Most people I meet know Avery Dennison as a pioneer in materials science and manufacturing. What isn’t as well known is that Avery Dennison is also helping to push the boundaries in design and consumer experience.
We are combining decades of labelling and branding experience with new technology to expand the capabilities of labels and branding and help build the Internet of Things. My colleague Francisco Melo recently explored this in a feature article about how our technology is helping to enable a new “frictionless” future for retail. Reinventing labels for the Internet Age is a logical progression for the company that invented the pressure-sensitive industry.
On the design side, our creative and R&D teams work closely with printers and graphic designers worldwide, helping them bring their ideas to life. We do unexpected things with paper, film and adhesives so that printers, designers and end-users can do unexpected things with packaging and graphics— and connect with consumers more deeply in the process.
Next month in New York City, we will bring all these capabilities together— materials science, design and technology. Our Bright New Things Take Times Square contest started with a design competition and will culminate in an installation featuring the work of four emerging artists and designers during NYCxDesign, New York city’s official design week. We look forward to bringing the artwork and the installation, which we are sponsoring in collaboration with Arts Thread, to an estimated three million visitors.
The objects our winning artists reimagined will be displayed in a 10-foot glass cube featured as part of design week’s Design Pavilion. This will be art meets science in the middle of Times Square; our new VELATM dynamic display-window technology will turn the glass walls into a digital video screen, capturing viewers’ attention, and then turning transparent to reveal the art showcased within. As the public walk around the cube, the experience will be enhanced by our JANELATM smart-products platform, enabling viewers to connect individually with the installation through their smartphones and share the content with friends and family around the world.
In all, the installation will integrate the physical with the digital in a new and compelling way. And that’s precisely what we’re doing at Avery Dennison. Our integration of materials and technology, along with the curiosity, creativity and innovation we have always brought to our work, is a key reason why printers, designers and brands still consider us their go-to partner more than eight decades after Stan Avery had his breakthrough moment in materials science.
We are proud to support four talented young artists and to bring their work to a global audience. And we are proud to be the company that other companies count on when they need innovation in a world of commerce that is an increasingly seamless hybrid of brick-and-mortar stores and Internet-enabled customer relationships.
I hope you can experience the exhibit for yourself from May 12 through 20. You can also view the Bright New Things Take Times Square installation online by visiting averydennison.com/bright or by following us on Instagram @welovematerials. We’d like to know what you think, and to hear your opinions on where the convergence of graphic design, materials science, and digital technology will take our industry.
