About the Client: As T&T Supermarket's success was growing steadily, its CEO, Tina Lee, and its majority shareholder, Loblaw Companies Limited, entrusted Watt Retail Agency to design a more premium experience before expanding across Canada and the US. Brian Bettencourt and Bryan Morris, both Senior Creative Directors at Watt, hired me to create on-brand illustrations for the new shop front in Fairview Mall.
Drawing from my 7 years of experience working in China, I was tasked with capturing the rich cultural traditions into a modern visual representation. Suggesting the concept of an 'Easter egg' wallpaper, I offered to create a line drawing depicting familiar cityscapes with culinary references written on signages in Chinese.
The illustrations I created became an essential part of the identity of the new in-store brand experience. The initial design for the interior architecture has gone through multiple transformations, yet the illustrations have remained as proposed and have been carried over every single new store so far*.
*Non-exhaustive list: T&T Supermarket Fairview Mall (Toronto, ON) | T&T Supermarket College St. and Spadina Ave. (Toronto, ON) | T&T Supermarket Waterloo (ON) | T&T Supermarket Montreal (QC) | T&T Supermarket Sage Hill—just renovated (Calgary, AB) | T&T Supermarket Willowbrook Shopping Centre (Langley, BC) | T&T Supermarket Lansdowne Centre (Richmond, BC) | T&T Supermarket Lougheed (Coquitlam, BC)