like me: Ldf
In 2015, Lippincott decided to participate in the London Design Festival by creating “Like Me,” an exhibition for the London Design Museum.
As professionals in the branding space, we’re often tasked with defining a brand—creating it out of seemingly thin air, or reconfiguring an existing one to meet modern needs—but the reality is that brands are in the eye of the beholder, in the control of the public. This show aimed to explore that push and pull between people and brands, wondering who is branding whom.
I was honored to be one of the lead designers behind this exhibition, alongside a fantastically talented team.
To get at the idea of how brands can help shape how we see the world and how the world sees us—and to create an object that drew museum-goers in—I recommended that we work with artist Michael Murphy to create a three-dimensional optical illusion piece. This is what viewers first saw as they entered the exhibition space.
We experimented with pieces that felt tightly controlled—how brands may want to be seen—and contrasted them with ones that felt interactive and even unruly—a reflection of how brands can be subverted. The giant coffee cup was an homage to how iconic Starbuck’s brand is, to the point that all you need is a green circle to get the idea across. But it was also a little irreverent, inviting people to pose with the cup and become the siren themselves.
Along the longest wall of the exhibition room, we showcased examples of how brands can take on lives of their own as they are loved, hated, and transformed by the societies they exist in.
At the end of the exhibition hall, we installed a wall that replaced the well-known DeBeers slogan, Diamonds are forever, with… well, our own message. But there’s a twist on the twist: the white and black dots were actually enamel pins that museum-goers could take home with them, helping to erase the message. Underneath each pin was a tiny brand logo, a little easter egg for visitors to see which one they’d been matched with.
Finally, for the outdoor space, we kept things simple and a little cheeky with brand topiaries—a nod to a beloved English tradition, a form of living art, and a way to express one’s character and status.