A SITE FOR SORE EYES

The Vision:         an optical store with a difference
The Objective:    a stylish, lifestyle oriented hub
The Motivation: dreary uninspiring clinical environments that have become the norm
The Change:       a meeting of minds – and, coincidentally brand identities!
The Place:           a conference in London.


At a retail designer’s conference, Bernard Dooling, director of 20/20 Interior Design bumped into Stephen Isaacs, owner of 20-20 Optical Store. Aside from sharing the same business name, theirs was also a meeting and merging of minds, both geared towards the creation of something inspirational.

So Isaacs gave Dooling the brief:

To come up with a unique new identity and graphics communication package for its Tottenham Court Road store to be applied across the full suite of the store interior, literature and promotional material.

The primary objective was to design an optical store that was refreshingly stylish but the complete antithesis to most high street opticians. Instead of the customary uninspired clinical environment, the store needed to be like a fashion retailer with bright colours and super-sharp graphics.

‘There’s no reason why you need the men in white coats – it’s just another part of high street retailing. The fact that they give good eye consultations is a given,’ says Dooling.

‘This approach has changed attitudes to eyewear’, adds Isaacs…

‘Wearing specs doesn’t carry a stigma. Now it’s fun – we should celebrate it… we want our clients to change their eyewear as often as they change their wardrobe.’

The store design certainly embodies this approach, starting at the façade with supergraphics of the shop name and a giant eye motif across the windows and glass doors. Inside, this motif is repeated on the walls while a large-scale graphic reads ‘Seeing things differently’ over the stairs – a play on the eye-chart format and a reference to its owner’s idiosyncratic approach to optical retailing.

‘We worked with visual plans to underpin the basic message and take people though the store,’ says 20/20’s Charles Dunnett, Chief Architect. These include multi-coloured graphic panels of spectacle frames in the client collections department.

The store, lit with natural light at the front and back, is arranged over two levels. On the lower level, the clinics embody Isaacs’s vision of open-plan consulting rooms coupled with fabulous state-of-the-art equipment. An area dedicated to contact lenses and their application is also housed on this level – this is where the expression “aesthetic functionality” finds its home. Clients waiting are seated on grey seating cubes made by Boline International and covered in Kvadrat’s Glove fabric.

Dunnett wanted to achieve a lightness of touch in the main retail area, combining a dark stained, oak floor throughout the ground level with custom-designed white merchandising units, which are backlit to appear as if they are floating off the walls.

‘The quality of lighting was hugely important in navigating the line between wanting it to be as light and clear as possible but not sterile,’ says Dunnett.

With customers spending up to an hour in 20-20, for their consultations, contact lenses and frame selection, a café was a sensible if unexpected idea. Apostrophe Café, with its modern clean lines and comfortable feel fits perfectly with 20-20s aim to “see things differently”.

20-20 Optical Store is about relaxing and enjoying yourself - so much so that you would love to stay all day!

Housing one of the largest eyewear collections in Europe and consuming over 15,000 square footage of London’s Tottenham Court Road, 20-20 Optical Store is Europe’s leading visionary and innovative eyewear and eye care retailer.

With its contemporary fashion-led interior, the store offers a lifestyle approach to eyewear and eye care. A full service nail bar by Nails Inc. and a leading café, Apostrophe, along with some of the UK’s most sophisticated eye care equipment including the revolutionary Optomap™, are just some of the services that demonstrate how 20-20 Optical Store has altered the face of the optical industry.

Alongside own brand frames Matasa, Sakura, Scaasi and Maurice Levitta, 20-20 Optical Store offer a selection of over 5,000 high designer brand frames, jewellery eyewear, sunglasses, contact lenses and travel eyewear products.

For press appointments to view 20-20 Optical Store please contact Isobel Klempka at Fearnhurst PR on 020 7499 3334 or email iklempka@fernhurstpr.com