Postscript was planned as a cafe, bakery and market in San Francisco's Jackson Square. It had no name, no menu and no walls yet. For a year I turned its open questions into things people could hold, move or taste.
The brief, in our own deck's words: an exciting, yet profitable market, where choosing any one part first boxes in the rest. I started with store visits and a written list of everything we were only assuming.
With two outside researchers we ran an eight-week study: expert interviews, store visits and card sorts with customers. I led the experience side.
A card sort: what would you buy here?
Draw your day, one of the exercises.
Nobody put classes and events in the no pile, so they went into the service plan.
The research wall.
The market concept, broken into offer cards.
We pulled the year into a 36-slide market design deck. The idea had to live where three things overlap: what we offer, how we serve it, and the space it happens in.
Offer, service and space, from the market design deck.
The offer, summarized.
The service. Classes and events became “Dare to engage further.”
Instead of arguing over floor plans, I built the store in foam core on the architect's plans, twice. The team moved the pieces until the line, the bar and the shelves worked.
Version one, November 2021.
Version two, April 2022.
Rearranging it in a workshop.
We tested with real things: croissants from different bakeries side by side, a survey code on the coffee tin, packaging sketched and voted on. For each name we took seriously I designed the labels, printed them, put them on real bottles and shot them on studio paper.
One of the label tests, shot on studio paper.
A blind croissant test.
A survey code on the coffee tin.
Packaging, sketched and voted on.
Juice labels I designed and printed, stocked.
I co-wrote the staffing model with the operations lead, mapping every role to a zone on the floor and a shift.
I wrote the brief for the branding agency, and they made the final name and identity. Postscript opened after I left.
Also: a 36-slide market plan and a Webflow store prototype.