The Brief

Newton and Ridley, the brewers best known for their pub, The Rovers Return, are opening a cafe/wine bar nearer the city centre.

The bar is designed to appeal to younger women and sophisticated young men. The brewery has identified a gap in the market and wants to provide a ‘sophisticated and relaxed’ venue for the ‘discerning’ drinker. This bar is to be called the French Hen and will be in direct competition with the cheap ‘binge drinking’ venues on the same street. The brewery is also trying to enhance its own image as a ‘respectable’ alcohol vendor.

They want you to develop some ideas for a logo, to be used: on covers for the food and cocktail menus, in colour on the signage outside, and as a cut-out for a window detail, on T-shirts for the staff and paper napkins, for one side of a beermat, the other will carry advice on sensible drinking.

There are many conventions that have been developed around the marketing of both bars and products to this age range. You need to be conscious the whole time of avoiding clichés and stereotyping.

Draw up at least three ideas to start with. Be critical of your work. Check it against the information you have here. Will it do what the client wants – and how will you know?

When you have decided which one you are happiest with, mock up the menu covers, the outside sign, the window detail, a T-shirt, paper napkin and a beermat. Does it all still work?

Research

According to Neil Gains’s book Brand esSense, sensory branding speaks to the most “direct and physical manifestation of the brand”.  Gains says that the physical experience of the brand reflects the meaning of the brand to customers, which in turn is ultimately defined by an underlying brand story.

He further defines sensory branding by saying, “story helps define why a brand exists, symbols help communicate a brand’s meanings, and the senses help a brand to make these meanings real and tangible through direct engagement with customers. (Gains, 2014)

As Matt Britton mentions in his book Youth Nation, over 2 billion smartphone users around the world have forever changed the way our world communicates.  People now have real-time access to data, tools and content on a 24-hour new cycle, forever impacting the ways we reach and influence them.  The pace of innovation in the marketplace has spawned a wave of millennial-inspired startups.  Britton believes that digital natives will rule the world and there is simply no way you can replace the experience of being hardwired in the new reality we live in today.

Here are a few principles that can be deployed when creating a brand;

1. Put the consumers at the centre.  We need to interact with them in ways that add value to their lives.
2. Embrace social-at-the-core.  We must design our communications with shareability in mind at every touch point.  We want consumers to feel a sense of ownership in the brand.
3. Everything is marketing.  Whether it’s the way consumers interact with the products or the way we activate events.

Britton further says that the expectations are high when investing in a night out.  Nights out can’t just deliver on a “fun time” anymore but rather have to be Instagram-worthy and otherwise “epic’.  Young adults are looking to be blown away, which is not easy to accomplish on a consistent basis.  You have to perfect the art of wowing its clientele.

There is a shift towards experiences.  Young adults are living in their newsfeeds where the action is nonstop every second of every day.  There is also a move toward diversity.  This age range craves diversity, culture and inclusiveness around them.

Cities have become a more viable long-term living solution.  The growing popularity of cities has resulted in more revenue and better city lifestyles, including reduced crime rates, improved school systems, and renewed emphasis on urban green spaces and sustainability.  Lifehacking (verb) refers to any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency in all walks of life.  This is an important part of social media and encourages social sharing.

Some good tips Britton shares for building a brand are to create a consistent personal social media brand across multiple platforms.  “Ask yourself, what can I bring my audience every day that they will drive value from?”  Map out a content strategy and stick to it.  It is key to sprinkle in content about your company to create a story and let the company persona shine.  There should be a face behind the company because nobody wants to be friends with a robot.

Create a story worth sharing and tell an inspiring brand story.  Create advertising that feels like a story.  Ask yourself how was the company founded?  What does it stand for?  What makes it different?  Why does it even exist?  Why should people care?  The answers to these questions will quickly uncover if you have an inspiring brand story. 

By having a strong brand story, being known for one thing, being human, inspiring action, and being inclusive of your audience, the best brands in the world are using stories, and not advertising, to create meaningful engagement and a lasting impact on their audience. (Britton, 2015)

Spider diagram

This research blows me away.  It is evident that the most successful brand designers with a young adult audience value these conventions and benefit from them by building a solid brand.  I brainstormed by using a spider diagram and generated some ideas.

Creating a story worth sharing can be done by having signature drinks.  Sustainability, health, responsible alcohol consumption, ethical sourcing, and involvement in the community align with the young adult’s social and environmental values.  Signature cocktails made from mixing herbal drinks with alcohol such as wheatgrass and gin, green tea and whiskey sours, elixir and vodka, chamomile and beer cocktail, and cherry and brandy can be a distinct product feature and encourage social sharing.  Wines and coffee can come from regions that support sustainable farming and ethical work environments.  These are some of the features that can create a memorable identity and put the customer and what they stand for at the centre.

The branding can create an immersive and personalised experience by having event parties such as gender reveals, hen parties, baby showers, engagement parties and themed nights.  This will already distinguish the brand from the cheap binge-drinking venues on the same street.  These events can come with personalised packaging such as cocktail kits.

The T-shirts for the staff can either have stripes to echo the name The French Hen but in a non-stereotype way such as part of the illustration, or an original stripe pattern that runs skew or is part of a message or slogan.  A niche brand personality can be brought in by having illustrations with top hats or clothing the characters or even animals in suits and formal wear.  The brand personality can extend further by collaborating with trendy and popular alcohol brands such as Monkey Shoulder Whiskey or Hibiki Japanese Whiskey.  These special whiskeys are sophisticated and are another story-sharing moment giving the consumer a sense of ownership.

Ideas for slogans or quotes on beer mats are:

“Try not to get in touch with your inner idiot”.

“He couldn’t remember ordering this”.

“Alcohol is not the answer; it just makes you forget the question”.

“Save beer, drink water”.

“Alcohol increases the size of the “send” button by 89%”.

“I didn’t text you.  Tequila did”.

“Sotally Tober”.

These slogans can be followed by “Drink sensibly” and “Know your alcohol limit”.

Thumbnail sketches

The visual message that this new bar is a Café/Wine Bar should be clear.  The audience might want to associate the new bar with The Rovers Return which is a traditional pub.  Still, it might be beneficial to retain traditional pub elements in the branding for the audience to make the connection between Newton and Ridley and the new wine bar.

The fact that it is closer to the city is another differential factor that separates the new bar from The Rovers Return.  Once I have the three ideas together, it can be decided whether to omit or include the name “Newton and Ridley.”

In Figure 2 I explored the idea of using illustrations as part of the logo design.  Illustrations bring a handmade personal touch and authenticity to the logo.  I explored ways to illustrate the signature cocktails and different ways of presenting the French hen.  I consider including a glass of wine in the illustration to convey a wine bar feel.  I like the simple side view of the hen and could develop this idea further. The black silhouette of the woman sitting with the chicken, drinking a glass of wine, is another idea but is clearer in the second picture of the woman interacting with the hen.

I explored dressing the hen and sketching the hen in different positions.  I asked my family and friends for their input and it was mentioned that the hen with the open wings might not be recognised as a hen but rather an eagle because it’s an unusual pose for a hen.

I considered bringing in another animal, the hen’s predator, the fox, but it might distract the audience from the hen and some people in my feedback thought it was a dog. I experimented with borders, text presentations, and different ways of presenting the feathers of the hen, herbs and smaller symbols and icons.

I organised the pictures into drafts in Figure 3.  I feel the side view of the hen could be simplified and the bannered text doesn’t work.  I like the tail of this hen and it might be worth it to work further on this idea. The green wordmark is a typography idea of pairing a low contrast sans-serif with a slab-serif Art Nouveau text.  I like this idea, especially the modern acid green and old gold.  Mixing the new and old. These colours work well with black and white and attract enough attention without being too harsh.  I also like the wooden hen typography that gives an organic barn feel.

I will now develop the following ideas:

• Bring in male characters and further develop ideas.  
• The side view of the hen and explore different ways of presenting the feathers.
• More typography ideas using the wooden “hen” typeface and researching typeface for the young adult audience.
• More ideas with the crown of the hen and a man-made crown.
• Simplify the illustrations to work as a logo.

Typeface research

Where do the young adults go in my immediate surroundings? Speaking to young adults around me, it became clear that all the places that appeal to them have simple and sleek branding, so I have decided to explore more.

Figure 4 shows examples of popular places for young adults.  Compared to the Newton and Ridley logo, it can be said that it has almost an opposite brand.  I further explored typefaces that appeal to this age group, and good information I could find was a YouTube documentary video by Cambell Walker from Struthless. (Walker, 2022)

The documentary goes through the history of type and type in today’s modern world.  Steve Jobs brought typeface to the Apple Computer and employed Susan Kare between 1983 to 1986 help him make it a reality.  Susan Kare created typefaces Chicago, Geneva, Monaco and Los Angeles.  All are named after popular cities.  Putting typefaces on a personal computer was the biggest typographic shift since the printing press.

It is imperative to consider that the sleek minimalistic typeface that originated from the 1950s Swiss movement is back and now has a new life because of Steve Jobs.  Helvetica has been the main choice for Apple IOS from the 2010s until 2015 and is part of the sharing, communicating and collaborating culture of today. 

This is the typeface young adults can relate to, and some of the people I have spoken to even went so far as to say that they won’t even consider entering a bar with a slab-serif logo because they expect to see an older crowd.

Of course, history can only be written until we have enough data, but this statement makes sense to me, and I am going to say that you can’t go wrong with choosing a Swiss-style typeface for this generation.

I could just not get the side view of this hen to appeal to me as a logo.  I first couldn’t understand why, but after some thought, I figured it out.  The hen is top-heavy and the design appears unbalanced.  It will be better to show both feet and more of a three-quarter side view of the hen.  The top hat doesn’t work for this project because it reminds me of a circus and not a wine bar.  I discarded this idea completely and worked on my other sketch ideas to eventually come up with four final ideas.

Figure 6 is my final four ideas that I want to consider for the logo.  I used sans-serif lettering, drawn by hand and will further develop the type once I have decided on one of these four logos. 

I included the bottom right ‘pink’ hen because I like the high contrast feel of the design appears modern and looks like a lino print, but once I scaled it down to test its visibility, it lost its shape. 

The best logo for visibility at a distance is the sketch with the red (top left) and also the bottom (left).  These two logos are also ideal for a window cut-out signage and especially the top red one has nice open forms at the top of the logo that will flow nicely when placed on a serviette or T-Shirt.

I am choosing the top left logo because it brings the message across of a wine bar and I like the interaction between the chicken and the woman, and that their ‘hair’ and ‘crown’ looks the same.  It shows common grounds and similar headspace, which are very much the tone of this wine bar. 

The colours work well, emphasising the wine and the crown/hair and once again the interaction across species or in real life, a place to meet new people and interact with like-minded people. 

The logo has the potential to be simple, elegant, niche, young, non-stereotype and delivers the message of a sophisticated wine bar.  The woman’s clothing sets the tone that it’s sophisticated.  The typography is relevant to the age group this bar wants to attract.  I will now develop this draft further in Adobe Illustrator.

In Figure 7, stage one, I added the type in Illustrator, which changed my proportions slightly, so I had to resolve this.  The logo was missing a background contrast which I also tried to resolve and the outcome was design one in Figure 7.

The logo now had too many colours I needed to simplify, but at this stage I have established the typography I want to use for the word ‘hen’ and I am pleased with the result.  The typeface for ‘hen’ and ‘the’ is Ofelia Display extra bold with -10 tracking.  I further explored type in stage two and tested my short list of options in the logo design to see how it interacts with the rest of the elements.  I settled with Dunbar Tall Regular for ‘French”. 

Design 2 lacked contrast in scale and I have decided to enlarge the girl and hen, which has taken me back to the drawing board to re-design.  I also wasn’t too happy with the very smooth lines I was getting in Illustrator and wanted a human element to the lines, so I used hand-drawn lines in Procreate and image-traced them in Illustrator to get that human touch.  I used a charcoal brush which gave me a textured edge, and once it was traced, it looked slightly different, but I think it still works.

Design 4 was the outcome and I am now happy with the design and need to establish the final colour palette.  I have tested different colours keeping sophisticated and upmarket in mind.  I have decided on the oxblood red, red-orange, black and white for the final colour palette.  This is the ideal mix between modern and sophisticated.  I was careful not to give an impression of a burger house, and using yellow and red together gave me that impression. 

I now finished the logo and created two variations so I can use it in different areas. 

I will use the simple colour way for the signage and the brighter logo for the cocktail menu and T-shirts.

The logo still works on all the different mock-ups but I think it will be nice to have a wordmark option without an illustration for the window cut-out, napkins and possibly the food menu.  Just the name on certain elements will look more polished and balance the overall brand identity.  It is interesting how different the end result is compared to my first drafts.  This is mainly because I have changed my views of what the brand should look like after talking to young adults.  I have decided not to include the association with Newton and Ridley in the branding to avoid expectations from the consumer, as this brand is entirely different from The Rovers Return.

Overall, I am pleased with the outcome and feel I have met the conventional criteria for marketing bars and products to this age range and avoided cliches and stereotyping. 

Works Cited

Gains, N. (2014). Brand esSense. London: Kogan Page Limited.

Britton, M. (2015). Youth Nation. New Jersey and Canada: John Wiley and Son.

Walker, C. (2022, August 24). You Tube. Retrieved from Struthless: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVfRxFwVHQc&t=2s