Anytime I design a project for a client I ask mself what it is we are trying to do with the piece.. I learned this many years ago. Once I learned to ask this question designing became a whole lot easier.
One of my early projects was to design displays for a Yamaha dealer. They sold ATV's, motorcycles and snowmobiles. The answer to the question was obvious in this case. I was to design display to help them sell their product. To sell snowmobiles I designed a display that placed a snowmobile in the snow. The dirtbikes were suspended from the ceiling on wires as it went over a jump that looked like dirt.
When it came to the ATV we went all out. We would perch an ATV in the wild, above a real waterfall. We sourced some realistic Christmas trees and sculpted the rest with fiberglass-reinforced-concrete. The display was self contained and rolled on hidden wheels to make it easy to rearrange the showroom.
The displays worked exceptionally well for the dealer. They were popular with the customers and were also featured in the motorcycle trade magazines. The displays did exactly what they were designed to do.
-grampa dan