Identity and online store for a retro gaming and collectibles shop in the heart of Liège, from the logo lettered by hand and the sign over the street to a custom WooCommerce store.
The context
In the summer of 2019, an old friend opened a shop in the heart of Liège, a place for collectors, with retro video games, vinyl records, figurines and statues, and old guitars. He asked me to help him give it an identity.
My first job was the logo, then the business card and the sign that hung outside the shop, so passers-by would see it from the street. I still have that sign today.
The logo
The idea was to be retro and modern at the same time. The name is lettered by hand, while the two other words come from an old typeface, with a slight shadow and a fine line that gives them depth.
Fine lines around the words say what the shop sells. Above them, a vinyl turntable with its record. Below, a directional pad and two buttons, for retro gaming.
Some sketches
At the time, I was taking up calligraphy again, and it was a good chance to practise some of the words. The sketches show the project's first name, ending in House.
The prints
The first printed piece was the business card, and the flyer came later to promote the online store. There were also social media visuals for the shop's and the online store's communication.
The online store
In the autumn of 2019, an online store opened alongside the shop. A WooCommerce store built on WordPress, with a custom theme and my usual tools, such as Advanced Custom Fields. At launch, it already held more than 300 items in twenty categories, mostly video games, then figurines and statues. When the health crisis closed the shop's doors the following year, it took over, alongside an eBay store.
With the online store, Retro House became Retro Shop, a clearer name. The logo kept its turntable and its directional pad, Shop joined Retro in the old typeface, and the name lettered by hand stayed on top.
I was helping a friend in my free time, just as I was starting out as a consultant on a very large project, with only my weekends and evenings available. So I drew a partial mockup of the home page and designed the rest directly in code, to give him as much as I could in the time I had. My previous experience at a web agency, where I had shipped many custom online stores, helped me enormously.
Technology choices
- WordPress
- WooCommerce
- Advanced
Custom Fields - Stripe
A store the shop could run itself. Products, stock and orders managed from WordPress, without touching the code.
A theme drawn for the shop. A custom theme and product pages, in the project's colours.
Pages shaped to measure. Advanced Custom Fields to edit the content of the pages from the administration.
Secure online payment. Customers paid with Stripe and received their orders through bpost or Mondial Relay, anywhere in Belgium and the neighbouring countries.
The end of the adventure
Not every project gets the story it deserves. The shop opened on a busy street, which then closed for several years for the works on the Liège tramway, and the health crisis came at the same time. In early 2022, the online store closed too.
Some projects close too soon, for reasons nobody controls. This one gave a friend's dream its face, and I still have its sign.