Thoughtful Design Drives the World Forward
Butterwood is an innovative design agency with a retail mindset for physical space. Butterwood is Architecture and Interior Design combined with Brand Strategy. We help people who think about physical spaces to understand the human experience layer that determines business success. We don't just design spaces, we design experiences.
Design is about more than creating a visual impact, good design is aesthetically pleasing but also unobtrusive and simple. Good design is innovative, useful and helps people understand things that are complex. Good design is honest, long-lasting and environmentally-friendly.
Aesthetics without substance or meaning is temporary, disposable and wasteful. In modern retail, the temporary aesthetic has overwhelmed good design, and this is creating many wasteful and disposable outcomes.
We love retail, we want to see it thrive and grow. People depend on retailers for the things we all need to live our lives. Respecting customers means respecting the environment and doing all that you can to minimise your impact.
This is a design problem, designers are needed by retailers for their thoughtfulness. We started Butterwood because we want to eliminate and reduce waste with great design.
Thoughtful Designers craft experiences that resonate on a human level and spark joy. Thoughtful Design makes more money. It attracts strangers into your business for the first time. Thoughtful Design engages prospects with stories about your business, your brand and how your product could be a meaningful part of their life. Thoughtful Design turns strangers and prospects into customers, retail is the business of connecting, joining, signing up, transacting, buying. Thoughtful Design drives your business, and the world, forward.
In spite of the digital revolution, most purchases are still made in physical retail spaces - because humans crave experiences. A desire for experiences drives us out into the world, and we often end up at a retailer, buying something.
Thoughtful Designers are needed to reimagine physical spaces from the perspective of the modern retailer. We need designers who think about attracting strangers, engaging prospects and connecting customers. When design is rooted in thoughtfulness, it becomes transformative, creating experiences that resonate on a human level, and ultimately, driving monetary value.
If a retail business depends on continuous product innovation to drive customers into physical spaces - it is incredibly unsustainable. Bulk selling necessitates large-scale manufacturing processes, extensive use of materials and a significant amount of carbon emissions. The sell-through rates of a new product range can often be minuscule.
Brands can be damaged by availability of discounted product, so the vast majority of a poorly conceived range, new colour-way or boring product feature, ends up in landfill. Any brand that relies on high product turnover has an emerging publicity problem, as customers seem to be several steps ahead of businesses when it comes to sustainability.
Designing a compelling experience into your physical spaces is the solution to this sustainability problem. If customers are attracted into your branded retail location for the experience, your brand will have no problems securing sales at a premium. Perhaps your customer doesn’t even need more of your products; maybe there’s even money to be made taking some products back from customers. Could your business join customers in finding further usage of the things you make or sell?
“In the west, we have probably hit peak stuff. We talk about peak oil. I’d say we’ve hit peak red meat, peak sugar, peak stuff… peak home furnishings.”
Steve Howard, Head of Sustainability, Ikea
Is your retail business just contributing to “peak stuff”? Are you releasing new colours or features quarterly, or even worse monthly? Do you need to update displays and interiors every time a new seasonal range is released?
Retailers don’t set out to entrench unsustainable practices at the heart of their business model. But it is incredibly complex to adjust a business model once it is in operation - akin to fixing a plane engine while it is in the air. Embedded complexity such as this this requires the type of thoughtfulness that is unique to designers.
Butterwood’s promise of Thoughtful Design can be summarised into three clear experiential goals: Attractive; Effective; Sustainable.
To craft an Attractive user experience one must merge design know-how with the gathering of strategic human insights.
Effective designs earn more revenue while also reducing costs, this requires an understanding of how brands actually work and what drives human behaviour.
Sustainable design doesn’t just draw more visitors —it engages entire communities in the dialogue of eco-consciousness, it sets examples that can elevate a brand to the very top of their category.
Designing space, whether it's retail or public, demands not just an eye for aesthetics but an understanding of purpose and inclusiveness. Butterwood designs everything with this promise in mind, every project is an opportunity to inject an extra layer of thoughtfulness. In this fast-paced, throwaway culture, our mission is to eliminate and reduce waste through enduring, smart, sustainable design.
The spaces we inhabit daily should spark joy and generate optimism. Retail has always been an important part of the human experience. Design needs to be modern yet timeless, it must adhere to the dynamics of space which are intuitive and ancient. Spaces must be designed, constructed and, one day, demolished with thoughtfulness. To do this Butterwood has created a unique but deliberate blend of architecture, design and strategy.
Architects don’t build buildings. Brand Strategists don’t design brands nor do they make ads. Many diverse talents and perspectives converge to tell a unified story that is a completed building, or a logo, or video, or poster.
Architects and Brand Strategists write blueprints so that expert craftspeople can execute the vision of the client with precision. Blueprint’s are not even blue, but they are a collection of thoughtful moments and decisions. Architects express these thoughts in drawings with highly detailed measurements that translate directly into the physical realm for contractors and tradespeople who are experts in what they do. Brand Strategists use lofty terms like “brand blueprint” (also not blue) or “brand architecture” all the time, but in reality they know very little about building or construction. They express thoughts in the form of observations and insights about cognition, motivation, emotions and how they drive human behaviours.
Architectural innovation, branding, advertising, experiential marketing, and the creation of meaningful retail experiences all hinge on a choreographed joint effort. Interdisciplinary expertise is a requirement for both Architects and Brand Strategists. Plans need to spur action and effective execution that is aesthetically appealing. Architects need to understand details about materials they specify. Brand strategists need to find other ideas based on similar insights, think about production budgets and the ability to achieve a truly original execution before the deadline.
Butterwood marries architectural expertise with brand strategy to create original and attractive retail spaces. By merging these two disciplines into a single practice, we can tackle any brand or retail business challenge from a truly fresh perspective. We create artfully layered multidimensional blueprints that reflect a deep understanding of human behaviour in the physical space.
Architecture is the physical manifestation of a design strategy in space. Often the client is looking to see their brand strategy manifested in physical space and it is the architects job to apply thoughtful design principles through the use of technical drawings for experts to refer to and work from.
An architect's insight extends well beyond just the appearance of final built forms. It stretches into the realm of sustainable practice, an increasingly pivotal dimension of today’s building and construction industry. Many sustainable innovations from architecture, building and construction are extremely overdue in traditional retail design.
Butterwood exists to bring architectural knowledge into the retail space.
Retailers need designs that are not just pleasing to the eyes but are also filled with the substance of their brands. Brands are abstract, they exist only in the mind of the consumer or audience, a complex network of narratives, emotions, memories, perceptions and pathways.
Strategists examine these networks of thoughts to settle the brand into an ecosystem of ideas, themes, sounds, images, messages and designs. Ensuring that every touchpoint tells a consistent story to reinforces the brand's strategy and identity.
Butterwood exists to bring the full power of your brand into your retail experience.
Butterwood is committed to solving client’s business and human problems through design practice. What distinguishes a good design from a great one? Insight and attention to detail.
We use Design Thinking processes in all that we do to ensure we are always working to a meaningful insight into human behaviour. We start our thoughtfulness with an empathetic understanding of the user or the target audience. Architects and strategists have always done this as a matter of course. One could argue that it’s not possible to really do the job of an architect or strategist without this critical first step.
“Design thinking” was first mentioned in the 1960s probably as “human-centred-design” in Don Norman’s seminal book The Design of Everyday Objects. Academics and designers from d.school at Berkeley have undoubtedly pushed this discipline forward, providing us with frameworks, processes, texts, blogs and podcasts. But this is not a trendy, new or innovative method, it is our only method.
Butterwood exists to design experiences based on the needs of your user.
Emma Butterworth, design lead at Butterwood and current Associate Director at Those Architects. Emma brings to both roles over 15 years of experience in creating timeless residential and commercial spaces. Having grown up in Toowoomba and Brisbane, Emma's architectural designs are significantly influenced by the Queensland lifestyle and its close connection with nature. Emma brings her experience gained in San Francisco, New York City and Sydney, home to Brisbane.
Warwick Heathwood is a seasoned strategist in retail and experiential agencies. Prior to co-founding Campfire x in Sydney, he held the position of North America Strategy Head at Set Creative, New York. Warwick has also developed advertising, retail and experiential strategies in leadership roles at renowned firms like Leo Burnett, TBWA, R/GA, and Argonaut in San Francisco, as well as shopper marketing agencies Arc and Integer and global experiential creative agencies Jack Morton Worldwide and Imagination.
We’d love to hear about your retail challenges and ideas.
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