Gabrielle's Coffee

On Tuesday, Luke placed our class into groups to design logos for specific clients. I was partnered with Hayley naming our group HC Designs. Our client was Gabrielle Bodonechi a man who had lived down in North Melbourne for many years but had decided to move up to Wagga Wagga to start anew. Gabrielle wanted Hayley and I to design a new logo for his new café ‘Gabrielle’s Coffee’. Gabrielle’s café was already fairly famous in Melbourne but he was sick of all the other cafés around Melbourne trying to outclass each other, he was trying to break away from that.

Gabrielle was very specific about what he wanted, he stated very clearly that he wanted to break away from the Melbourne theme of trying to outclass everyone but at the same time that he wanted his café to be unique. He also stated that he wanted fresh colours that would give the café a kind of cosmopolitan feel to it, as well as a dining out feel. Gabrielle intended for this logo to be printed on several different things. He wanted it to be on signs, staff uniform, menus and the coffee mugs used there. Gabrielle wanted a second meeting within two hours after being introduced where we could show him what sketches and designs we had come up with in that time.

Hayley and I got straight into comparing ideas. One thing that we both agreed on was getting away from the stereotypical brown colours seen in most coffee shops today. So we began experimenting with new fresh colours that we felt would suit our designs. Hayley later suggested an Italian theme as Gabrielle had stated that he wanted his café to have a dinning out feel to it. So with that I started looking up some Italian restaurant logos looking for inspiration. I later decided just to incorporate the colours of the flag to give it the Italian dinning out feel. The coffee mug design in the middle of the logo was based off a sort of tribal like look trying to steer away from the typical coffee mug. A Bauhaus design inspired me with the layout of the background.



My second design was inspired by a coffee been and once again I placed a coffee mug in the centre of it. I replaced the handle on the mug with the ‘G’ at the start of Gabrielle’s name and used it as a key point in the logo. The background colour consisted of a light blue colour with an even lighter blue used to create the effect of steam.

We then had our second meeting with Gabrielle. We lay out all of our designs in front of Gabrielle. He instantly liked my first design with the layout as well as the tribal coffee cup but was however unsure about the colours used. He hated the look of my second logo but however he loved the colours used in it. One of Hayley’s coffee mugs caught his eye as well. Gabrielle stated that he wanted all three of these ideas meshed together. So he wanted the layout of the first design, the colour of the second and the coffee mug used in one of Hayley’s designs.

Now that we knew exactly what to do it made things so much easier. We were able to effectively criticise each other’s designs and even add suggestions on what would and wouldn’t look good. We removed the colours of the flag from our first design and replaced it with the two shades of blue used in the second design and Hayley’s coffee mug design from one of her other designs. I stayed with the basic Bauhaus layout as well as the font, which I felt had a real sort of café feel about it already. After combining the three designs and looking back at it we had decided that the coffee mug was still a bit bland, so we decided to use a similar effect to the background and placed the light steamy blue colour on the inside of the coffee mug as well. We had our completed design and we were completely satisfied by it we only hoped that
Gabrielle would feel the same way.



But just in case Gabrielle decided that he wanted to go back to the previous tribal coffee mug design I applied the same changes but without removing the tribal design. So that he now has a choice of which of these designs he wishes to be his logo.