inspire: retail design blog » F&B

Thorntons – New Store Design

Nick — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:30:51 +0000

Towards the end of last year our new concept design for Thorntons opened in Birmingham.

More bling, more product talk and more emphasis on Thorntons enormous product range.

The perimeter (shown here in the Christmas scheme) uses a magnetic paper background to provide an easily changeable backdrop for promotions and events. Self selection is more prominent as is a more elaborate gift wrapping service. Lighting is much more detailed and ranges from overhead ceiling rafts to shelf level product lighting.

More blurb on our website.

Cioccolato

Nick — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:54:39 +0000

A pastry boutique specialising in in custom desserts for special events.

Very clean, nice quirks (especially that table) and a space where the product can really stand out.

Via the Behance Network

Cupcakes in Abu Dhabi

Nick — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:30:09 +0000

Via a submission, London based carbon, have recently completed a project in Abu Dhabi for Bloomsbury’s.

A free standing cupcake kiosk in Al Wahda Mall. The architecture and components were designed as a ‘kit of parts’ so the design can work for roll out locations across the Middle East and India.

Flavaboom

Nick — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:24:57 +0000

A new frozen yogurt shop in Manhattan, New York. Very clean simple and with some really great features, particularly the large seating ‘pods’ with mirrored backs and the illuminated far yogurt dispensing wall.

Flavaboom Fascia

View through the window

Seating pods mounted on the wall and far wall yogurt dispenser

Far wall with changing lighting

Mirrored back on seating pod

Interior, very open, very clean

DIY instructions are very straightforward, like the little 'Start Here' projecting sign

Close up of the dispensing wall for choosing your yogurt flavour

Originally from Contemporist.

Cielito Querido Café

Nick — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:45:53 +0000

Very nice Mexican café. So much time and energy has gone into this and a fantastic use of colour and type. Just goes to show you don’t need supersize product images to get your style and flavour across.

Spotted at The Dieline

D’Espresso – New York

Nick — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 07:22:53 +0000

A nice little coffee shop in New York (on Madison Avenue). The optimum word here being little, at only 420 square feet (39 square metres) the designers have done a great job of tricking the eye into making you believe you’re in a larger space. The back wall becomes the floor with the floor and other walls covered in library book wallpaper.

I’m starting to see quite a few smaller shops covering their entire wall space with wallpaper of some description, a quick and easy way to change your look almost overnight, or a bit of theatre if you did it during shopping hours.

Originally from The Cool Hunter.

Holland & Barrett

Nick — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 08:53:55 +0000

Holland & Barrett opened a new format store back in February in Bury St Edmunds. Eventually we got around to taking a look.

Features included an olive oil station and coffee area and a new Good Food to Go identity which is rather at odds with the traditional Holland & Barrett identity as well as further window graphics which are again mismatched with the Good Food To Go identity. Gondolas are internally illuminated with semi-circular ends which include some high level magazines which are also placed rather strangely on a low level shelf probably just gathering dust. The store itself is well lit and bright in all the right places and according to several sources the customer service is very good which makes a huge difference these days, unfortunately not all retailers have realised this yet.

A couple of these images are from the Rubbish Diet where there is more opinion of the store.

The big image

Nick — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 07:00:58 +0000

There’s a trend in website design to use large background images to add a larger sense of place to screens. These images should be scaleable so they fit into whatever size window you’re using. Some sites have a random rotating image, some are more static. Some use a bit of javascript, or you can just use css and html (our preferred method, see below) and some use flash. Using images this big though means you can’t get away with using photographs or illustrations that are amateur, so the investment in quality images becomes even more important. Also if you use stock images you’ll need to make sure that they’re not ones that have been used by a large amount of websites especially amongst your competitors, that just makes you look cheap.

Because we’re immersed into all things bakery (see Greggs) here we came across this site yesterday for Le Pain de Quotidien, this uses flash to add a random image from a selection every time you visit, refresh the page to see how it works. The photography is fantastic, scales well to fit large screens and loads quickly, all the things you need. This is one of the ways to get across the quality of your goods in a medium when customers can’t touch anything.

A large background image technique

To create a large image for a background there a few ways of doing it. Here’s our preferred method.

The image

We use images that are around 1500 x 1000 pixels and that have been optimised in Photoshop. If the image isn’t optimised then loading times can be much to long to make using this technique worthwhile.

The css

First add a few lines to your css file.

The first line creates the dimensions for the body of the page, the second adds a dimension for the background image including positioning the image for IE6 (yes, incredibly we still have to work with this), the third line positions the background image for IE7 onwards and other browsers and fixes it in place. The last line adds the position to your content div.
/*** Background image ***/ body, html { height: auto; width:100% } img.bg { min-height: 100%; min-width: 1024px; width: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; } html>body img.bg { position: fixed; } #content { position: relative; }

The html

This is mark up for WordPress. If you’re not using WordPress then change the file path for the image source to whatever works for you.

/images/background.jpg" />



Your content goes in here

Some examples

Thomas Peatling (this also includes a rotator script that adds a random image from a selection every time a different page is loaded, refresh the page to see it in action)

Jempsons

Thanks

The original post we used is here on CSS Tricks

Cox Cookies & Cake

Nick — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:12:05 +0000

Patrick Cox opened a new venture in Soho on Tuesday. Cox Cookies & Cake takes the current trend for all things cup cake/indulgence and adds a big dose of Soho neon chic.

The website as yet isn’t live but shows the intent with an animated neon identity, and thank goodness for a sign up form.

The website is at www.coxcookiesandcake.com their Facebook page is here.

Also on a cupcake note the recent Cupcake Champion of Great Britain 2010 (yes there is one) was David Bennett of the Sunshine Bakery in Chapel Allerton, Leeds, here’s his website www.sunshinebakeryleeds.co.uk.

National Cupcake Week takes place from 13-19 September 2010, you can follow them on twitter.com/CupcakeWeek.

The Luncheonette

Nick — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 09:17:53 +0000

The idea of the luncheonette (officially a long counter with stools where the patron is served from the other side of the counter) has always really appealed to me. The romance of solitude and a cup of coffee and eggs over easy. Whilst looking at John Wright’s photography site I saw luncheonette in the background of one of the shots. 2 mins of google searching later and I arrived at the All Star Lanes website with images of their luncheonette at Brick Lane. Also on their site a look at their pop up stand and finally for true luncheonette flavour the external sign of Hinsch from the very fine flickr photostream of Whiskeygonebad.