Tim’s Hot Honey
Environmental Pop-up
Environmental pop-up I made for Tim’s Hot Honey potato chips. This was a solo spin off project from a project made in collaboration with Davin Spridgen. The initial concept involved the Washington State Ferry and a warm snack in cold weather. For the full environmental pop-up I took the concept and ran with it, creating a food truck from an RV camper and themed it around a winter cabin.
This project is a follow-up to a project made in collaboration with Davin Spridgen. The original project was to find a way to sell Tim’s Hot Honey Potato chips in Seattle. We had wound up on an approach that utilized the Washington State Ferry and leveraged the fact that the ferry can be a cold experience even in the middle of summer. To demonstrate our approach, we settled on a winter cabin type look for the ferry takeover that involved me designing a billboard that demonstrated a cozier, more intimate take using a first-person perspective.
The pop-up itself was instead a solo project. Initial passes involved cargo container storefronts near the waterfront with hot food for the wintertime. I kept the cabin aesthetic the whole way through, but the scope of what I needed to make quickly outgrew the cargo container. I took the new direction into designing a full food truck that could operate around the Seattle area. To keep the outdoors feel, I chose to use an RV camper as a template for the food truck, with a wrap that had cabin walls and icicles. For the employee uniform, I wear classic blue jeans and a flannel jacket combo, with the addition of knit beard hats. Not only would the hats make a humorous and approachable appearance, but they would also be something that would be sold at the truck to further draw attention to the pop-up.
Finally, I spent a good amount of time researching exactly what kinds of foods pair well with hot honey flavor and potato chips. I quickly found that hearty, savory dishes were the best option. I had to cross-reference these dishes with those that would also appear in classic mountain terrain Americana. I eventually settled on chili as a natural balance between the two requirements. The use of chili also meant that I could add a touchpoint of marketing by serving the chili directly from the potato chip bags themselves.
Why it Matters:
This project shows how I can take one creative concept—a cozy winter cabin—and carry it across an entire brand experience, from a food truck built on an RV to branded merchandise to a custom menu item. When the original cargo container concept outgrew its space, I redesigned the whole building around a food truck without losing the aesthetic, showing I can adapt quickly under real production constraints. The chili recipe and chip-bag serving idea also reflect research-driven design, grounding the concept in what resonates with the audience. Overall, it demonstrates skills like brand consistency, systems thinking, and adaptive problem-solving—all directly relevant to a design role that goes beyond one deliverable.
Process
Problem to Solve: The potato chip category is a crowded market in Seattle, how can Tim’s Hot Honey chips stand out in Seattle.
Solution: I chose to pursue the idea of a warm meal in cold weather. To this end the environmental details were all made to reflect a lumberjack’s cabin. The main installation is a food truck that uses an RV camper instead of a typical box truck. Not only is the camper itself made to look like a winter cabin but the workers also dress as lumberjacks and serve food on tree-cutout trays. Finally, I researched food that would pair well with Hot Honey potato chips and struck on chili as being the most in theme, which also allows me to serve the food directly out of the chip bag for bonus marketing.
Research and insights: After doing some research on the kinds of foods that would pair well with Hot Honey potato chips I settled on Chili as it would be the most in theme and allow me to sneak in some extra branding by serving it directly out of the chip bag.
Project Type: environmental
Timeframe: 4 weeks (February-March 2026)
Solo Project initial concept project made in collaboration with Davin Spridgen
Tools: Photoshop
Overview: Building on the team project in the Fall class for design thinking I decided to continue building out the idea of selling Tim’s Hot Honey chips in cold weather. To this point I settled on a food truck concept built around an outdoor camper van. To keep it in theme with the warm food/cold weather idea I built the camper to be themed as a winter cabin and leaned into lumberjack imagery.
Characteristics: Cozy, Masculine, Cold-outside