In New York City, retail spaces turn over regularly and often go unused during transition periods. When a storefront below the Combo office was slated to be available for a week, Combo took the opportunity to design a novel way to put the space to use, from concept to execution.

The retail space on Canal Street was situated within a span of souvenir stores. This area receives a steady stream of foot traffic and attracts tourists shopping for trinkets to remember their time in New York City. For tourists, a souvenir can be an important personal reminder. Using the location and its built-in audience as assets, Combo dialed up the idea of the souvenir-as-memory by adding a dimension of customization.

NYC is not simply memorable—the core insight was that it is uniquely so. While no one’s time in New York is exactly the same, the available souvenirs are predictable and generic. What makes a classic experience like visiting New York special are the personalized details of the trip. Today in New York was a weeklong pop-up on Canal Street that offered a new kind of souvenir for New York City—a memento that was as specific and unique as everyone’s NYC experience.

The Today in New York storefront operated as an interactive retail space. Combo designers created customer forms, T-shirts and tote bags, and had people fill in their unique take on the city by answering a prompt that would help them create a commemorative totem of not just New York, but their relationship to it. The Combo staff operated printing guns to transfer customers’ memories onto their product of choice, creating an immediate reflection of their New York experience that they could take home.