Sip, see, sense: developing taste through visual literacy
Working in any industry, there are a lot of components which lead professionals to success. Education, experience, work ethic, strong communication skills even networking are often discussed and promoted among today’s work environment. And while the focus is positively shifting from the importance of hard skills to highly developed soft skills as well, in my opinion, the concept of visual literacy is still not covered enough. And I, as a marketing professional, believe in it a lot.
In Russian, it is called “насмотренность”. It’s about training your eye by exposing yourself to different aesthetics, experiences, and service standards to truly understand the products, markets, modern trends and develop a taste. A taste is someone’s likes and preferences in areas like art, fashion, food, music, etc. It is also a pretty controversial topic, of whom we consider to be tasteful, but usually it is a person with a lot of experience in the industry and a lot of visual literacy. And here we circle back to the starting point with the visual literacy being essential in the top professional’s career.
For some reason this concept is mostly used in art and fashion industries, only for something we see with our eyes. But in my opinion, it goes way beyond, with understanding the atmosphere, service, aesthetics and the ideas behind any establishment. And as someone working in F&B, specifically in coffee industry, I rely on my visual literacy a lot when I think of the new ways to bring our guests the best experience possible.
So of course it’s a part of my job to check out other coffee shops wherever, to see if we are keeping up with the high bar of the industry, but to push the bar higher, I need to go further than that. That’s why whenever I can in Dubai or on trips I make time to visit luxury hotels, fine dining restaurants, museums, nice beauty salons, high-end retail, and … bookstores, street food, even thrift stores on the other side of the spectrum.
It’s not only for pleasures, although that’s a nice bonus, and something I consider to be my hobby, but because this is how I study the guest experience and develop my visual literacy. Any new tastes in food? OMG this pastry is amazing! How is food plated? How are drinks served? Shall we try it in our coffee shop? How do the staff greet you? How’s the packaging? What brand is this comfortable chair from? What scent is in the air, what’s the lighting like, what small thoughtful touches do they add?
Sometimes it’s the bathroom mirror or a cute phrase at the entrance — photographed, instagrammed and tagged — that’s how we get more exposure. And sometimes it is a new promo by American plane ticket marketplace, can we reinvent it for our guests at a coffee shop? Of course!
Even if the price point is way above ours, or it’s totally different industry, this kind of exposure shapes how I think about our business. Because our guests don’t just compare us to other coffee shops, they compare us to their lifestyle, something they are used to on a daily basis. They will unconsciously compare us to their boss’s house, favorite restaurant for family gatherings, fancy place for dates and that hotel in Bora Bora where they spent their honeymoon. Can we fit into that?
We develop our visual literacy and train our eyes (tastes, palettes, etc) by exposing ourselves to the industry’s best and even some mediocre places, it is also important not to fixate on one industry, but go on a broad spectrum, just as I mentioned earlier. The more we see, taste and experience, the better our brain will work with coming up with new bright ideas. Being visually literate helps me find a lot of answers, and would be beneficial to any professional, no matter what field they are in, IT, operations, product development or, as in my case, marketing and guests’ experience.
And finally, I genuinely believe this kind of “fieldwork” should be a part of the team budget, because the higher visual literacy of the team, the better experience they will create for their guests, users or buyers. Sometimes, training your eye is about visiting the new exhibition at the MET, and sometimes it means getting one overpriced cappuccino at a hotel lobby and stare at a velvet armchair for 20 minutes. Because that’s where the best ideas come from, and this process is never ending.
