Solana Spaces
About the project
Solana Spaces were created as the world’s first physical, educational retail storefronts devoted to the blockchain and all things Web3. Through these first-of-their-kind, permanent retail environments in NYC and Miami, the Solana team focused on onboarding new Web3 customers with Solana digital wallets, creating a hub for experiential and educational events to immerse the public in crypto-technology and encourage guests shop Solana themed and crypto lifestyle products.
Since Solana Spaces were a new concept and needed to not only introduce Solana, but also blockchain to customers of varying familiarities, they leaned heavily into the use of immersive and interactive digital storytelling content. In New York and Miami, before even entering the space, customers could spot the high-definition curved LED screen from the entryway. The immersive interactive display showcased the Solana blockchain in real-time by highlighting a specific transaction that had just occurred.
Once inside, customers were greeted with an interactive Solana 101 story. Guests used private seed phrase booths to sign up for their digital wallets and could engage with featured crypto-native partner kiosks to learn more about their offerings and earn digital currency.
The spaces also featured a digital NFT gallery, wrapping several walls, and acting as a secondary beacon to draw customers into the retail environment. The use of digital frames for the gallery allowed us the flexibility to highlight different artists and curate collections with ease as rotating NFT artists will be featured over time, as the space evolves.
Services Provided
- Campaign Management
- Creative Direction
- Experience Production
As a counterbalance to the colorful motion graphics, NFTs and lit logo, we used an understated, but elevated, material palette for the rest of the retail fixtures, focusing on warmth and texture. Included in this material palette were ash, whitewashed ash, terrazzo and fluted wood, along with lush vegetation. We focused on striking a fine balance between digital and the physical, tactile world. With a need to feature an ever-growing roster of Solana partner collaborations, we also created a flexible fixture system that offered partners a storytelling platform as well as displaying (and storing) their lifestyle products.
One of the unique challenges of this project was to achieve a level of continuous flexibility as Solana evolves and grows in their new spaces. We focused on space saving features, like an integrated back-of-house entry with the visually private seed phrase booth to enable guests to set up their digital wallets and made efficient use of the space, integrating product storage anywhere we could. All fixtures were designed to be flexible to accommodate a variety of Solana partners, a truly universal solution for any lifestyle product the Solana team could dream up. This project was a true testament of flexible design, providing a thoughtful canvas for both product showcase and storytelling.