UC Davis design professor and holiday fanatic Dolph Gotelli will head later this week to the mecca of Christmas and commercialism.

The end of classes Friday will find him on his way to New York City to join throngs of holiday shoppers gazing at the fanciful holiday displays in the windows of Fifth Avenue stores. Lord & Taylor, for example, this year will portray The Nutcracker Suite using mechanized props and winter wonderland scenery.

Tiffany & Co., which has featured bejeweled snowmen and mermaids over the past years, is the favorite of Gotelli, whose research and teaching field is exhibition design.

New York stores often hire full-time window designers to create an enticing display for shoppers. With indoor malls and the increasing interest by stores in corporate identity, most of that work, in other parts of the country is going by the wayside, Gotelli said.

But UC Davis - thanks to Gotelli and some talented alumni - is putting its own mark on the visual merchandising field, decorating holiday displays in local stores such as Macy's Downtown Plaza and Sunrise Mall.

Other design alumni have festooned public areas in the Roseville Galleria shopping mall, designed displays for Southwestern department store Dillard's, built a store Santa Claus throne, and in a new twist on visual merchandising, showcased products in online catalogs such as Pottery Barn Kids.

Melissa Fredona Veselovsky '96, who worked in "visual" for Dillard's in Texas and Arizona for several years, likened her work to that of the elves, working busily behind the scenes to get Santa Claus ready for Christmas. In her work she hung wreaths, decked trees and positioned merchandise in holiday-themed scenes. "It's fun, and it make the customer feel good," Veselovsky said.

Child-like themes of anticipation can be central to holiday design, like the in-store displays that Gordon Murray '80 has created.

• number of years ago, he designed the larger-than-life throne for a gift-store Santa Claus. A red carpet led up to chair, and Murray had store elves stand as gatekeepers. Behind the throne, encrusted entirely with candy, were oversize candy canes.

"You felt as though you were visiting a king," said Murray who now owns a Walnut Creek design consulting firm, Applied Imagination.

While many designs seem to spring up overnight around Thanksgiving, holiday props and windows are huge products of work, said another of Gotelli's former students, Alvin Inenaga '85, the visual merchandising manager for Macy's Downtown Plaza. He and his staff put in 10 to 12 hour days beginning in September as they begin to arrange displays.

For his more elaborate designs, Inenaga and his staff of five head to Macy's basement storeroom for chairs, books, garland, and even a giant mounted deer head, for use as props. One window displays an antique-style bicycle piled with presents and ready for a ride in the snow. Another uses the mounted buck's head to portray a holiday dining room design. "Most of the people in the field are so tired of Christmas by Christmas, they don't do any (decorating)," Inenaga said.

Inenaga was hired for his first visual merchandising job in 1986 at the old Weinstocks department store by another UC Davis alum, Karen Nielson, '72. She's now in the visual department at Macy's Sunrise Mall.

Like Gotelli, through the years, Inenaga has noticed a change in retail design philosophy. Store space and funds seldom are reserved for purely decorative elements, and merchandise selected at the corporate level is incorporated into nearly every display.

But the field still offers plenty of chances for creativity, Inenaga said. "It just depends on how you look at it. Each Macy's store is physically different. We have to tailor the presentations to the size of the store and the merchandise we get."

Gotelli, who has taught at UC Davis since 1970, offers principles of visual merchandising in a design communication course for undergraduates. "(The skills) are important for any job they get in design," he said. He encourages them to offer their services to mom-and-pop stores. For his students' final project this quarter, Gotelli had them pick a business in Davis to promote in a window-like design. Several of the projects are now on display on the first-floor of Walker Hall.

And although he hasn't erected a Christmas display for some time professionally, Murray continues to use his expertise for family holiday projects. A few years ago, with a creation in mind, he enticed his young daughter to ask for her favorite arcade prize game, the claw machine, for Christmas.

Murray actually bought a full-sized machine, emptied it out and decorated it in a winter scene. Then, he and wife Rebecca dropped Allison's presents into the machine, forcing her to maneuver the claw deftly to "win" her presents. Allison loved it. "At Christmas, the impossible becomes real, and all you have to do is wish for it," Murray said.