The brief

Luna Leigh, the (fictional) founder of the cafe bakery, wanted a bold visual identity that captured herself as a passionate baker, but also the beauty of the space.

There also was an additional objective of creating an identity that would represent a clear intention — the revival of the third space.

My design process

‍After establishing the client's the needs, wants and and "absolutely-nots" the most important part of my design process is selecting project guiding words.

These (typically three) words are meant to keep consistency, cohesion and most importantly ensure every decision is aligned from start to finish.

Storytelling beyond project guiding words

There were two core narratives I wanted to weave throughout the project: the founder's journey and the cafe's mission to revive the third space. This weaving is best illustrated in the logo icon.

Considering what lessons the founder learned along the path to opening their own business, four value pillars were selected to guide the cafe bakery — each represented by a crescent moon.

The idea here is that when these four pillars are successfully achieved and aligned, they create not just a thriving business, but true community. That sense of community, the result of a succesful revival of a third space, is represented with a star at the centre.

I did my best to ensure these narratives were woven in as many details of the project as I could, including brand colour names, what deliverables were needed, etc.

Storytelling and rationale go hand-in-hand

While developing this project I realized that storytelling is like a more in-depth rationale. It’s more than just reasoning and explanation, but also background, context and meaning.

Like any designer I love a good rationale, but I discovered that a story can weave every design decision together and give it that extra shine. I think in the future I’d like to explore projects that go even more in-depth with storytelling and maybe even projects that rely very heavily on a story.

Purpose > guiding words

My design process has included selecting guiding words for the project for quite some time. I found it was useful to have these words to link back to throughout the duration of a project. However, during this project, I found that having a single purpose or objective worked better for my creativity.

It made things a little more human. Having more of a “mission statement” rather than just three separate words made it easier to focus on the audience and the actual desired result — human connection.

From this point on I think I’m going to consider either replacing the guiding words with maybe a guiding sentence to further refine my process.

Visual storytelling doesn’t have to be dramatic

I think there’s a lot of pressure in creative spaces to have every aspect of your work be extremely clever and have everything “bleed” creativity. But with this project I found that clever ties to the client and main objectives worked in some places and didn’t work in others. I found that I eventually just had to “let it go” when certain ideas didn’t work or better ideas never came along.

Trusting my gut and sticking with initial ideas worked quite a few times during this project. I think going forward I will probably revisit certain details of a project less and learn to have confidence
in my experience and ideas.

Exploring Visual Storytelling

The brief

My design process

modern, welcoming, functional

Storytelling beyond project guiding words

Lessons learned

Storytelling and rationale go hand-in-hand

Purpose > guiding words

Visual storytelling doesn’t have to be dramatic

Identity in application

I resonate much better in person. Let's grab bubble tea!

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