bark roast
dog-friendly café
logo • branding • signage • packaging
Bark Roast is an outdoor café for dog lovers, by dog lovers. It’s the perfect place to relax with coffee and a book while Fido frolics in a fenced patio area made for canine friends. The challenge for Bark Roast was to create a logo and brand from the ground up that appealed to the kind of outdoorsy, energetic people who love going anywhere and everywhere with their pup, while infusing nods to the coffee aspect of the business.
discovery
My moodboard focused on a direction that’s modern, playful, and energetic to match the personalities of the on-the-go dog parents in my target audience. I explored many typefaces to try to determine which had the perfect, friendly mood I was looking for. I also knew I wanted to have a colorful palette that could feel both earthy and lively - I would need browns and greens, but also some brighter colors like orange to be able to contrast them and draw attention.
sketches
In my initial sketches I was primarily interested in the designs that can be created using latte art techniques, and wanted to see if I could use the swirls and heart shapes to form a dog’s face or paw. I also began playing with the coffee bean shape and integrating it into the dog’s paw shape.
digital drafts
In my digital drafts for the logos, I was focused on keeping things casual and playful. I tried incorporating a dog into the letter K because the shape of the letter in the typeface I chose was reminiscent of a dog with its tail raised already. I also played with warping the name of the cafe into a paw shape, which created a fun, “Keep Austin Weird” feel when paired with the uppercase, bubbly typeface.
My final option was my favorite, where I used BN Monica because of its roundness and the S shape looking a bit like a coffee bean. I created a friendly looking dog face with a heart shaped nose and wavy mouth to evoke the latte art feel.
In addition to the logo, I began drafting various dog vector illustrations. I wanted to come up with a variety of simple illustrations that would further communicate the friendliness and dog-loving focus of the brand and could be carried across various touchpoints. I made sure each of these had a strong silhouette that could be understood at a distance, and used only a few colors that could easily be swapped for other colors in the palette to keep a good contrast.
Using this illustration style, I drafted a design for a to-go coffee cup with an outdoor scene and a dog playing to tie in with the outdoorsy, energetic personality of the brand.
final designs
After fixing up some details, I settled on my final logo and variations using the latte art face concept. I added a small swoosh to the “k” in the logo to represent a dog’s tail, and reversed the latte art for better balance.
I made some small changes to the coffee cups as well, opting to use only green instead of complicating the design with two colors. My final designs incorporate bold colors, playful illustrations, and friendly, bubbly typefaces that capture the spirit of a playdate with puppies.
reflection
I had such a blast working on this project because I got to focus on things I absolutely adore - dogs, coffee, logos, and packaging. It would be a real treat to get to work with an animal-related concept again!