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Varme Cafe
Brewing Comfort, Redefining Identity
Formerly Merry Hill Coffee & Teas, Varme Cafe in the Central Coast offers a wide range of drinks and meals. Despite its variety, the cafe has struggled to stand out. To address this, the business is rebranding to create a fresh identity that better connects with its community and stakeholders.
Year: 2020
Project Type: Personal Project
Produced: Independently
Varme Cafe
Brewing Comfort, Redefining Identity
Formerly Merry Hill Coffee & Teas, Varme Cafe in the Central Coast offers a wide range of drinks and meals. Despite its variety, the cafe has struggled to stand out. To address this, the business is rebranding to create a fresh identity that better connects with its community and stakeholders.
Year: 2020
Project Type: Personal Project
Produced: Independently
Objective
To execute a thorough and strategic rebrand for Merry Hill Coffee & Teas, encompassing all aspects of its identity to better reflect its core values and connect with its audience.
Research
Research is essential to my design process, helping me understand the subject and audience. I start with a clear plan to guide a focused approach. This market understanding and awareness of trends shape my design decisions, ensuring they are relevant and effective. You can view the complete market research here.
- Gamers 26-35 years old play for eight hours 12 minutes per week. This increased more than 25 percent in the last year. (Limelight Networks)
- Video gamers spend an average of 7.1 hours (seven hours, seven minutes) each week playing games. This is an increase of 19.3 percent in the last year. (Limelight Networks)
- Understand the market of related to coffee shops
- Identify the target audience of Merry Hills
- Learn about how the main competitors of Merry Hills are catering to customers’ needs
- Understand the problem related to the current brand
- Identify the visual language related to coffee
- Who is the target audiences?
- Who are the main competitors of Merry Hills, and how do they serve the consumers?
- What are some of the common features of coffee?
- What are some of the reasons for buying the coffee?
- How do people find coffee they would like to drink?
Primary Research
- Market Research – Understand the industry related to coffee shops, as well as the target audience
- Competitive Analysis – Learn about how the main competitors of Merry Hills and how they are catering to customers’ needs.
Secondary Research
- Learn about the problem regarding the current brand.
- It is equally important to research enterprises that pioneer in the market of platforms related to coffee shops, as their solutions to similar problems will help me gather insights about their strengths and weaknesses. A complete competitive research can be viewed here.
- Merry Hill’s lack of brand identity hinders the company’s growth. This becomes a problem when trying to diverge from the competition.
- Merry Hill’s has a busy logo and an absence of social media. These factors reinforce the idea that Merry Hill’s is outdated and unable to adapt.
- Both Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts have a strong identity and cater to a specific audience.
- Starbucks focuses on the premium aesthetic while Dunkin Donuts offers a fast food appeal.
- Starbucks delivery is a perfect example of a quick to adapt mentality, which has enhanced the company’s ability to offer more for the customer.
- Both Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts memorable brand set it apart from other coffee shops, as well as the services and wide variety of products they provide.
- Both have short or catchy names that reinforce the memorable aspect of the companies.
- A memorable name, logo and aesthetic to separate itself from its competition.
- An ideal message or tagline that appeals to an audience.
- A specific audience within the coffee shop demographics to provide the best customer service.
- Customer customization for an ideal experience.
Accordion Content
- Taking the HMW questions, I started my brainstorming process to come up with solutions for each of these problems. I decided to use mind mapping so that I could quickly generate as many ideas as I could. This is an extract of my brainstorm results.
- Warm, spiritual, and satisfying. The idea was that the new identity would reflect the rewarding experience bestowed by the coffee shop.
- Varme Cafe would become the new identity of Merry Hills Coffee & Teams. The name translates from Danish to “Warm Coffee.” It is both, short and catchy.
- Varme Cafe’s aesthetic would focus on the comfort, relaxing, and casual experience.
- I pursued to accentuate the phrase “enrich the human spirit” as a memorable narrative to the brand. The slogan promotes the enriching qualities of the coffee shop as well as the humanistic and spiritual comfort that it offers.
To support my insights, I created a mood board inspired by my research to capture the overall visual style and tone. You can view the mood board here.
Strategy
To define the problem, I created Point-of-View (POV) Statements to guide goal-oriented ideation and How-Might-We (HMW) Questions to frame brainstorming sessions. These were developed based on insights and needs identified in my preliminary research.
The Identity
This design centers on calmness, warmth, and tranquility. The soft browns, beige, and warm neutrals create a relaxing, cozy café atmosphere. The dove, symbolizing peace, rises as steam from the coffee cup, perfectly aligning with the serene vibe. The overall design invites customers to unwind and enjoy a peaceful ambiance, reinforced by imagery of serene landscapes and quiet reflection. The combination of the dove and warm tones ensures the brand feels welcoming and comforting, making it an ideal space for individuals to enrich their spirit with a cup of coffee.
Accordion Content
- After gathering enough information about what and who I’m designing for, I started sketching ideas for the logo and brand. This enables me to quickly explore and review my concepts before adding them into a digital program.
- The design of the icon is composed of a dove that coexists as steam—to assert peace, spirit, and love that comes from a cup of coffee. In addition, the combination of these two elements project the emotional and physical qualities of the shop.
- The choice of neutral colors was to generate a calm and soothing aesthetic. This feeling would reiterate as a visual color palette across the brand.
- Open sans and Alverata were used to attain a neutral and distinctive style. Open sans is designed with an upright stress, open forms, and a neutral, yet friendly appearance. On the other hand, Alverata offers the brand elegance with its contemporary font family and reverence to the Romanesque capitals.
- To make sure that the brand stays consistent, I created a brand style guide to represent an overview of the best use practices for the visual assets of the brand. Contents range from stationery systems to color guides, typography, and applications.
- To show how the brand works across different applications, I created 3D mockups. These mockups include business cards, store signage, merchandise, and poster ads.
Enrich the human spirit.
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