Market Halls
Intro
As the founding designer for Market Halls, a growing food hall group, I have been embedded in the business from the ground up - building processes, understanding evolving business needs, and ensuring every department has the design tools and brand assets required to operate effectively. Over the course of our partnership, Market Halls scaled from 3 sites to 5 and the scope of design work has grown in parallel with the business.
Brand Design
Design Systems
UX/UI
User Experience
Wayfinding Systems
POS Digital Screens
Campaigns
RESULTS:
In 3 years we scaled from 3 sites to 5.
3 million people through our doors in 2025 (based on 5 sites).
Grew from 35K to 56K combined social media followers in 2 years.
80K unique monthly website visitors.
Grew CRM database from 50K to 100K in 2 years.
50% email open rate (industry average 36%) with a 15% CTR (industry average 2.5%)
10,000+ people signed up to our Paddington launch database.
Year
/
2022-2026
Client
/
Market Halls
As the business strategy evolved, so too did the demands on the brand. I have been leading the development of the Market Halls design system and brand guidelines, keeping them agile enough to flex with shifting business goals while maintaining consistency across all touchpoints. Having pushed the original brand as far as it could go, a full rebrand is now on the horizon - a process we are approaching thoughtfully, beginning with brand positioning and ensuring all stakeholders and teams are aligned on who Market Halls are and what they stand for.
Working closely with the marketing team, I have designed integrated campaigns across digital and print channels, balancing brand consistency with a focus on engagement and conversion. A key ongoing focus has been refining the campaign process itself, improving cross-functional ways of working so that each year runs more efficiently than the last. To reinforce marketing at the point of sale, I have also produced motion design content for in-venue digital screens, bringing the brand to life in the physical space.
Acquiring an existing food hall and building one from scratch present very different challenges. For acquired sites, the incumbent team continues to operate with our in-house support, requiring a more considered integration of brand and operations. For our Paddington site (constructed as Paddington Square was developed) I worked closely with the property team from the earliest stages, contributing to hoarding designs, wayfinding systems, and select interior finishes to ensure branded touchpoints were woven throughout the space as guests moved through it. The Paddington launch was supported by a full campaign: influencer partnerships, a golden ticket giveaway, office competitions targeting the local area, TfL advertising, and a street activation on launch day where chocolate bar flyers were handed out with one concealing a golden ticket.
When Market Halls launched Games Hall at its Oxford Street site, I led the brand identity work alongside the marketing team, developing a sub-brand that sat distinctly within the wider Market Halls family without disrupting it. The process began with competitor research across venues including Big Penny Social and Kerb Social Club, exploring the energy and experience we wanted to create. The resulting identity draws on gaming-inspired graphics, star bursts, transcendent shapes, and halftone textures to create something deliberately anarchic and raw - punk energy meets retro gaming aesthetic. The brand was rolled out across vinyl wraps, in-space wayfinding, digital screens, and zonal graphics, as well as shaping the tone and language used across all marketing communications.
We have mapped and refined the customer journey across key touchpoints, from the booking experience through to the in-venue visit. By identifying friction points and opportunities, the work has focused on improving guest satisfaction, extending dwell time, and driving deeper engagement. Wayfinding has been a particular area of focus, from the new Paddington site to more complex existing sites where navigation was creating confusion. My approach involved designing wayfinding solutions, then user-testing them with staff and customers to observe how people moved through the space and iterating based on real behaviour.
I have collaborated closely with our developer on the Market Halls website across several projects. A significant piece of work was redesigning the events page. As the volume of events grew substantially, the existing page could no longer accommodate the scale or complexity of the programme. I designed a new solution in Figma, working iteratively with the developer to ensure the build could surface all relevant event information clearly, handling both the interaction design and the visual presentation of a high volume of content.
