Coutts: Dickensian Christmas 2012

In October 2012 The JUSTSO Team were approached by Coutts to produce the creative retail solutions to design a concept for their windows for Christmas 2012, the theme was to be Dickens. Being such a wide topic, the JUSTSO design team were excited to start work on this and transform the huge windows.

2012 was the bicentennial anniversary of Dickens. With such a big year for London including The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, Olympics and Paralympics, Dickens’ contribution to British culture and society has been slightly overlooked. A great philanthropist and close friend of Angela Burdett Coutts, Dickens was involved in a number of key charities and institutions in London. Angela met Dickens in the late 1830s, by which time the writer was already a customer. She was greatly taken with Dickens and became a family friend. Dickens gradually became Angela’s unpaid almoner, overseeing her charitable work. The heiress made many one-off donations to individuals whose cases had been reported to her by Dickens, thus he assisted her in her private giving but it was the larger, public causes he wished her to become part of. Dickens wrote to Angela about his books. He claimed ideas for ‘Hard Times’ came from their discussion on education. In 1849 he told her of the challenges of creating ‘David Copperfield’ and dedicated ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ to her.

The JUSTSO Design Team did extensive research into Dickens and the Dickensian period to ensure that the concept captured the real essence of the theme. Various visuals were produced including characters, architecture, iconic items and of course books. The clients decided to go with a book that had glistening gold quotes leaping from the pages. The quotes were a selections from his books and personal memoires which together created Idyllic Dickensian Christmas which we now base our typical Christmas on.

Final designs and artworks were sent over to the printers and massive vinyls went into production. Installation happened early morning and included various equipment such as mobile towers and a self propelled boom cherry picker that were required to apply the huge window vinyls covering a space over 5m high.

If you’re looking for Creative Retail Design Solutions, get in touch with JUSTSO.