CHUCK'S HOPSHOP
Redesign of Seattle iconic beer place
BRANDING | MOTION | WEB DESIGN
Problem: What started in 2010 as a convenience store with a great beer selection has become a beloved neighborhood watering hole. Chuck’s now stands as a community gathering spot, supplying over 40 beers on tap with a wide selection of bottled beers in a family-friendly and dog-friendly environment. The current brand identity dates back to the times when Chuck’s only function was that of a convenience store and thus fails to deliver the great brand promise Chuck’s carries today.
Solution: Refresh brand identity of the hopshop highlighting its existing sparks that make Chuck’s so special. Create a design that would give the store updated look by retaining its qualities of inclusiveness and welcoming nature for all the members of the community.
My role: Branding, Typography & Layout, Website Design, Motion Graphics
Tools: Illustrator, Indesign, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Lasercutter
Timeline: 10 weeks
Collaborators: Kylie Della
What sets Chuck's apart from its competitors is its vast amount of choices, its focus on the community and, most importantly, the knowledgeale and unbiased staff. When tackling the redesign of such a beloved iconic Seattle place as Chuck’s, we faced a challenge of staying true to what Chuck’s already is and what makes it so valuable. Our objective was to make the brand look refreshed without hiding its intentional roughness and sincerity. We chose bold hand-touched style for Chuck's, which helped us create an easily identifiable and unique brand, without the pretension of taking itself too seriously.
In order to stay on track throughout the entire design process, we developed Chuck’s brand identity by defining its brand promise, brand positioning, brand attributes, and brand impact.
Audience: Chuck’s main audience is local beer lovers, mainly young adults and young families, hipsters, and yuppies, but everyone’s welcome here. A secondary audience includes corporate and small businesses that use Chuck's to fill their office taps and their restaurant bars.
Combination mark: We designed Chuck’s logomark to succinctly express the brand’s personality as neighborly, candid, passionate and knowledgeable through the union of the hop, dropped pin and neighborhood street pattern in the mark. We also combined it with the rough texture and two approachable typefaces. The logo is paired with the structural Archive typeface and gender-neutral cursive SantElia, both of which add to the friendly and welcoming nature of the logo.
Brandbook: Chuck’s offers a wide range of services to an ever growing community, so it’s essential that the Chuck’s brand can grow and change with its application. For this reason, a big part of this project was designing a brand guidelines book. We created it as an inward facing document that would direct further application of the brand. The book contains three sections: the general company overview, brand identity and identity application.
Design solutions: Chuck’s is a vibrant, lively place where Seattle community can come together as they are, without pretense. For this reason, Chuck’s does not use photography in its brand identity. Instead, we choose illustrations and typography as a means to reflect the services Chuck’s provides and the honest interactions its customers experience in the shops.
Tone of voice: Just because Chuck’s is an approachable, welcoming place that holds no pretence or snootiness, we developed a unique light-hearted tone of voice Chuck’s uses when talking to its community. Harkening to a good groan-worthy dad joke, much of our advertising, merchandise and print material messaging uses well-known proverbs and repurposes them to relate to beer. This intentionally clumsy play on words shows our community that Chuck’s is an approachable, welcoming place that holds no pretence or snootiness.
Stance on dogs: One selling point of Chuck’s Hop Shop is its inclusionary stance of the four-legged friends. Dogs are part of family and Chuck’s proudly welcomes them into their stores. This led us to the idea that pups should not be overlooked in our branded apparel. Like the other items of wearables, dog attire is monochromatic and bold in nature.
Environmetal Graphics: We used branded graphic elements in the environmental design to give the community a sense of place within the brand. Whether Chuck’s customers are stopping by for a pint with their friends or for a scoop of ice cream with kids, it is important that the community feels comfortable with the physical space that Chuck’s Hop Shop provides.
Like all other touchpoints, the branded graphics play with the materials they are applied to, through the use of a knockout texture. This allows the elements themselves to be big and bold, but not overpowering. As with the other illustrations in the brand, the line quality of the illustrations is organic and the graphics are monochromatic.
Website: Website is a big part of Chuck’s brand identity. It’s a big touchpoint that should look consistent with the rest of the brand while being functional and easy to navigate.
Due to the nature of Chuck’s as a handcrafted brand, we wanted to bring this feel into its web presence. We used textures and bold branded illustrations to guide the visitors through the website and to call attention to its main functions.
To make visiting Chuck’s website a pleasant user experience, we targeted the main goals the users may have when coming to the website – look up the address, hours and contact information, look through the rotating tap beer menu, and look up the schedule of the food trucks. These user goals are reflected in the three main sections of the website.
Since Chuck’s operates in two locations, we created a simple toggle button, which switches the website from one location to another and triggers the overall website color change to signify which particular location the user is looking at.
PROCESS
History and current state of affairs: Chuck Shin opened Chuck’s Hop Shop’s Greenwood location in 2010 and the second location in the Central District in 2013. Chuck’s has always been a convenient store with a great beer selection but since the development of the Central Districs location, Chuck’s has become a neighborhood watering hole. It now stands as a community gathering spot, supplying over 40 beers on tap with a wide selection of bottled beers in a family-friendly environment. Chuck’s doesn’t have kitchen so food is restricted to snacks and ice cream, with more substantial food served up from local food trucks that rotate their visitation. When visiting Chuck’s, customers know they will find informative beer shop with knowledgeable staff that will fill all of their beer needs.
Brand Promise: Chuck’s fosters a casual community gathering place for patrons to enjoy a rotating selection of drinks, consistently good company, and honest, friendly recommendations.
Brand Positioning: The brand positioning is what makes Chuck’s Hop Shop stand out in the vibrant brew scene of Seattle and the whole Pacific Northwest. There’s more to Chuck’s than simply great beer. What sets Chucks apart from its competitors is its vast amount of beverage choices, its focus on their community, its food truck circulation, and knowledgeable staff.
Brand Attributes: We went through a brand deck exercise to define the brand attributes for Chuck's Hopshop. We narrowed the adjectives down to candid, knowledgeable, passionate, and neighborly. We used them to keep us on track and to assess all the work we do, to ensure that the brand expression reflects the brand strategy. After defining the brand attributes, we were able to move to the next step of brand creation – tonal territories. These helped us with the further creation of the moodboard and thus defining the direction in which the brand identity process was going.
Moodboard: When it came to defining a direction for the branding process, we felt that it was essential to maintain Chuck's Hopshop's trusted, quirky vibe while bringing a renewed sense of cohesion to the business. We wanted to highlight its bold, hand-touched style and create an easily identifiable and unique brand, without the pretension of taking itself too seriously. This is why bold typography, textured elements, and playful organic shapes prevail in the moodboard we created for Chuck's.
Color: Beyond our logo, color is the most recognizable aspect of Chuck's brand identity. We selected these colors, as they fit best to reflect Chuck’s expertise and a candid relationship with its community.
Typography: To succinctly express the brand’s personality as neighborly, candid, passionate and knowledgeable, we chose open friendly sans serif Montserrat complemented by gender-neutral cursive SantElia. Both of the typefaces add to the friendly and welcoming nature of the brand.
Comination mark guidelines: The combination mark is a vital part of the brand identity. To ensure brand consistency and familiarity, it’s important to make sure the logo is used cohesively throughout the whole brand. In Chuck’s brandbook we outlined a set of guidelines to curate the look of the logo. We defined the combination mark colors, sizes, variations, negative space around it, background colors and typical do’s and don'ts.
Textures: Craft beer is just that — a craft. The Chuck’s visual branding acknowledges that hand touched quality of great beer in the form of texture. Every visual touchpoint should be created with the materials used to make it in mind. We use a knockout texture to expose this materiality solidifying Chuck’s candid and trustworthy nature.
Illustrations: Chuck’s is a vibrant, lively place where our community can come together as they are, without pretense. For this reason, Chuck’s does not use photography in its brand identity. Instead, we created a neutral platform that reflects the services we provide and the honest interactions our customers experience in our shops. We do this in the form of illustration.
Our illustrations are bold and hand-touched. There are no straight lines here, everything is organic and whimsical, without being delicate or refined. All illustrations are representational of our services and brand cornerstones. You won’t see people or settings, but rather bottles, pitchers, tap handles and dogs.
