The Canary Bodega —
VR Holiday Webstore Experience
Merchandise + Packaging Design for an Immersive VR Storefront
Role: Graphic Designer
Team: Canary Marketing
Photography: @nataliemstudios · @canarymarketing
Tools: Adobe Creative Cloud
Background
For the 2023 holiday season, Canary Marketing created an immersive virtual gift store featuring a collection of custom-designed merchandise and packaging that visitors could explore and purchase through a VR storefront.
The experience was built around the concept of an Italian Bodega—a playful interpretation of the neighborhood corner store, drawing inspiration from the food, drinks, signage, and everyday products that fill its shelves.
Each designer was tasked with developing a merchandise item and pairing it with custom food-inspired packaging, creating a collection that blurred the line between apparel, product design, and familiar grocery-store ephemera.
The Concept
My assignment was to design a custom sweatshirt and its corresponding packaging.
Playing into the Italian food-store concept, I approached the sweatshirt as though it were a freshly made pizza—designing a custom pizza box as the garment's packaging. The familiar format created an unexpected unboxing experience while helping the product feel naturally integrated into the larger Italian Bodega world.
The challenge was to create something that worked on multiple levels: as a wearable piece of merchandise, as a physical packaged product, and as an object compelling enough to discover within the virtual storefront.
Design Approach
The sweatshirt and packaging were developed as a cohesive system rather than two separate pieces. Graphic elements, typography, illustration, and color were carried across both applications, allowing the pizza box to become an extension of the garment itself.
The visual language drew from recognizable Italian food packaging and neighborhood shop graphics, reinterpreting those references through Canary's playful, contemporary design sensibility.
By transforming an everyday pizza box into branded merchandise packaging, the final design brought a sense of humor and familiarity to the experience while reinforcing the immersive world of the store.
Packaging Design
Impact
The final sweatshirt and custom pizza box became part of Canary Marketing's larger holiday merchandise collection, displayed within the Italian Bodega VR storefront alongside products created by the rest of the design team.
The project brought together branding, apparel, packaging, and experiential design, demonstrating how a physical product and its packaging can contribute to a larger narrative and digital experience.
Social Media
Most Ordered and reordered item.
See them worn all over sAN FRANCISCO BY CLIENTS. A pieve d merch that resonates and is well kept. meaningful delivery. interactivity and re-use of the packaging items,
