Crate & Barrel Signage — Sarah Gaynor Portfolio

Retail Signage . Crate and Barrel . 2020 - 2022
art direction . creative execution . production management

In 2021, I became the lead art director for Crate & Barrel’s retail signage. Partnering with the Crate visual merchandising team, I worked to create a more cohesive, elevated brand statement with our in-store signage. This meant reducing the visual clutter on many of our existing signs, cleaning up the font usage and sign layouts throughout the store as well as standardizing the sizes of the signs we created.

*cookware wall with new collection signage*

A key part of this signage revamp was look at our kitchen section. Previously there was very little signage to indicate that we had a larger assortment available online. We routinely only showed a few key pieces and large, expensive sets. This also made it difficult for couples coming in to create their wedding registry. They would often have to go home and add items online later.

I developed small 6x9 inch easel signs that could be placed near our key cookware collections. It would highlight some of the best-selling pieces with prices. Each sign also contained a QR code so that registrants could add items to their registry seamlessly while visiting the store. I also worked with our copywriting team to streamline the copy on each sign so the language we used was more user friendly and less overly technical.

This approach was also applied to our knife displays and key bakeware collections.

*feature signage for Crate’s kitchen line launch*

*feature signage for Crate’s new kitchen line*

My last signage initiative for Crate was a complete overhaul of the furniture collection signs. These had not been updated in many years and were starting to look dated. My goal was to modernize and refresh the design. I added a lifestyle image so the customer could not only get a better sense of the piece but could also pickup some styling ideas. We reviewed the copy on every collection, streamlining the information so the important details were easier to find. In order to reduce the amount of silos or illustrations shown, we added a QR code so the customer could view the whole collection without trying to show all of it on the sign.