Dalziel & Pow, the global strategy and design studio, has created a storytelling-led way-finding, retail strategy and design for the new Guinness Open Gate Brewery London.
Doors open to the public for Guinness Open Gate Brewery London on December 11th, offering visitors the chance to experience the magic of Guinness across brewing, food, retail, and community. The new 54,000 ft² venue spans three different buildings, multiple entrances and exits, and is located on the site of the historic Old Brewer’s Yard in The Yards in London’s Covent Garden.
Dalziel & Pow, the studio behind the immersive Ingredients experience and retail design of the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, has designed the site’s Guinness Good Things pop-up store and the Guinness Goods Market Store along with all the internal and external way-finding and signage for the entire site.
Dynamic, innovative retail design
The Guinness Good Things store, apop-up space in the Guinness Open Gate Brewery London, is a creative, dynamic store that aims to mix the Guinness magic with new ideas and purposeful collaboration. The space is designed to house a series of collaborations between Guinness and artists, designers, makers and brands such as Lazy Oaf. The collaborations are short-term installations spotlighting a selection of goods re-interpreting and celebrating Guinness in new ways.
The concept store sits within a beautiful industrial shell featuring textural, tactical materials and super scale hand-painted murals. The store has a flexible modular design system that can be easily adapted to allow for a total takeover by the guest artist or brand. The impactful digital façade of the store on Neal Street features content both from the guest brand and from Guinness.
The Guinness Goods Market Store in the Mercer building houses an abundant, energetic and localised retail ‘market’ that invites people to enjoy the Guinness brand in social and creative ways. The approach to the design is to retain and hero the industrial shell and materiality, and to create visual links to the Guinness retail portfolio. Collaborative experiences include the personalisation area offering customers the opportunity to customise bottles and the ‘Our Beers’ wall.
Wayfinding that’s distinctly Guinness and celebrates Covent Garden
Guinness Open Gate Brewery occupies multiple buildings across an historic and complex Quarter, therefore way-finding had to functionally assist both planned and unplanned visitors, giving them a sense of what’s on offer and how to locate each offer, while guiding flow around the site. The concept behind the wayfinding throughout the site is “Discover the Unexpected”. The design is creative, playful and distinctly Guinness, and reflects the vibrancy of the brand while aligning with the creativity and character of the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. The aim is to convey brand warmth, tell authentic stories and make people smile in a way that only Guinness can.
External wayfinding
External wayfinding takes inspiration from the iconic visual language of Guinness.
Wall-mounted black-and-white directory panels and bus stops signs are designed to evoke the look of a perfectly poured pint. Crafted with a deep matte black body and a crisp white “head” section, the signs mirror the appearance of a Guinness pint while remaining clean, contemporary, and legible. Positioned at key entry points and junctions, these pint-inspired signs guide visitors seamlessly throughout the site, acting as both navigational tools and brand touchpoints.
Behind the surface of the directories lies a gradient of bright colours reflecting the colour code of each building – and the colours and magic inside a pint of Guinness. The wayfinding also features distinctive black arrows, and hand-painted signs on the brickwork, navigating people to different locations. Visitors can follow a trail of mini golden harps mounted at eye level on each building — each one hand-crafted and beautifully made.
The main entrance on Mercer Street is boldly branded with key brand assets applied with a refined balance of 3D signage and a large-scale hand-painted Guinness logo. The entrance tunnels to the site on Shelton Street and Langley Street feature layers of coloured banners hanging from the black ceiling. A ‘Covent Garden’ graphic is applied on the walls of the tunnel at Shelton Street, interspersed with golden harps.
Internal way-finding
Dalziel & Pow developed a robust internal system and introduced a cast of playful supporting characters illustrated by Mason London. These colourful Guinness icons — including the toucan and sea lion made famous by John Gilroy, the creative force behind many of the brand’s most iconic campaigns — interact with the signage to guide people through the buildings.
Building on the concept of “Discover the Unexpected”, each journey becomes a storytelling opportunity, encouraging visitors to engage and learn something new as they make their way through the buildings. Large, hand-drawn facts guide visitors up and down the staircases, turning each transition between floors into part of the Guinness story. These shareable, playful ‘pub facts’ are memorable, surprising, and closely tied to the character of the brand.
The windows in Gilroy’s Loft – a restaurant located on the top floor of the site – are adorned with playful scenes straight out of Gilroy’s sketchbook with his characters, including the zookeeper and the ostrich, interacting with each other and the space itself.
Key moments on the journey become statement walls, such as on the top floor of the Mercer Walk building, visitors are greeted with a large-scale painted “Fáilte”, the Irish word for “welcome”, and “Sláinte”, which means “health” and is used as a toast, similar to saying “cheers”.
Sarah Fairhurst, Creative Director at Dalziel & Pow, said: “Our design across way-finding, signage and retail supports Guinness Open Gate Brewery London to land in its Covent Garden neighbourhood with confidence. We took every opportunity to communicate the warmth and uniquely creative personality of Guinness, tell authentic stories and engage communities and visitors in creative and thought-provoking ways.”
Source: Dalziel & Pow
You must be logged in to post a comment Login