Warby Parker Press
Warby Parker is a retailer of prescription eyeglasses, contact lenses and sunglasses.
The company was founded in 2010 as an internet business by students in the venture program at the Wharton School of Business, but has since opened more than 160 physical stores in the USA and abroad.
While visiting the Soho store in NYC with Magdalena, who was looking for a new pair of Morgan’s (or maybe Blakely’s?), I paged through a book called The Alphabet of Art at Warby Parker.
Published by Warby Parker Press, the company's in-house publications department, the book celebrates the company's first 10 years by bringing together and representing its collaborations with illustrators, painters, print-makers, designers.
Interesting, but my first thought was what is the connection between commissioning art and making and selling eyeglasses?
The book’s introductory essay by illustrator Maira Kalman explains it well, and what follows is no substitute. But here’s a short explainer of what’s inside. And why it hits for me.
From the beginning, Warby Parker has commissioned original pieces big and small, sourcing artists from the places where it operates.
The work has has been used to enliven customer communications, product packaging, retail interiors, and even brightened whole city blocks (Warby Parker storefronts are often brightly/energetically decorated).
The thread throughout the pictures is ... eyeglasses.
A blue-footed penguin (wearing glasses). A crowd of stylish hipsters (wearing glasses). A swirly abstract pattern made from a single, long line (faces, wearing glasses).
The book brings together work from over 100 artists, and presents it in A-Z order by artist last name.
The names - Shantell Martin, Geoff McFetridge, Kenesha Sneed, Chris Ware - may not all be familiar to the ear, but their work is familiar to the eye. These are the same people whose work you see regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times and so forth.
The proceeds from the sale of these books (available for $40 in retail stores) goes to the Pupils Project, a nonprofit which provides free eye exams and eyeglasses to students in public schools in New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
IMO, The Alphabet of Art at Warby Parker is an exemplary way to tell a brand story, where each piece of marketing communication (a mailer, a print ad, a web graphic) has a chance to contribute to something bigger. And that something serves both the brand, and its ideals.
Learn more about the book, here:
https://design-milk.com/the-alphabet-of-art-at-warby-parker-celebrates-their-11th-birthday/
