the work whatever format the creativity comes in and to bestow upon us their opinion as if it is fact.The challenge of course is that I think there may be an ignorance in the public and that the deeper inner meaning of things is somehow held in reserve for the creators of the work or select few who follow it.But I've always had a challenge with the idea that the critic seems to have the extraordinary power to completely destroy the creative work as well as raise it to high levels of adulation and praise.I think that in some ways we have come to trust to the critic as certainly knowing more than we do and therefore what they say about a particular piece of art or architecture should be taken as truth and the presumed value of the creation lies in whether their commentary is positive or negative.How many people have not gone to see a movie because it only got 2 stars… and who said it should only have two stars?Maybe I would have found the comedy hilarious… but not the critic.I often don't even check reviews by the masses on restaurant or hotel booking sites and if I do read the reviews, I do it very carefully. I look to see what it was that these people did or didn't like. What it was that made their experience a must see or a definite red tomato. Personally, I dig to see if there is anything at a lower level that suggests what was driving the positive or negative review? What it was in this message that this particular critic is trying to convey?I've often thought that to be able to criticize art or other forms of creative invention you'd have to understand what it was the maker was intending to convey.You'd have to understand the basic ideas, for example, of composition to be able to determine whether a Jackson Pollock or a Kandinsky or a Basquiat was worth all the fuss and on what basis you were making the comments about the work.I guess it’s not all critics that I have a problem with but maybe more those who simply present negative opinions. And it’s not like I should even care that critic X didn’t like thing Y. It was their opinion. Okay so they have an opinion. The challenge is the uninformed may come to accept the opinion as fact and turn away from somethings simply because some one says its not good.I guess the role of the professional critic is to study and assess the value of a creative work and pass judgment on the product based on facts and logical assertions. This is kind of like knowing a bit about composition before offering an opinion the write something off.It seems to me that the idea of a critic is to connect ideas, arrive at reasonable conclusions and perhaps open avenues for discussing new directions and fostering an awareness of ideas and cultural trends.It also seems to me that the role of the critic is to challenge our general assumptions about things to get us to look more deeply at our assertions and to get us to not simply accept things at face value but to continue to search for excellence, challenge the status quo, in all of the things that we bring into the world so that we don't fill it with the mundane or banal.There's something about the critic as ‘educator’ - increasing our collective level of understanding of things, pointing out where things might likely be improved and offering positive commentary on what might be a series of next steps in order to develop the output and make it better - that I align with.And I know that the idea of making it ‘better’ is full of all manner of subtext and necessity to consider contextual considerations… ‘better’ for whom, for what and why?And maybe this is where I mostly land on the idea of the value of the critique is that of using constructive criticism for the value of enhancing people's understanding of a particular subject or giving the creator tools to go back to the drawing board, so to speak, and make it better.Jazz master saxophonist David Liebman wrote a concise piece on his website called “The Critic Dilemma: Criticism vs. Review”. He describes many of the same ideas about who’s making he comments, are they objective facts or subjective opinions, and why should we trust one critic’s opinion over another? Liebman differentiates between critique and a review:“…When the writer’s opinion and taste is the focal point, this constitutes a critique. On the other hand, a review should be the dissemination of information with the desired intention being elucidation. The idea is that with this information, the listener is equipped to form his own opinion…”.And this is where this episode’s guest Louisa Whitmore begins to fit into the story.When Louisa was 16 years old she began to share architecture commentary on Tik Tok. She blew up the social media sphere with posts that were personal and occasionally pointed. She came at her critiques of buildings not from the expert or architectural practioner point of view but from that of the user, the general public mindset.She didn’t profess to be a building expert, to have deep knowledge in construction but rather to simply be part of the general public who experienced the built environment every day but who had little to nothing to do with how buildings got there in the first place.Her negative commentary on 432 Park Avenue - the luxury condo building designed by Rafael Viñoly and SLCE Architects – lit up the digisphere with 100s of thousands of followers lining up behind her to voice their impressions of this building. Most of them not very good I might add. Which was actually ok since there was a ton of press – not particularly good I might add – about problems with the building. Now, Louisa didn’t know about these issues about the engineering, the building swaying (which would be natural by the way) and other problems but felt vindicated nevertheless with the press that effectively substantiated her intuitive feelings about this super-tall condo on the Central Park’s edge.I see her posts more like David Leibman’s construct of the ‘Review’ – “…that with this information, the listener is equipped to form his own opinion…”.And opinions her followers had. 1000’s of them.In the spirit of “…the dissemination of information with the desired intention being elucidation…” Whitmore turned her attention to projects thatfocused on Biophilia and how buildings with ample integration of plants seemed to simply feel better. Her noteriaty on Tik Tok, articulate whit, intuition and ability to articulate the ‘person on the street’s’ perception of the built environment, landed her the role as host of “the cable television documentary series “The Nature of Design”.Over the course of a number of episodes Whitmore tours properties talking about biophilic principles and with the support of a variety of experts ranging from architects to neuroscientists she dives into the science of how buildings with a biophilic approach effect our well-being…Whitmore is called a teenage architecture critic. While her rise on social media platforms may have been based on the building she loved to hate, it seems that she is using her notoriety to review and elucidate…. ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582bWebsites:  https://www.davidkepron.com    (personal website)vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645  (Blog)Email: [email protected]: DavidKepronPersonal 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.

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  1:24:15
• Ep. 74 THE COMPLEX AND EVOLVING WORLD OF DESIGN EDUCATION with Trevor Bullen, Dean of the School of Design at Dunwoody College of Technology

  ABOUT TREVOR BULLEN:LINKEDIN PROFILE:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-bullen-6b55b615/DUNWOODY COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY: https://www.linkedin.com/school/dunwoody-college-of-technology/TREVOR'S BIO:Trevor is the Dean of the School of Design at Dunwoody College of Technology. He is an award-winning architect with over 25 years of professional experience. He has significant international experience; working on a wide range of architecture, landscape architecture and planning projects in Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States. In addition to his role as Dean, Trevor has taught architectural design at the Boston Architectural College, the City College of New York as well as the University of Minnesota and is a frequent guest critic at schools of architecture nationwide.Prior to joining Dunwoody, he was a Senior Associate and Director of Operations at Snow Kreilich Architects, the recipient of the 2018 AIA Architecture Firm Award. From 2000 to 2016, he co-founded and led an architecture and planning studio on the island of Grenada, completing more than 30 built projects. The work of his firm has been published extensively in journals and books as well as being exhibited at the 2021 Architecture Biennale in Venice. SHOW INTRO:Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.EPISODE 74… and my conversation with Trevor Bullen. On the podacast our 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.orgTrevor is the Dean of the School of Design at Dunwoody College of Technology. He is an award-winning architect with over 25 years of professional experience who believes that design and teaching architecture is synonymous with discernment.We’ll get to all of that in a moment but first though, a few thoughts…                 *                                  *                                  *When I think back to my architecture education, it seems like another universe to today’s practice. And then again, in some ways it is much the same.Architecture school was 4 long years of hard work and all-nighters that, at the time, we wore as a badge of honor. It seemed that there was never enough time to do what we were being asked to accomplish. Or maybe I was trying to do more than was necessary to fulfill the learning objectives. I certainly felt I had a lot to prove since it had taken me a couple of years to finally get accepted into the program after not doing particularly well at calculus and linear algebra in junior college. I also took extra math in fifth grade. Yeah… math wasn’t my thing.Or at least it wasn’t my thing until I had a good tutor in second year who helped me understand that I was visual spatial learner and if I could draw or make models of the problems they would all make sense. Seeing algorithms… my eyes would roll back in my head.Anyway…I stuck with it, took every drawing class I could, loved design studio and managed the engineering. I was proud to graduate from the McGill School of Architecture school, go on to study for my licensing exams - another series of all-nighters – pass and be able to enter the profession of reserved title and call myself an “Architect.”I was proud to wear the traditional pinky-finger white gold ring with 7 notches in it representing the 7 Lamps of Architecture by John Ruskin. Ruskin was an English polymath – a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. The Seven Lamps were seven principles which Ruskin viewed should be reflected in a building: Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and Obedience. The white gold ring was a tradition of McGill 4th year architecture graduates, as symbols of having legitimately put the time in, done the work on the design thesis and survived it. In those days we drew our projects by hand and built models in the workshop. We got our hands dirty. There were 4 years of design studio projects that, in the real world, would take months or more, and we were trying to get them done in weeks. Back in those days, the mid 80’s, Computer Aided Design was emerging as a new tool. I remember that we had to take a class in computer programming – I think it was Fortran or something – and we had dinosaur computers that some students were playing around with to create drawings.In the mid-80’s email didn’t exist, or not to students in any case,Cell phones had just arrived with the Morotrola DynaTec 8000 which was the size of a brick and weighed almost the same, We used this thing called a fax machine that magically sent images across the telephone wires and could print it out on the other end on thermal paper (which you didn’t want to leave on the window sill, because it would fade away),The blue print shop was an ammonia fumigated workplace where diazo prints, as they were technically called,  were actually blue hence the term “blue prints.”We used pencils or ink pens on paper or mylar, and if you screwed up you actually used an eraser to rub the error out and you drew it again.I remember one of my first summer jobs in an architecture office, I was quickly assigned renderings due to my love of drawing. I had made some mistakes when plotting out a perspective using the Plan Projection Method, and I was erasing what I had drawn. One of the principals came by my desk, stopped, watched and then remarked “hey… we hired you to draw not erase…” and then walked away.Nice…Our go to reference books were by Francis D.K Ching – ah… the drawings and hand lettering in “Architecture Construction Illustrated”, or “Form Space and Order”And… the social media, google, Ai and computer generated 3D modeling didn’t exist.It wasn’t until around 2005 or so that Facebook became popular and the iPhone came out in 2007.Then the world seemed to shift on it axis and life as we know it was on the path towards Artificial General Intelligence and all of the miraculous - and scary - things we are now so familiar with shaped our everyday lives. The world sped up and the way I learned in university was both a thing of the past and then again it wasn’t.Many of the ways architecture is taught are similar to my experience. Courses are taught as individual, disaggregated subjects, that graduates have to piece together in actual life experience. A wholistic approach to learning the discipline of architecture is not generally the norm. Which when you consider all of the components of a building it is a challenge since everything is connected to everything and the amount of ‘everything’ in a building can indeed be overwhelming if you try to consider it all at the same time.The number of professional and skilled labor disciplines is enormous. And most of us simply see buildings as ‘fait a complis’ – completed works - with no idea what actually had to be wrangled to go from concept to completed construction.Going back to social media and the internet for a moment, students now have never known a time without ubiquitous access to the world’s information through the internet. The tools for designing buildings have changed.One could say it is easier to some degree now. Computer programs manage all of the interrelationships between engineering, architecture, building systems, interior design elements, as well as the cost estimating, construction management and more.It is also easier to rely on tools to think for you and disconnect you from discernment – one of the key features of the architects’ role in puting a building together.And this is where my guest on this episode comes into the frame. Trevor Bullen is the Dean of the School of Design at Dunwoody College of Technology. Trevor is an award-winning architect with over 25 years of professional experience. He has significant international experience, working on a wide range of architecture, landscape architecture and planning projects in Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States.In addition to his role as Dean, Trevor has taught architectural design at the Boston Architectural College, the City College of New York as well as the University of Minnesota and is a frequent guest critic at schools of architecture nationwide.He believes in introducing real world problems into the architecture curriculum so that students begin to understand the relationships between theory and practice as well as that good projects are built on good relationships between architects and their clients.He suggests to students that new tools should not supplant their discernment – That key to their success as a professional will be their ability to consider the multitude of factors in building design, determine what matters and to not let the remarkable tools that are afforded us through the development of computer aided design relace their voice.Trevor pushes the idea that great advances in visualization with Ai should not be and end in itself but a means to that end. The tools should be a part of the process not the end point in the evolution of a concept and that their personal voice, point of view, vision should not be lost in the use of the app.And in Trevor’s experience, oh what a voice students of today have. Projects are influenced by subjects of racial equity, restorative justice, indigeneity, political orientations, sustainability and climate change and more.And this, it seems to me, is what architecture has always been partly about – the 3-dimensional representation of cultural ideologies. Architecture and ideas are inseparable. Buildings stand as testaments to what we believe, want to influence and aspire to. They are much more than the materials that bring them into being or the space planning at accommodate human interactions. They are epicenters of human relationships imbued with stories and meaning. That said, it brings to mind the famous quote by Marshal McLuhan - "The medium is the message." McLuhan suggested that the way information or an idea is communicated, like in a television broadcast, newspaper, social media post or I dare say architecture, has as much impact on the message itself as the content of the message.I think that this suggests that the form of communication, even if the form of architecture, significantly influences how the message is perceived by the audience.In architecture parlance – I think Mies van der Rohe phrased it as “Form Follows Function.” If beyond utility, architecture is made to convey ideas, then its Form, Space and Order are brought together as a 3-dimension embodiment of them.Thinking back to my architecture education, the tools of today’s professional practice have drastically changed and some of my classmates when on to other careers other than being architects, but the education we got then gave us a understating of the interconnectedness of things and the ability to solve multilayered challenges while wielding stone, steel, glass, light all forged into a unified whole by learned discernment. Teaching discernment is not just in the service of good building design and construction, it is a life skill as emerging students navigate the volatile, unpredictable, complex and often ambiguous world that face them beyond their architecture degree.             *                         *                         *ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582bWebsites:  https://www.davidkepron.com    (personal website)vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645  (Blog)Email: [email protected]: DavidKepronPersonal 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.

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  1:28:35
• EP.73 Creating Rhyme and Reason in Retail Design with Mardi Najafi, Principal, Chief Creative Officer, and Retail & Hospitality Practice Lead at SDI Design

  ABOUT MARDI NAJAFI:LINKEDIN PROFILE:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mardi-najafi-rdi-idc-772b1328/MARDI'S BIO:Mardi Najafi is an award-winning, multidisciplinary designer with over 30 years of experience at the forefront of the design world. A visionary leader in the field, Mardi believes that design has the power to evoke emotion, create unforgettable experiences, and leave a lasting impact. His work spans a diverse range of high-profile retail environments, from intimate boutiques to large-scale, branded experiences for some of the world’s most iconic companies, including Coca-Cola, Adidas, Virgin Mobile, Telus, Loblaws, Penguin Random House, Keilhauer, and Versace. His global portfolio reflects his ability to blend innovation and cultural context, with projects across Paris, New York, Toronto, and beyond.As the Principal, Chief Creative Officer, and Retail & Hospitality Practice Lead at SDI Design, Mardi is passionate about pushing the boundaries of design to craft immersive, transformative environments that captivate audiences. Known for his attention to detail and his ability to seamlessly merge art and commerce, he excels at creating spaces that are not only visually striking but also deeply meaningful and engaging. His work continues to redefine the retail landscape, setting new standards for brand experiences that resonate long after customers leave.Beyond his design practice, Mardi is an active voice in the industry as an accomplished speaker, educator, and panelist. He is deeply committed to fostering innovation, sharing his expertise with the next generation of designers through mentorship and his involvement in various professional advisory committees. A lifelong advocate for education, Mardi has taught at prestigious design schools around the world, inspiring students and shaping the future of the design community.In 2023, Mardi was honored as the first Canadian inductee into the Retail Design Institute's prestigious Legions of Honor, recognizing his exceptional contributions to the field. He is also currently serving as the President of the Retail Design Institute Canada, where he continues to shape industry standards and advocate for the advancement of design excellence. SHOW INTRO:Welcome to the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast.EPISODE 73… and my conversation with Mardi Najafi. On the podcast, our 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.orgMardi Najafi  is the Principal, Chief Creative Officer, and Retail & Hospitality Practice Lead at SDI Design.We discuss his life of growing up the son of an Iranian diplomat, a professional path through the fashion, exhibit design and retail industries and how teaching is about giving back to young designers in their fledgling careers…We’ll get to all of that in a moment but first, a few thoughts…             *                         *                         *There are interviews that I have done over the past 73 episodes that have been specifically about a person’s work, There have been those that have been about a brand or product category, Or the study of neuroscience and its role in experience making,  We’ve delved into art and creativity, leadership, climate issues, and many other subjects.And there are other interviews that I have done that focused in on a person’s career path, how their experiences brought them to where they are today. In these cases, I often find that my guest and I identify how serendipity stepped in front of them as they careened through a career, how taking the road less traveled lead them to creative professional journeys that were unexpected, and how a shift in their mindset resulted in profoundly rewarding roles at companies or with personal and professional relationships. I love discussions about serendipity – how our life paths seem to be guided by novel circumstances that were unforeseen, yet when confronted with them, we found a moment to step aside from our pre-determined story, one that we might have created with specific objectives, a place to be at some future moment, and in the midst of new circumstances, a choice was to be made about what the next move would be without really knowing where it would lead.There seems to be some magic in this process – a sense of wonder that keeps the creative spirit alive. There is also a good dose of courage needed at the nexus of ‘now and next, when a calling summons new thinking and a re-evaluation of our pre-suppositions about how things are supposed to be now, or in the future, need re-evaluation.I think it is often the case with creative paths or projects.To start out knowing where you are going would suggest that you have you have already been. To start out with the end in mind creates a path of production, of doing, rather than one of seminal discoveries along the way.There is something in the unknowing that I believe maintains the creative path as an adventure, one where in the doing of the thing we are continuously discovering rather than just in production mode.In the discovering, we remain engaged, learning, exploring and the path is laid out as we move along it. However… being in a place of unknowing, can be fear inducing since I think we so often like the assuredness of the pre-determined and predicable.I have found this particularly true in teaching at universities in design fields. Students don’t like the unpredictable so much. Many prefer the determinism of knowing where their projects will eventually end up. But I think in taking this approach we short circuit the opportunity to discover something new – something we could not have predicted but when discovered, results in a sense of awe that shifts our perspective and maybe our purpose. And I think it takes courage to follow a set of rules about designing something, call it strategy, and let the rules of the strategy guide the process. As we pursue the path of the work the rules help to guide decisions that make the next step self-evident. Then the next, and the next and so on, until a conclusion to the process meets the requirements of the design brief.Assuming the strategy is well founded, you can rely on the rules to guide the process and decision-making. Along the design path, all decisions can be cross-referenced against the strategy and the outcomes that don’t align with the determined set of rules can be set aside in a preference for the ones that best exemplify them.Then there is the emergence of circumstances that throw you a curve ball – conditions shift within which you have little control – and your path necessarily changes. The resilience and the flexible mindset that is required in these moments are factors that influence your ability to adjust – to find yourself in a place of positive transformation or maybe to simply survive.I have found that the key to positive transformation is to keep saying yes to serendipity. To loosen the rigidity in my mindset and welcome the unexpected. It can be a struggle because I have generally been geared to knowing where I’m going. I don’t mind saying that I have long preferred the predictable over the mercurial. It is at times not easy, but these moments of re-alignment with new realities can be the success factor supporting our determination to keep going and to leverage the “new” for the purpose of re-making ourselves. I think that in this, there is a sense of agency. I think that we are, in fact, in little control of anything but for our own reactions to adversity or the everchanging circumstances of life.Perhaps this is the proverbial ‘making lemonade out of lemons.’ When life gives you lemons… you know… make lemonade.And this is where the life path of my guest in this episode comes in. Mardi Najafi has had a colorful host of experiences influencing his professional path.Having grown up the son of an Iranian Diplomat, he was schooled in multiple countries including Iran, France and Russia. He was conscripted into Iranian military service and made a friend with whom he, after his release from service, created a business bringing watches into Iran. That adventure eventually allowed him to earn enough money to buy his father’s release from prison and ironically lead to a career in design.After a building a successful professional track record working in Europe, he landed in Canada where he fostered his interest in retail design. In 2023, Mardi was honored as the first Canadian inductee into the Retail Design Institute's prestigious Legion of Honor, recognizing his exceptional contributions to the retail design field. He is also currently serving as the President of the Retail Design Institute Canada, where he continues to shape industry standards and advocate for the advancement of design excellence.Mardi Najafi is an award-winning, multidisciplinary designer with over 30 years of experience at the forefront of the design world. A visionary leader in the field, Mardi believes that design has the power to evoke emotion, create unforgettable experiences, and leave a lasting impact.His work spans a diverse range of high-profile retail environments, from intimate boutiques to large-scale, branded experiences for some of the world’s most iconic companies, including Coca-Cola, Adidas, Virgin Mobile, Telus, Loblaws, Penguin Random House and Versace.Mardi is deeply committed to fostering innovation, sharing his expertise with the next generation of designers through mentorship and his involvement in various professional advisory committees.After having a few conversations with Mardi, I would say he lands squarely in the camp of actually following Robert Frost’s ‘Road Not Taken’ welcoming the discovery born of life’s moment of significant change - even when it is uncomfortable.             *                         *                         *ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582bWebsites:  https://www.davidkepron.com    (personal website)vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645  (Blog)Email: [email protected]: DavidKepronPersonal 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.

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