Cream Pop-Up Shop

CATEGORIES

Animation
Art Direction
Branding & Corporate Design
Lettering & Type

In 2018, collage artist Sarah Judge (NSFW) and I decided to set out on an ambitious endeavour to organize our own pop-up shop for summer that coincided with Vancouver Pride and would be offered as a sex-positive, queer friendly space for vendors and customers alike. We named the shop Cream after the song by Prince.

We collaborated on many assets in this project, starting with the event poster. Sarah created a collage background featuring a banana that turned into a fixture for promotional materials for Cream. I designed Cream’s logo by hand lettering in my sketchbook and tracing a vector version for a crisp, clean cursive result. A small splash flourishes off the end of the logo to help convey its creaminess.

Both of us being graphic designers, Sarah and I definitely considered that an advantage as all our social media posts on Instagram, Facebook and the Event page all included the same fun, floral and titillating variations on the poster. We were able to keep all promotional materials consistent and on-brand.

Outside of having retail vendors involved in Cream, we wanted to create an environment that would encourage customers to hang out and feel welcome at our shop. I crafted a sponsorship pitch deck and reached out to various small businesses in Vancouver and successfully landed Umaluma, a local shop that serves organic non-dairy gelato, which was followed by me creating promotional Umaluma graphics for our partnership.

Because I couldn’t help myself, I made an animated promotional video for the event. The song usage in this video is entirely unlicensed, but the song was integral as this can only be enjoyed with the sound on.

The Cream venue was decorated with roughly two dozen large vinyl bananas that could be easily applied and removed from the walls, and a vinyl graphic of the Cream logo for the front window. Giant inflatable pool floaties of a banana and rainbow were placed in the front display area with scattered postcards and varying merchandise from vendors to help attract interest from passers by.

Our hard work that included an ad-hoc digital campaign, Facebook event and printed postcards/posters that were placed around Vancouver proved successful as Cream had a great turnout over its 2-day run, with many customers ranging from friends, family to strangers who wanted to support small businesses and artists.