Cafe Cartel

The brief for Cafe Cartel instructed that they wanted a brand that stripped back all the unnecessary elements that was found in their current design. This fit in with their competition and ensured that they had a more professional and intentional aesthetic.

The direction that they wanted their redesign to take was a still to draw its DNA from the original aesthetic, i.e. influenced by Miami. Designing two design concepts based on colour, we had a choice between a daylight aesthetic or midnight. As they already contained neon lights set up in-store, we decide the midnight aesthetic was most suitable as the design choice in order to have neon throughout the whole brand.

From the new logo, we were able to design a new pattern to fill spaces and could be applied across physical and digital canvases. The goal behind the entire rebrand was to ensure that it was recognisable and stood out without including the word mark.

Quasimoda was the typeface chosen due to its large font family, supplying a variety of weights that served as the menus multiple paragraph elements. Additionally, it had characteristics that supported its legibility at a range of sizes, with each glyph created in a recognisable format.

The menu featured repeated columns in each section to provide a consistent aesthetic. Each section was paired alongside what customers could additionally purchase alongside initial orders so that they would not have to scan far.

Neon tubes were used as dividers and containers and changed colour, respectively.

To complement the printed menu, the arrangement was reconfigured to fit within the horizontal layout of the 1080p screens found above the bar. To fill in the blank space, the logo was expanded into a rotating pattern, that ‘faded’ out as it reached the menu.