Soph Collins | Graphic Design

Project Statement | Stinkweeds

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Stinkweeds is an independent record store located in uptown Phoenix, Arizona. Established in 1987, they provide music lovers with quality new and used records, CDs, and cassettes. With the wide range of music being sold from a wide range of genres and eras, Stinkweeds needs to capture that scope of history while still appealing to modern, and increasingly younger, music collectors. The ambience of the store, both inside and out, has inspirations in 90s grunge, while the signage draws more on 50s aesthetics; though that may seem to clash, when applied, the two work well together. This seamless combination of cool and playful is essential to the character of Stinkweeds as a small business primarily serving local customers, and it had to carry over into the redesign. With a store like this, it’s difficult not to completely eradicate its undeniably intimate and personal feeling by overhauling the branding. I hesitated to start redesigning anything because I’m very fond of the original branding, which isn’t tied down by rules; however, it is a wonderful challenge to redesign something I like quite a lot, and to attempt toeing the line between cohesion and a lack thereof. 

The major goal of this project was to keep the eccentricities of Stinkweeds alive. It was important that the new logo retained its mid century flair with the thin, slab-serif type, along with the shape behind it, which looks like a flat record. I customized the type and stretched the serifs to create a more unique, bouncy look and made the serifs of the ‘k’ and ‘w’ form a needle over a record. The original logo has four pointed stars, so to carry that over into the redesign, I created a simple, eight pointed star that fit the secondary geometric typeface, Compagnon Roman. This typeface satisfies the 'cool’ part of the ‘cool and playful’ equation, and it is used for any body text as well as for a simpler secondary logo. There are certain elements of the branding that shift, others that are stable, and some that would simply be up to the staff. The bright green color is a through line, but the logo varies. The star becomes a motif, but the prices on the tags are always handwritten. Any illustration is free to ebb and flow when it comes to style. In the end, I’m confident I kept Stinkweeds’ unique flare while bringing together elements that add cohesion.