Brand Identity // The Penny
Brand Design // The Penny Coffee Shop
The Penny is a coffee shop coming to the downtown area of Mission, BC that came to me in need of a design for the brand. The mission of The Penny however, is to do much more than just sell coffee. Situated upstairs from a place called Hope Central that acts as a beacon to many that need it, offering meals and help to the down-and-out, The Penny hopes to usher all profits down into Hope Central to fund the projects and help buy supplies and other necessities.
BUILDING DESIGN IDEAS:
The building is also one of the oldest in the area (mid 1930’s). We knew the logo had to have a message of hope, and it had to fit into the era of the building, as all of the decor and interior design was going to strongly pull design cues from the era.
There was also, of course, the imagery of The Canadian Penny. The inspiration behind the name, and I was told they were planning to use discontinued Canadian pennies in the design work as a tile backsplash and a couple other places. After a bit of trial and error (Do we use the Queen’s silhouette? -too authoritative. Do we use the maple leaf? -too obvious. A cup of coffee- WAY too obvious.)
DESIGN ROUGHS:
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- We toyed around with the royal silhouette for a while but it didn’t feel right.
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- This pot had a nice old-school feel to it, but it was a little bit too 50s diner.
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- The imagery of a grinder had the era throwback we were looking for, but didn’t tell any story beyond coffee.
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- We wanted to play on the idea of “coffee that makes cents”, but this just wasn’t doing it justice.
In the end we decided to go with the imagery of the dove off of the Canadian centennial penny that was run for one year on Canada’s 100th birthday in 1967. The dove exemplifies hope in an unbiased way and with added distress and a circular motif it really does give the feel of the old pennies.
FINAL DESIGN:
For the fonts, we chose a timeless serif, and combined it with a modern minimal and narrow sans serif to tie the past with the future. We created both a circular and non circular version of the logo for use everywhere.
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- The dove can be used alone to convey that The Penny is involved, without ever having to say “The Penny”.
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- Here is an example of the wordmark version of the logo being used without the circular outline.
As a result, the brand has a concise and clear image that translates their mission to their client without even having to speak a word.
2 comments on “Brand Identity // The Penny”
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I love the logo that your team decided to go with in the end, although, all were very beautiful.
Thanks so much, it means a lot!