This was a full brand redesign for Vincenzo's, a family run Italian grocery store in Waterloo. I did a complete overhaul of their logo and marketing materials, and I changed the name as well.
I wanted to do this because there was really strong audience space here, but the brand was speaking mainly to an older demographic. I wanted to tailor it to a younger crowd and make it more visible and suitable to younger professionals. So my job across this whole project was to figure out which design decisions would do that, and then actually make them.
How I Critiqued the Brand
Before designing anything I needed to know what I was actually working with. So I compared Vincenzo's directly to Eataly, a big Italian grocery competitor in downtown Toronto and across the world. I used a table to lay it out side by side, because seeing it that way made the gaps obvious.
The thing I had to be careful about was not throwing away what worked. They had a very loyal customer base, a very authentic in store experience where the staff know your name, and really strong social engagement with their existing audience. This is rare for a business, so I wanted to lean into it, not replace it.
Then I looked at what wasn't working. Their website was hard to navigate with unprofessional photos. Their packaging was generic and boring and didn't explain much about them. Their gift cards were ugly and unappealing. Compared to Eataly, where the website was curated and professional and inviting, where you could tell the brand story from the packaging, and where everything was well designed and thought out. Vincenzo's by contrast felt cramped, rushed, and unwelcoming.
That gave me the core problem to design against: the customers that built Vincenzo's are getting older, and the brand isn't welcoming or engaging to anyone new.
The Direction I Chose
Once I knew the problem, I had to pick a feeling to design toward. I decided I wanted Vinnie's to feel like a third place.
A third place is common now with a younger demographic. It's the gym, a coffee shop, your favourite bar. It's not quite home and not quite work, but it's the place you look forward to going after you get off work. That was the goal. Then I needed to figure out how to make that feeling specifically Italian, so I created something called Nonna's table. The idea was that walking into Vinnie's should feel like sitting down at your grandmother's table.
I based this on a real detail. Rita, Vincenzo's wife, called the store many times a day long after she retired. That told me how much this place meant to the family, so I built the whole direction around her.
To lock the feeling in before designing, I wrote a brand story to describe it:
"For 30 mins once a week, I take a break and leave the shopping list at home. I step into Vincenzo's, breathe a breath of relief, grab a coffee and start to browse the aisles. Instead of rushing, I say hi to the workers and try their new items. I feel relieved, not stressed, allowed the time to think and figure out what I really want. I feel the Italian lifestyle."
Every design decision after this point answered one question: does this feel like I'm pulling up a chair at Nonna's table? If it didn't, it was wrong.
Designing the Name and Logo
The name change was the biggest decision, so I want to walk through how I got there.
The previous Vincenzo's logo wasn't broken. It was trusted, recognized, and carried sixty years of loyalty. So the goal was never to replace it, it was to refine it. I changed it to Vinnie's because it feels friendlier. The thinking was that Vincenzo is the founder, but Vinnie can be your friend. Someone who's always there. As welcoming as it feels to go sit down for dinner with Nonna. I remember before I started going to Vincenzo's that it was difficult to work up the courage because of how intimidating it was. I wanted Vinnie's to fix exactly that.
For the wordmark I chose a typeface called Powell because it feels personal, like Vincenzo himself wrote it.
The small logo is where I worked through the most steps. I originally chose the apostrophe because I wanted to keep Vincenzo himself in the logo. It shows he's still part of it. It's still his store, still his possession. Then I kept looking at the shape and started to see a person in it. But not just any person, Nonna. And Nonna loves you, so I made sure to include love in it. Then I put that logo on a map of Italy. So the way I built it was Nonna, plus love, plus Italy, plus Vincenzo's, equals the Vinnie's short logo.
A big inspiration here was the Cal & Gary's logo from Calgary Co-op. They created a single character, then built a whole clothing line around it. The biggest thing for me was how friendly it was. They basically personified the entire brand, everything vibrant and friendly. I wanted to do that with Vinnie.
Building the Store Mockups
The store mockups were definitely the hardest part. I had to figure out the kind of place I wanted before I could make any of it.
So the order I worked in mattered. The biggest thing was thinking about the feeling of the space first, then creating the mockups based on that feeling. I wanted warm colours and that sense of friendly chaos. What I literally did was transcribe that feeling into Nano Banana, then generate the space, and then put the logo on top of it as the last step. Working in that order is what kept the space feeling intentional instead of random.
The brief I held myself to was simple: make the space more welcoming and inviting to new people, give them a place to relax, and turn the third place into reality.
Building the Product Mockups
This is where my physical process matters most, so here's exactly how I made them.
For the products, it's important to note that I designed the covers separately first and then composited them. I'd create the label on its own, then bring it into Firefly and use Nano Banana to put it onto a real product. For the wine, I created the wine label, then I separately created the bottle, and then I put them together. I did the same with the gift cards. I made the gift card label myself in Photoshop, then brought it into Firefly and had it turned into real life. Doing the label and the object separately is what kept everything sharp and believable.
The goal across the line was to make products that felt like home but still high end. Something where if you got it as a gift, or you were about to cook with it, you'd actually look forward to it. I built out a coffee cup before and after, then a full line that didn't exist before: pasta, pomodoro sauce, and wine. I also had AI help me create some background graphics to sit behind it all.
The gift cards were one of the original problems I found in the critique, so redesigning them mattered. The new ones have more thought put into the design and remind you more of the Eataly level of quality.
Building the Videos
For the social strategy I made three video spots, and the way I built them was the most involved part of the project.
To make these videos, I started with some of the existing products and store mockups I'd already created, and used those to build the specific shots I wanted. For each four to five second shot I created a start frame in Nano Banana. For some of them, like the shopping cart ones, I created an end frame as well. Then I'd tweak them and generate photo after photo after photo to try to get the movement and the language of the shot consistent, because I wanted the whole thing to feel like one piece.
Once I had the frames the way I wanted, I planned out exactly what the movement in each shot needed to look like. Then I put it into Veo 3.1 and used the video generation model to create the shot. That left me with about five or six shots per video. I pieced them all together in Premiere Pro and did the final cuts to remove any hallucinations.
The three videos each had a job. The first shows what it feels like to exist inside Vinnie's for a few minutes, no products and nothing sold directly. The second shows the idea of showing up without a shopping list, where you arrive and the store tells you what you want. The third targets the biggest barrier to a first purchase, which is the assumption that high quality means high effort, and shows a normal weeknight cook instead.
Final Notes
If you want to see the full pitch I presented and submitted, it's published in full below. The proof of work goes deeper, it documents every design decision and walks through the actual prompts and workflows behind everything you've seen here.