Table of Contents
Summary
Gallery Espresso is a Georgia-based café chain that provides gallery space for local artists and hosts local musicians. Their target audience is composed of trendsetters who appreciate culture, art, and local entertainment.
With plans to launch the company nationally, Gallery Espresso is in need of a new brand strategy targeting males and females ages 18-50 in the US. This strategy will include a new logo design, color and font choices, promotional products, and application strategies.
Research
My approach began with researching competing US coffee chains and industry trends. In my findings, I concluded that today’s coffee consumer demands both a quality product and experience; and are willing to pay a premium for it. National competitors include Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, Dunkin’ Donuts, and McCafé. With such contenders, it is important for Gallery Espresso to distinguish itself amongst the competition both visually and experientially.
I broke my findings into three categories that I hope to distinguish the Gallery Espresso brand through:
Experience
Consumers are looking for companies that have a more personal touch and exhibit local flair. Gallery Espresso is positioned to stand out. Their inclusion of local musicians and artists will infuse a sense of community pride and comfort in the café experience.
Visuals
Competing coffee shops share a similar color palette of warm, browns, and reds, Gallery Espresso will differentiate through the use of more vibrant colors and types.
Marketing
Efforts will focus on promoting local ties, not just a corporate identity. Promotions will seek to promote participating artists and musicians as well as Gallery Espresso, demonstrating their emphasis on local culture and helping to reinforce a belief in supporting local business.
Design Decisions
After deciding the areas in which the Gallery Espresso brand needs to differentiate itself from other competitors I put together an initial color palette of orange, purple, green, and blue. These vibrant colors will be used to both distinguish from the competition and project a fun, eclectic, and modern image. Orange will be the primary brand color reflecting an image of happiness, creativity, success, and warmth. Green will be infused to reference peace, purple to indicate luxury, and blue to infuse trust in the brand.
My next step was to create a logo design. I chose a symbol that represented both the café name and its purpose, an abstracted coffee mug created from the lowercase letters “e” and “g”. It encompasses both the main purpose of providing quality coffee and the identity of the company name. I set the symbol in an orange offset square to highlight the brand color and provide dimension. For the logotype
I chose a warm brown to reference the color of coffee. I set the company location below the name as a way to reference the city it is in, creating local ties when the company launches nationally. So, when the next location opens in, say, Raleigh, North Carolina, the logo for the location would have Raleigh, NC below the Gallery Espresso name. The idea is to incorporate community ties with each chain location. The font I chose for the Gallery Espresso brand is Fontin Sans. I wanted a typeface that would project bold and modern sensibility. I felt that this face accomplished this with its bold strokes and slight serif references.
allow me to present concise information with blocks of type that would be large enough to remain readable but small enough to be easily digested on the screen. I also chose to incorporate the orange bullet character from the logo into my overall design, separating headline copy in a similar fashion as the logo city information. For headlines, I chose to continue with the Fontin Sans typeface as another way to incorporate the brand into the design.
Design Outcomes
My design successfully incorporates a unified brand image through the use of color, font choices, and a consistent layout. The layout structure provides flexibility and structure to the design while also injecting a sense of professionalism. I have not yet begun incorporating images into my design and hope to draw together imagery that remains consistent with the modern, upbeat brand that I am establishing.
