Brand Identity 2021

Hide Out Café Branding

A calm, minimal rebrand for a small cafe.

Hide Out Café Branding cover
Hide Out Cafe logo, a ring split into brown and white halves with the name curved around it, on navyThe Hide Out Cafe logo

Project brief

A rebranding project for a small cafe that wanted a logo conveying its environment: relaxed and peaceful, a place where anyone can sit for hours without being disturbed. We created a minimal, relaxing visual identity for them.

The mood references pointed the same way: warm light, coffee made slowly, a corner where no one hurries you.

Mood reference photograph of a lived-in cafe interior with a counter and menu boardsMood reference: a lived-in cafe
Mood reference photograph of milk being poured into a cappuccinoMood reference: coffee made slowly
Mood reference photograph of a chalkboard sign reading Good vibes onlyMood reference: good vibes only

Challenges

  1. As a rebrand, the cafe already had an established image in locals’ minds.
  2. Choosing colors and a theme that feel relaxing and also relate to coffee. First we had to pin down their ideal customer, which they were unsure about.
Hide Out Cafe moodboard collage of coffee, food, people and cafe brandingMoodboard

User profile

In trying to serve everyone, you end up serving no one. Hide Out’s ideal customer:

Mood reference of a young woman sitting at a cafe window with graphic patternsMood reference: the ideal customer

Solution

  1. We created two stylescapes for direction: one relaxing with a homely feel, the other more modern and minimal.
  2. To keep customers comfortable, we used few colors and stayed consistent across the design.
  3. Dark brown is the primary color: a natural color that also feels like a cafe.

The mark is a ring split into two halves, one solid brown and the other white, with the name Hide Out Cafe curving around it. It stays quiet on a menu and clear on a cup. A few ideas were tested before this one was chosen, including the ring as a bare monogram and as a badge, with and without the name.

Hide Out Cafe ring logo shown as a monogram and with the name, on blackLogo: monogram and badge
Three Hide Out Cafe logo ideas shown on blackLogo ideas

Applications

The identity was applied to a letterhead, business cards, a diary and a website, so the cafe could look consistent from the counter to the screen.

Hide Out Cafe letterhead and brown business cards beside a website on a tablet, on weathered woodLetterhead, business cards and website
Hide Out Cafe business diary with a brown label on a dark wood tableBusiness diary
Hide Out Cafe website on a laptop beside a coffee cup with the logoWebsite on a laptop

On cups, the ring appears in brown and white on black, and in deep green on white.

Black coffee cup with the Hide Out Cafe logo on a wooden tableCup and saucer
Hand holding a white takeaway cup with the Hide Out Cafe logo in greenWhite takeaway cup
Two hands holding black takeaway cups with the Hide Out Cafe logoBlack takeaway cups

The ring also stands on its own, here over a layer of leaves.

Large Hide Out Cafe logo overlaid on green leavesThe logo over leaves

Credits

Designer & Strategist: Rahul Yadav. Creative Director: Tarun Jaiswal. Studio: Analog Design Studio.

Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator

View the original project on Behance