Coffee House Signage
Challenge:
As a wholesale coffee provider to cafes, Great Basin Coffee Company hadn't yet made any print material available for wholesale partners. Coffee shops that serve specialty quality coffee often like to highlight the roaster's coffee that they use.
Great Basin supplies coffee in a variety of cafes across Utah, and I wanted them to have something they could give to partners that could be displayed in the cafe.
Constraints:
I had around 5-6 hours to create this so that I could deliver the file to the client, Great Basin. Due to the time constraint, I leveraged previous design work I had been doing with typography. I also leveraged a pre-existing logo (circular and rectangular logos) that I did not create.
Intention:
The intention behind this design exploration was to create a piece that could be used as a small 5x7 card on top of a counter, or hung on a large poster. I wanted the design to be legible at almost any size. In addition to size, I wanted the design to maintain strong design principles that would communicate quality, simplicity, and clarity.
Exploration:
Great Basin provided a few sketches to help provide some direction to the design.
In all honesty, I struggled to maintain and explore options with the layouts that were given in the sketches. I had a hard time using the logo with text. I had access to two logos, one circular, the other rectangular. The sketches suggested a centered design, and I couldn't seem to make that work.
I explored a variety of other visual designs as you can see below.
Iteration on design:
I ultimately settled on iterating on the final layout from the exploration above.
In this exploration, I played around with spacing, alignment, sizing, and the location of the pre-existing logo. I had 9 variations on this design to choose from.
Conclusion:
My personal favorite versions are numbers 3 and 9. I like 3 for its simplicity and clarity, and it removes the strong pull from the logo. At the same time, I like 9 for the logo. The logo is the most recognizable piece to the brand, and I wanted to have a version that kept that brand communication.
