A self-initiated concept project: a complete identity for an imaginary neighbourhood café and small-batch roastery, from logo to packaging to a homepage for its online bean shop. Scope: logo, brand guidelines, packaging and website design. Imagery: stock photography. The brief Warm in the café, credible on the shelf. The goals were: A mark that works from a 16px icon up to a shop sign Guidelines a team can follow without a designer A homepage that sells beans and brings people into the café From safe to distinctive Round one's badges and labels read as generic café branding, so round two turned the name into small ideas a customer can retell. I explored four routes: a latte fern, a steam fiddlehead, a hedgehog mascot and an unfurling wordmark. The final mark: Latte Fern From above, a latte's rosetta already looks like a fern, so the mark says "café" and "Fernhollow" in one picture. It feels discovered, not invented. The cup is tilted 28° so the handle reads at a glance A sage saucer gives a solid edge in the leaf colour The Fraunces wordmark echoes the cup's soft curves Brand system Logo suite: six versions, from shop signs down to a 16px browser icon, with a simplified mark below 48px Colour: Oat, Espresso, Sage and Caramel. Contrast testing showed cream text on caramel buttons failed accessibility checks, so buttons use espresso text, and two deeper shades are kept for small text Type: Fraunces for headings and DM Sans for body text, both free Google Fonts that work on the web, in Canva and in print Applications and website The system was tested on five touchpoints: the website header, a kraft bean bag, a takeaway cup, a business card and a social post. The homepage is built to sell beans and fill seats. Every section ends in a clear action: a hero with "Shop beans" and "Visit the café", proof points, this week's roasts, subscriptions, the café with directions, and a newsletter sign-up. It stacks into one column on phones. Outcome Six logo files, a brand guide, packaging and print templates, and a homepage ready to build. Fernhollow is an imaginary client, so this piece shows the full process rather than real-world results.
- Brand Strategist
- Graphic Designer
- Web Designer