Competition Brief 02: Study Task 05

With the new identity is designed for the coffee bean company Grand Café I designed the packaging for it. These product are for non- branded coffee shops, cafés, pubs, quick service restaurants and contract caterer. The typography have to be quick readable for everyone. But still have to look friendly/accessible/no jargon/matter of fact as I mentioned in my research.  

Competition Brief 02: Study Task 05

Final outcome logo design

This is the final outcome for the logo design for grand café. After I decided to keep the font instead of the handwriting font it is representing a professional level logo design for a big company. This whole logo package below here I decide to design the identity for the packaging.

Competition Brief 02: Study Task 04

After a break a picked op the project again a looked at the icon design with the smiley face and thought something was missing. The green rounded shape was too smooth for a fair trade coffee product. With this conclusion I started to illustrate the same shape and make it more organic.

 

 

While I was illustrating this round shape I decided to place the icon design in the circle. This combination creates more the icon for a logo design I was searching for. When I was satisfied about the icon design I added the typography and tried to find the best place and space for grand café. I wrote it in lower case otherwise it was too heavy for a fair trade brand.

 

After illustrating the icon design for the logo I though maybe this would work also for the typography. While doing this it was looking very childish and the concept of the logo went in a wrong direction. 

Competition Brief 02: Study Task 03

When I was illustrating the logo in my sketchbook, I found out that both letters together combine an abstract smiley face. And decided to continue the design digitally so I can sketch more logos in short time. This is a small selection of the smiley face icon design.

Competition Brief 02: Study Task 02

Sketches

With the research from the previous blog post I started the make some sketches with a pencil and trying to come up with some ideas. Their first logo design from Grand Café was a minimalistic icon design with a fast handwritten font used. The icon design they used is a real shame for the graphic design world. It's an image of a coffee plant that is horrible illustrated in Adobe Illustrator with the tool Image Trace. 

This is an not professional way to use for an abstract logo icon. This is the reason I started to design a typeface logo and play around with the composition of the letters. The fonts I started with are modern Sans Serif font. These are timeless and readable for everybody.

Analogue sketches

Digital sketches

Competition Brief 02: Study Task 01

Brand Research

 
Brand: Grand Café

Vision: To be the most respected certified coffee brand in the out of home market.

Brand Concept: Promoting the social and economic benefits of certified coffee whilst providing a feel good factor and peace of mind.

Reasons to Believe: Committed to industry certifications FT, Organic and RFA; solid taste test performer; our best-selling branded product range

Core Consumer: Contract caterers

Core Products:
Grand Café Rainforest 500g
Tasting notes: Chocolately, sweet, with a hint of its slow roast, gives this blend real character. Bright and balanced with citrus hints and a clean and balanced aftertaste.
The source: Colombia, Honduras, Brazil
Logo: RFA

Grand Café Fairtrade
Tasting notes: Deep, intense coffee with a full body and lasting taste.
The source: Colombia, Vietnam, Peru
Logo: FT

Grand Café Triple Certified
Tasting notes: Rich, balanced coffee with red fruit top notes and a sweet creamy finish.
The source: Peru, Guatemala, Sumatra
Logos: RFA, Fairtrade, SA

Grand Café Fairtrade Decaf
Tasting notes: A clean mouth feel with a hint of sweet watermelon. All the flavour but without the caffeine.
The source: Peru
Logo: FT

Brand Personality: educated/knowledgeable/travelled/down to earth/respected/direct/academic/possesses gravitas
Tone of Voice: friendly/accessible/no jargon/matter of fact

From a previous blog post Studio Brief 02 OUGD504 I had a similar kind of project about the main product Coffee. This was really useful for starting with brain storming. What noticed was that the color of all coffee logos have an association with the smell, the color and the taste of coffee. This has an impact to associate with the experience of drinking a nice cup of quality coffee.

The research for fairtrade, biologic and health logos is similar the color use for coffee logos. The most of the logos from the research are in two-tone designed, green and white. The color use look very confident and genuinely.

From the color research that is shown above there are two final outcomes that are used for the logo design. The first color combination is more the experience of drinking coffee and the second color combination is representing the fairtrade experience.

Competition Brief 02

UCC Coffee

Brand Background
You may not have heard of Grand Café coffee but the chances are you will have tasted it! As our most popular coffee brand; there are over 10,000 customers using it in the UK. This market leading ethical food service brand is credible coffee at its best and the ideal brand for the ethically aware business. Grand Café promotes the social and economic benefits of certified coffee whilst providing a feel good factor and peace of mind to the customers who buy it.
These coffees can’t stop showing off when it comes to credentials - each of the
four variants in the range are fully certified, showing that we’re doing our bit to
sustain the lives and lands of the farmers who grow our coffee. The certifications are Rainforest Alliance, Soil Association and Fairtrade - all unique concepts that support communities and projects in different countries around the world. Not to mention that the coffee is great — freshly roasted beans, expertly blended and each with its own distinctive taste.

Our Audience
We don’t sell directly to consumers; and our core current customers are non- branded coffee shops, cafés, pubs, quick service restaurants and contract caterers but that isn’t to say they are the only target for the brand. The nature of Grand Café means it ticks a lot of the boxes for companies to fulfil their corporate responsibility requirements. More and more businesses are becoming aware of the impact of their buying choices and looking for an offering that promotes sustainability in the industry. 

Creative Challenge
The Grand Café brand performs well amongst its current customers but we’re the first to admit the design doesn’t bring the brand to life as expressively as it could do. We want to make it an iconic visual brand — and that’s where you come in!
Your challenge is to visually re-think and revitalise the brand, creating designs that will not only communicate what great coffee Grand Café is, but also the good that it does.
We want to move Grand Café coffee from being hidden in a cupboard underneath the counter to having pride of place on display in our customer’s outlets!
We’re keen to understand the thinking behind your work; and how you feel your proposed designs, relate back to our brand DNA. We have included some notes on it in the Project Pack that supports the brief, and so please do provide a short written summary to support your visualisations. 

Creative Considerations
No aspect of the brand, product range or communication channels are off limits. It’s up to you to choose the formats and applications that you wish to demonstrate your re-launch within. For example — you might choose to focus just on the identity and its application to packaging or you may wish to take it further and show how it comes to life in campaign elements; digital contexts or an animation that tells the story. 

Consider the product family and how each member might creatively relate to each other. You might want to consider renaming the products or introducing a new blend. Think about innovation in sustainable products and how this could support the direction we want Grand Café to go. 

We want to strengthen our messaging around certifications, and focus on the impact they have — so you are also welcome to think about point of sale and show us how your design thinking might come to life in such contexts. That might be great design ideas for a uniform, posters, table talkers, information booklets or something different that no other coffee shop has tried before. Consider what will empower the staff serving our coffee to communicate the stories around the certifications. 

Things to bear in mind:
The certification logos cannot be changed and would need to be displayed on any packaging design.


Current Product Range
In the supporting Project Pack at the YCN website you’ll find product imagery relating to each of the variants below, as well as the relevant certification logos. 

Grand Café Rainforest
Tasting notes: Chocolately, sweet, with a hint of its slow roast, gives this blend real character. Bright and balanced with citrus hints and a clean and balanced aftertaste.
The source: Colombia, Honduras, Brazil
Logo: RFA
Grand Café Fairtrade
Tasting notes: Deep, intense coffee with a full body and lasting taste. The source: Colombia, Vietnam, Peru
Logo: FT

Grand Café Triple Certified
Tasting notes: Rich, balanced coffee with red fruit top notes and a sweet creamy finish.
The source: Peru, Guatemala, Sumatra
Logos: RFA, Fairtrade, SA
Grand Café Fairtrade Decaf
Tasting notes: A clean mouth feel with a hint of sweet watermelon. All the flavour but without the caffeine.
The source: Peru
Logo: FT 

Deliverables & Additional Information
Websites for further reading:
Rainforest Alliance
Soil Association
Fairtrade

For guidance on how to submit your work, please adhere to the main Deliverables information which can be found at the YCN website. Any additional information referenced in the brief can be found in the supporting Project Pack at the YCN website.