Early this year I was asked if I could be the retail interior designer with a family business called Turner’s Pies. I jumped at the chance as I love pies and these pies are also sold at Harrods to a recipe which has been around for years. Turners wanted to expand from one shop to two shops and wanted my help with the retail design aspect.
The Brief –
Rustington / Sussex has a fairly elderly demographic and the design brief was to design a shop interior that would attract both young shoppers whilst not put off the older customers with an interior design that made the pie and the history behind the pie the hero. We produced a fairly light and cool pallet that contrasted with the golden colours of the pies and also helped to communicate the high hygiene standards. The Clients were also very proud of their West Sussex routes and wanted to make sure this was also apparent when in the shop interior.
The Concept –
Turners had already found a site and were in negotiations to secure the lease when we started the design process. We put together four plan options when considering the retail concept design and thankfully they went for the most dynamic of them which was a design where the main counter is angled to make it stand out from the rest of the surrounding shop. This also presented it to the passers by as it was a corner site with good windows to two sides. We decided to make the anchor walls (for want of a better description) the same angle as the main counter and coloured them a dark warm blue for maximum visual impact, these received gentle illumination whilst the Pies and accompanying products got most of the Lux attention with some surface mounted MR16 LED spots.
Site –
I have a informal partner when it comes to a lot of my sites, this is a friend that I have known for over 20 years when we both did an art foundation at Brighton College. His name is Kevin Blondel. Kevin went onto study furniture and product design whilst I studied Interior Architecture and Nottingham Trent University. I will always offer Kevin up as my chosen carpenter and furniture maker as I know he will look after the design on site and understands why certain decisions have been made. Along with that he is cost effective and a bit of a perfectionist. A testament to this is the fact that the projects he works on generally make it onto the website gallery. With this site the client was not sure if we should go to the expense of over cladding the counter units, thankfully Kevin talked them round and the result is a lot stronger than it would of been.
