Brand + logo design for Tokyo-based café and brunch restaurant
Tea & Toast
Tea & Toast is a fictional cafe business created as a passion project for @hellotayloramy. This year I set myself the task of completing more passion projects every month. It has been great to occasionally take a step back from client work and push the boat out creatively, learn a new tool or try a new style. I’ve been developing my procreate skills, creating these digital illustrations on my tablet, and then bringing them into illustrator to bring together the brand identity.
Proudly selected for Design Rush’s Logo Design Awards. Visit Design Rush.
The passion project process
On fictional projects like these, I still work through a fast-tracked moodboard and research stage of the brand strategy process, so that I can develop the brand personality and design psychology of the project.
Then I experiment with new fonts that I’ve been loving (and I think fit with the fictional brand), colour palettes and other brand identity elements.
Brand identity design elements included:
Main logo, submark and secondary logo, illustrations and brand pattern design, colour palette backed by colour psychology, menu design, and business cards.
Wanna see a real café brand I’ve done IRL?
Grays Café & Wine Bar = proof I don’t just do passion projects. This one lives, breathes, and serves coffee and vintage thrift.
Why a Passion Project?
Tea & Toast wasn’t a real café. But it could have been – and that’s the point.
This project was a self-initiated exploration of what it means to build a local business with heart. I wanted to design a brand that felt warm, nostalgic and quietly confident. A brand that would feel at home in a heritage building, on a Sunday stroll, or in the hands of someone picking up a cinnamon scroll and flat white.
Sometimes, our best ideas come when there are no rules. Tea & Toast was a space to explore!
The brand & logo design:
Coffee cup and holder design
Character illustration drawn in Procreate and then vectorised in Adobe Illustrator
Logo design using typography from Pangram Pangram font foundry
Brand pattern design using digital illustrative icons in alternative colourway
Character illustration drawn in Procreate and then vectorised in Adobe Illustrator
Menu design in tall portrait format, double-sided, using brand fonts and colours
Mobile mockups using the brand imagery
Magazine design on display next the croissants! Showing brand in action
Obsessing over the perfect vibe for your brand?
You're probably 27 tabs deep in a Pinterest spiral. I get it – finding visuals that actually get your brand is a whole thing.
Good news: I’ve got a whole page for that.
It’s packed with hand-drawn, personality-filled illustration work to make your brand stand out (without screaming about it).
Go on, take a scroll. Your moodboard will thank you.
