Work 03  ·  Booth Design · Event Design · Experience Design

2026 Jeju K-Seafood Pop-up Store

A soft, playful underwater world where Jeju seafood is discovered rather than sold.

Role
Booth, event and experience design
Type
Retail pop-up promotion
Context
Jeju seafood export promotion, 2026
Scope
Concept, zoning, 3D design, graphics
04
Zones in the booth
05
Steps in the visitor journey
02
Interactive activities
01
Governing concept
01

Objective

Jeju K-Seafood Pop-Up Store presents Jeju seafood through the concept “The Hidden Gem of Jeju Blue,” inspired by Jeju’s ocean, sandy seabed, and Haenyeo culture.

The difficulty is that seafood promotion in an export market has to do two incompatible things at once. It must prove freshness, provenance and food-safety credentials to trade buyers, and it must feel light enough that a shopper walking past will stop, touch something and taste. A booth built as a fishmonger’s counter satisfies the first and repels the second. The design had to hold both audiences in one small footprint.

Goal 01
Make approach effortless, no threshold, no queue, no counter to be served at.
Goal 02
Convert curiosity into a tasting, and a tasting into a remembered product name.
Goal 03
Give visitors a reason to photograph and share the booth without prompting.
02

Context

Every competing pavilion sells the sea as abundance. Jeju’s advantage is that it can sell the sea as a place.

Blue on blue

Korean seafood stands converge on the same deep navy, the same chilled-display language. A booth in that palette disappears into its neighbours from ten metres away.

Product, not origin

Competitors lead with species and price. Jeju’s island identity, sandy seabed and Haenyeo divers are unused assets and cannot be copied by a mainland exporter.

Raw is a barrier

Whole fish on ice reads as trade-only. Softened forms, pale sand tones and packaged sampling let a general visitor engage before they are asked to buy.

03

Audience

The passer-by

Walking a long hall with no intention to stop. Gives the booth two seconds and one glance; will only enter if entry costs nothing.

The family group

Moves at the pace of the youngest member. An activity for the child buys the adult’s attention, and the photograph they take carries the booth further than any banner.

The trade buyer

Looking for supply credentials, not entertainment. Needs a quieter edge of the booth where product, packaging and provenance can be read properly.

Journey map · attention against effort
Notice
Approach
Play
Taste
Survey
Redeem

Design intent, not measured data. Bar length is the share of visitors the design expects to carry to each step; the drop after tasting is what the reward redemption is there to slow.

Survey instrument · four questions at redemption
  1. Had you heard of Jeju olive flounder before today?
  2. Which of the three samples would you buy?
  3. What stopped you at the booth, the wall, the pool, or the tasting?
  4. Where would you expect to buy this product?

Kept to four questions so it can be completed standing, holding a sample cup. Results feed the next event’s zoning; no figures are published here.

Arrival Engagement Capture
04

Concept

The Hidden Gem of Jeju Blue

The event creates a soft and playful underwater experience where visitors can discover, taste, and engage with Jeju seafood in an approachable way. The booth is built as a shallow seabed: pale sand floor, rounded rock and coral forms, a wave-cut wall, and product raised on soft plinths so that browsing feels like finding something rather than being sold to.

Hand-drawn isometric concept sketch of the Jeju K-Seafood pop-up store
Concept sketch. The seabed set out in line before colour: wave-cut wall carrying the name, rock and coral bank behind it, tewak pool raised at the centre, product counter curving along the aisle, photo booth volume standing free, and the tasting counter on its own patch of sand.
Zone A
Seabed display

Wave-form wall, aquarium graphics and packaged product on a rounded sand-toned counter.

Zone B
Tewak pool

A lucky-draw basin borrowed from the Haenyeo float, the one activity that stops a passer-by outright.

Zone C
Underwater photo booth

A framed opening with fish and kelp graphics, sized for two people and a phone on a tripod.

Zone D
Tasting counter

Set apart on the quiet side, with induction cooking, cups, survey tablet and reward hand-out in one movement.

05

Zoning and circulation

  1. 01
    Open corner entry

    Two sides left fully open; the sand-toned floor graphic runs out past the booth line to pull traffic across the threshold.

  2. 02
    Wave wall as backdrop

    The tallest element sits on the far corner so the booth name is legible down the aisle and closes the view from behind.

  3. 03
    Activity in front, trade behind

    Pool and product counter meet the aisle; the tasting counter and photo frame sit deeper, so a crowd never blocks the entrance.

  4. 04
    One loop, one exit

    Circulation is a single curve: play, taste, survey, redeem, out, no dead end and no crossing flow.

  5. 05
    Service kept out of sight

    Stock, chiller and staff bags live inside the closed counter volumes rather than in a back room the plan does not have.

Line plan of the Jeju K-Seafood pop-up store
Plan drawing. Wave wall and rock line along the top, tewak pool upper right, product counter running the lower left corner, tasting counter and camera position lower right, and the sand line cutting a single curve across the middle. Included because the whole zoning argument is legible in one drawing.
06

The experience, step by step

01
Discover

Seabed floor and wave wall read from the aisle.

02
Play

Tewak pool lucky draw, or a photo in the underwater frame.

03
Taste

Sampling handed over at the tasting counter.

04
Answer

A short survey completed while standing.

05
Redeem

Reward collected, product name carried home.

Before
Read from the aisle

Everything a passer-by needs to decide is above waist height and outside the booth line: name, sea, one activity visibly in progress. Nothing asks for a commitment yet.

During
Play earns the tasting

The pool and the photo frame are the price of entry, free, quick, and they put the visitor in the middle of the booth, where the product counter is already at hand.

After
Reward, survey, share

The exchange at the end is deliberate: the visitor gives four answers and receives something to take away, and the photograph they already took does the rest of the work off-site.

07

Design

Isometric render of the Jeju K-Seafood pop-up store
The governing view. Every decision in the case study is visible here: the wave-cut wall carrying the name, rounded sand-toned volumes with no sharp edge at child height, the tewak pool raised to the centre, and the tasting counter set on the far side with its own small piece of seabed so the quiet zone still belongs to the same world.
Front elevation render of the pop-up store
Front elevation render. Sets the height hierarchy, wave wall tallest, photo booth volume behind it, counters at hand height, and shows the tewak float and rock line grounding the whole thing.
Render of the tewak pool at the centre of the booth
Tewak pool, close. The lucky-draw basin drawn as a soft blob at leaning height, with the prize plinth beside it, the detail the whole entry sequence depends on.
The built pop-up store seen from the mall floor
Built, from the aisle. The wave wall, the screen, the product counter and the tewak float read as one object from twenty metres, the thing the sketch could only claim.
Visitor inside the underwater photo frame
The photo frame in use. Cut-out fish hung on wire at three depths, so a single visitor at the counter appears to be standing inside the water.
The photo booth backdrop seen straight on
The backdrop straight on. Haenyeo diver, Dol Hareubang, coral and rock built up in layers, the composition every visitor photograph is framed against.
Visitors taking samples beside the tewak pool
Sampling and the pool from above. Freezer on the left, cups in hand, staff working the basin, the moment the design was built to produce, with the crowd standing outside the booth line rather than blocking it.
The whole booth from the floor above
From the floor above. Shows the single loop working: pool centre, product left, tasting and photo booth right, and the sand-coloured floor pulling the whole footprint out into the atrium.
Queue forming at the tewak pool
The queue that formed at the pool. Useful evidence and the flaw named in the reflection: the line for the draw runs across the route to the tasting counter.
Packaged product on the display counter
Product at eye level. Packs raised on clear risers with the fish cut-outs between them, so the range reads as a display rather than as stock.
08

Outcome and reflection

A game is a better door than a greeter

The pool did the work the staff would otherwise have to do. Once someone reaches into the basin they are already inside the booth, and the tasting no longer needs an invitation.

Softness carried the provenance

Rounded forms and sand tones let Jeju’s island story be told without a single fish on ice, which is what separated the booth from the navy stands either side of it.

What I would do differently

Two activities and one tasting counter on a single loop puts the queue where visitors need to pass. I would give the redemption point its own edge of the booth and set the survey on a fixed stand, so the counter is never doing three jobs at once.

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