Hunky Dory Records
A record store with beer on tap, brought into the vinyl revival with its mid-century roots intact.
Hunky Dory Records
Independent record store and taproom
Brand identity, guidelines, website, merchandise, beer cans, signage and store environment
A record store with beer on tap.
Hunky Dory had the records and a rare extra: local beer on tap, across stores in Raleigh, Cary, Durham and Apex, NC.
With a move into a new flagship coming up, the brand, the website and the in-store experience all needed to catch up.
Stuck in a groove.
The brand said none of it. The logo was dated, every website update meant waiting on an outside developer, and the new space needed a full in-store experience.
Turn it up. Pour one, too.
We agreed on two goals: bring the brand into the modern vinyl revival without losing its mid-century roots, and make the beer on tap impossible to miss.
One insight tied it together. The appeal of vinyl is the experience, so every decision came back to that.
It’s all in the sleeve.
The logo is the second before the needle drops: a record halfway out of its sleeve. I stripped the old heritage back to an HD mark cut with record grooves and one line, Music · Beer · Vibes. Vintage record-label cues with a modern edge, built for merch, packaging and signage.
Type stacks music genres, with red letters that spell Hunky Dory if you look twice. A nine-square grid of photos, color and letterforms works on any format. A written guideline keeps every store on brand.
The greatest hits.
Flyers and posters carry the photo grid on the front and every genre and store on the back. Hoodies, totes, pins, buttons and stickers live under one line: Everything is Hunky Dory. Spoof band stickers riff on classic logos, made to end up on guitar cases and laptops.
Branded beer cans make the taps impossible to miss, and one new website for every store is one the team updates themselves.
In the new flagship, murals, signage and artwork guide you through the space, with vintage posters and rare finds rewarding anyone who keeps digging.
Merch and beer both turned up.
The two things the store needed to sell beyond records both rose after launch. The new website brought more traffic and made promotions easy to run in-house.
Every piece, from the logo to the beer can, answered to the same idea, so the store finally feels like one thing.
“Adam completely nailed our brand. He brought that mid-century vinyl feel into the present without losing our soul, and giving us a site we can actually update ourselves ahead of the shop move was a game changer. Couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”
