Shopwell - Your Everyday Friendly and Reliable Grocery Store
Masters Project
Year: 2025
Category: Art Direction, Branding (Speculative), Illustration, Mixed Media
Art Direction and Design:
Quang Nguyễn
Lecturer/Supervisor (RMIT University):
Hope Lumsden-Barry
Shopwell is a critical design project developed as the Studio Knowledge Object (SKO) of Entrepreneurship Design Studio (GRAP2655) at RMIT University. For this project, Shopwell — a speculative, satirical high-end grocery store brand — was designed to highlight and raise awareness of the ongoing food insecurity and price inflation crisis in Australia.
The project is divided into several parts:
Packaging and Receipts/POS Application
Custom pantry product packaging, thermal-printed receipts, and a POS-like application were produced to allow audiences to engage with the food staples presented throughout the experience — accessing pricing information and calls to action in the process.
Five basic pantry staples were selected as subjects: eggs, cooking oil, vegetables, canned food, and pasta sauce. Each item's packaging was collected and measured, then given its own unique product label. Each product also has a corresponding receipt, printed on 80mm thermal paper, featuring a hand-drawn illustration, a price comparison between past and present, contextual information about the ongoing issue, a short project summary, and a QR code linking to Food Bank Victoria for donations. Price data was sourced from Trove and archived online news articles. A series of risograph posters were also produced as a final component.
The custom app was written in AppleScript via Applicator, functioning similarly to a standard POS application. Combined with a Datalogic barcode scanner and an Epson TM-T20 thermal printer, participants could scan a chosen product and print out its corresponding receipt.
Typefaces:
OT Jubilee by Off Type
Roboto Mono by Christian Robertson
From left to right: “Bougie” illustrations of everyday pantry items: egg, cooking oil, tomatoes (for vegetable), tuna (for canned food) and pasta (sauce)
Different packaging labels and uniquely assigned barcodes
Left/middle: scanned different receipt design with price comparison, related information and project summary. Right: Risograph poster with scannable barcodes
Receipts' scanning and printing process, demonstrated in studio
Speculative Branding
As the project revolves around a fictional grocery store, a speculative branding was also developed.
The visual identity includes standard brand assets such as a logo, visual motifs, typography and colour palette (which were adapted to the custom packaging) and serves as a parody of high-end delis and grocery stores (such as Harrods or Fortnum and Mason).
Typefaces: OT Jubilee by Off Type
Left: online shop website interface. Right: mobile app icon
Street billboard
From left to right: shopping bag, wrapping papers and tote bag merch
Quang Nguyễn
Communication Designer
is a Vietnamese design practitioner/illustrator currently based in Naarm (Melbourne), and an ongoing Master’s student of Communication Design at RMIT University.
Previously held a Bachelor of Communication (Advertising) degree and throughout years of accumulated independent design learning and practice, Quang is currently focused on brand illustration, brand identity, and communication design, with some of past high-profile clients including Sovico Group, RMIT, and UNESCO. He also frequently collaborates with Hands Collective, an award-winning brand consultancy based in Hanoi, and produces works recognised and featured by Behance, Dieline, and Pentawards.
[GMT+7]
Hanoi, Vietnam
[GMT+4]
Naarm, Australia
As a Vietnamese currently residing and working on the stolen lands in the Kulin Nation, I acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong peoples as the Traditional Owners, and recognise their deep and ongoing connection to these lands and waters. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty has never been ceded. It always was and always will be, Aboriginal land.