Week 10 - Irvine Spectrum

A few days ago, I went to the Irvine Spectrum. Upon walking into the main shopping area, I immediately noticed the holiday lights everywhere. Almost all the trees were covered in lights, which made the place even brighter than it usually is. This uplifted the mood of the area, giving it the "merry and bright" feeling. I also think the brightness disguises the fact that it's dark/nighttime outside, giving shoppers the impression that they have more time to shop. The focal point of this particular area of the mall is the large Christmas tree in the center, which was the only thing that had colored lights that changed every few seconds. I think this gave the area a sense of community - a "gathering place" of sorts for people to come together and shop. Overall I think this worked well, especially since there was Christmas music playing everywhere. The visual elements of the mall matched the aural elements.

A store that I thought had unsuccessful lighting was Honey and Butter, a macaron shop. The store is currently doing a collaboration with TokiDoki, a Japanese brand that features various colorful cartoon characters. I thought the lighting was unsuccessful because it did not reflect the fun and happy feeling that one would get when seeing these characters or eating sweet desserts. One half of the store was brightly lit. This was on the left side, where the macarons were and in the back wall where the TokiDoki wallpaper was. I thought that was great because customers are able to see all the fun designs of the macarons and they are able to take photos in front of the wall. However, on the other half of the store, the lighting was extremely dim. This was unfortunate because there was other TokiDoki merchandise on this side and I didn't even bother looking at them. It didn't seem like it was worth my time because I didn't want to spend the time browsing through items in the dark. Because of the dim lighting, it made the overall appearance of the store look unappealing from the outside. I felt like it was hard to see what was on the inside, especially because of the clutter of the TokiDoki window decals, which seemed to blend it with the darkness in the background.

On the other hand, a store that I thought was successful was the Adidas store. I passed by this store at the end of the day and I was pretty tired from walking around. My eye was immediately drawn to the store because of how bright it was and when I walked in, I felt instantly awake. I thought this worked well for the Adidas store since it sells athletic apparel and the lights gave the entire store (and me) a high energy feeling. I also appreciated how along with the general lighting, there were individual spotlights that were focused on all the shelves and racks. This pulled the focus to all the products in the store and I felt like I wanted to look through everything. I think the brightness also gave the entire store a pristine look, which made the clothing and shoes look clean and neat.