Whole Foods Market Parking Signage

Project: After receiving lots of negative feedback surrounding previously design parking signage (all reflecting the Amazon Prime brand), I was tasked with coming up with a signage system that was flexible to Whole Foods Market (and dozens of other partner brands in the future).

Process: In-store pickup and curbside pickup were both relatively new areas of business for Whole Foods Market when I was onboarded onto this project. This also coincided right with the start of the pandemic, when online grocery orders came pouring in like never before. The existing signage created a bit of a confusing experience, as it wasn’t clear if the pickup was meant for Amazon packages shipped to the stores, or for groceries from Whole Foods. The WFM Creative Team came back to us with a proposal to strip the signs from color completely, and lean into a fully black-and-white series of signs. We completed a series of user testing experiments to determine if customers were finding the new signage any big clearer than the previous signage, and the overall consensus was that…it actually really didn’t. In order to solve this problem, I did competitive research to see what other brands were doing in their signage. What was it that made their customer experience so crystal clear? How could we accomplish a similar task? I went back to the drawing board, and recommended leaning fully into the WFM brand to ensure that customers knew they were at exactly the right place. This led to a rollout of brand new permanent signage at all participating WFM stores across the US. The Whole Foods creative team still compliments us on it to this day. (A HUGE feat!)

Role: Art Direction, Visual Design.

A side by side view of the original version of the parking lot signage and the re-designed version. The decision was made to steer entirely away from the Prime brand and reduce the amount of overall copy to make the messaging as simple and clear as possible, especially considering customers will be reading signage from a far distance.

A behind-the-scenes look at our final (approved) pitch deck.