Branding a Gift Shop Inside Vancouver’s Oldest Chinatown Building

When the Chinese Canadian Museum asked us to help launch a gift shop inside the historic Wing Sang building on Pender Street, we knew from the start that this wasn’t a typical retail branding project.

The Wing Sang building is the oldest standing structure in Vancouver’s Chinatown. It was built in 1889 by Yip Sang, a merchant, community leader, and one of the most significant figures in early Chinese Canadian history. Any brand we created would need to live up to that legacy.

Introducing 1889 Trading Co.

We named the shop after the year Yip Sang established the original Wing Sang Company, a trading house that connected communities across continents from this very address. The name does more than reference history. It positions the shop as a continuation of what that building has always been: a place of exchange, culture, and community.

From there, we built a complete visual identity system. The logomark features a custom numeral lockup where the two 8s interlock to form an infinity symbol: a nod to the cultural significance of eight as a number of prosperity and good fortune. Scalloped seal icons, custom illustrations, and patterns drawn from traditional textiles and architecture round out a system that feels rooted without feeling like a museum artifact.

The full identity spans retail signage, bilingual applications, packaging, event posters, social media templates, and a brand guidelines document the museum team can carry forward independently.

As Vancouver locals, it’s one of the most meaningful projects we’ve worked on to date,

→ View the full project
1889 Trading Co. Case Study