Project Overview
Karla Kahvi is a new local business owner set to open a coffee shop in three months. She need help coming up with a brand and suite of identity designs for a new local coffee shop named Bean + Leaf. In addition to creating a brand style guide for shop, I also did a one-page design comp for her website.
Goals & Problems
Karla is excited to open the coffee shop in her neighborhood. Karla is skilled at running the business and financial aspects of the shop but needs a lot of guidance in creating a brand design that fits her products and the neighborhood. I was tasked with providing a color scheme, type scale, logo, icon pair, a collection of brand images, a social media header, a brand style guide and a design comp for her website.
Design Process
Before I put pen to paper to create Karla’s brand, I had to do field research to get a better understanding of what potential customers wanted from their local coffee shop. As a small business, Karla must stand out in the field of larger chains. Our field research showed that customers want a place that not only allowed them to sit and stay a while, but also a place to try a variety of coffee and tea. The Bean + Leaf’s customers are trying to make a more concerted effort to make better choices on their food and drink intake to help impact their overall mood and life.
Karla wants her shop to be fun, exciting, and welcoming. She is very big on hospitality and being a welcoming presence for her neighbors. She wanted that reflected in her brand identity.
With that in mind, I chose a color scheme (Black Olive, Tulip, and Tea Green) that evoked Karla’s sincerity about providing a warm, fun, welcoming environment for her customers. For the type scale I chose Rampart One as the main brand font, while PT Sans Narrow is a simple san serif font that will compliment it.
In addition to the style guide, I also created a social media header and a website landing page. To keep the pages connected, I used the same header image for both pages. For the website, I used Black Olive as the background color at 70% opacity to evoke the warmth that Karla wants her customers to feel when they come to her café. I made use of the logo and icon pair, as well as mocking up a t-shirt to be sold at the café and on the website.
Conclusions & Takeaways
The most challenging part of this project was marrying Karla’s ideas for what she wanted the store to be and what customers are looking for in a new business coming into their neighborhood. I worked with Karla to ensure that her goals and the neighborhood’s desires were met through her mission statement.
It was also important to complete the project in a timely manner so that Karla could build up her online presence ahead of the grand opening.
