WinCo Foods Redesign

Understanding the Brand

The first step in refreshing WinCo's brand was understanding the market of grocery stores and their position. While there are plenty of employee owned provisioners, including most everything at a farmer’s market or a bodega, there are (to my knowledge) no chains of employee owned stores as big as WinCo with around 150 stores in more than a half dozen states.

These stores prominently aim to have low prices with their drab warehouses and bulk goods. WinCo, after all, does not necessarily have the same profit incentive as Walmart, Target, Kroger, Wholefoods, or CostCo which are public (or subsidiaries of public companies) instead being beholden to its owner-employees who stand to gain by undercutting their competition by not having the same expectations.

The challenge here is to frame WinCo as the best choice, luckily we have both a practical (price-based) and ethical argument. The line goes, “Other grocery stores exploit their workers and customers in order to satisfy quarterly earning reports and share-holders. WinCo not only has the best prices but the profits go to enriching the community through employee ownership.”

All I have to do is encapsulate that in the imagery.

The Logo

To distinguish the brand and solidify that central thesis I used several soft colors and large blocky shapes in the graphic elements of the logo paired with the blocky, always black, no-frills, Komet Bold font.

Where other brands simplify to look like a tech start up, restrict themselves to a singular tone, and use only abstract graphics WinCo would distinguish itself with a bushel of pleasant, nostalgic colors and large representative graphics of ordinary things. This declares WinCo as a company for people, shoppers and employees, which is focused on very real and practical things which they provide.

Supplmentals

Along with the logo I would need several supplimentals to pair with the logo in the creation of the brand and the items that make it up.

Mockups

With a few key elements I could now realize the vision with mock ups of various products with the new branding.

Style Guide

With the above I finished this project by compiling the brand into a style guide.