Dark Horse Espresso Bar
Dark Horse Espresso Bar is a Toronto- based coffee shop chain aiming to bring it’s customers specialty coffee and espresso, and a third-place to connect and relax in.
The client wanted to have their logo and branding redesigned in order to better reflect their story. However, they also requested that this redesign must not stray too far from their pre-existing style.
The greatest challenge of this redesign was figuring out how to represent the client’s back story without alienating their customer base. After some research, I determined that their target audience consisted of young adults who greatly prioritized familiarity/casualness and modern design. Keeping this in mind, I decided that redesign had to be simple but eye-catching in order to fulfill the client’s objective.
I used a slightly modified star as the main silhouette of the logo and as a repeated element in all the branding as a regular star was already apart of their old branding. The negative space silhouette of a horse better represents their “dark horse” in the race aspect of their story, as well as their love for Canadian racehorses. I kept their colours from their old branding since it was something that already had an impression with their customers. Lastly, the typography was kept simple to keep in line with the target audience’s values of modernity and casualness.
