community shop, sunderland
Environmental graphics, wayfinding and a full interior scheme for a shop that belongs to its neighbourhood, not to a head office.
a shop that had to feel like a welcome.
A community shop lives or dies on how it makes people feel the moment they walk in. The brief was an interior that worked as hard as a supermarket but read nothing like one: warm, legible and generous, with no whiff of the institutional.
The space itself was honest and big. The graphics had to bring it down to a human scale, guide people through it without a single barked instruction, and hold together across walls, bays, shelving and windows.
signage that speaks like a neighbour.
We wrote the scheme before we drew it. Every sign in the building says what a helpful neighbour would say, in the order they would say it, and the design serves that voice: big friendly type, warm colour, nothing shouting.
Wayfinding runs on colour and plain words rather than icons and arrows alone, so the store can be read at a glance from the door. The same system scales from the fascia to a shelf-edge label without changing character.
"The scheme turned a big retail shed into somewhere you would happily spend your morning."
warm words, working walls.
then we walked it downstairs.
The approved scheme went straight to the factory floor. OneSign printed, fabricated and installed the full graphics package, so the colour on the wall matches the colour in the deck, to the millimetre.