Everyday at Arcade ….
Everyday we do regular prints for regular businesses. Aslan Coffee House is my local coffee shop so it’s great to do his shirts.
This is how we go about it …. everyday
Buhdi really dosen’t like wearing aprons or polos and he likes the casual style of a good Tee.
We started with his old graphics and icons created by his old graphic designers and looked at developing his new look.
The whole idea was subtle. The old shirts had a huge lion icon on the front in orange – printed in a pretty heavy plastisol. On the back was his logo type, also in the same orange.
The outstanding thing from a design perspective was Buhdi is seriously good at coffee. Every month he makes a new blend and roasts it himself he also does very good light food and even hires picnic blankets to sit in the park opposite. The shop is clean and his food is clean and very organic in nature. There are lots of brown paper bags and coffee sacks around the place. You sit in a well lit room next to a Dyson fan and chill to the tunes of the day usually surrounded by the models from ‘Seduce’ or inundated by the soccer crowds on Saturdays.
The point is, as a designer and a screen printer – everyone wants you to ‘just print my stuff’ … as a screen printer we can do this but as a designer it’s easier to just suggest a few things and ask a customer to take a leap of faith with you ….
With Alsan Coffee I wanted his shirts to work in his environment and sit correctly with really good coffee.
The thinking was to really reduce the size of all his icons and text … it’s close quarters in a small coffee shop, so you don’t need to read or understand anything from a distance. So the lions head was reduced by about 600% and the writing on the back was also reduced by about %50. The lion head was placed front and centre of the chest as Buhdi is rightly very proud of his coffee. It was off the side 80′s style and huge trying to be astatement. Now it was a statement. Subtle but front and centre.
The colour was chosen to work with his paper bags, blackboard menus and egg cartons around the place …. it’s a very organic, natural feel which works very well in any food store in 2012 as it reflects people becoming more concerned with social and health origins and effects of the foods they consume. Marrickville and St Peters are pretty progressive areas and it’s important here. The thinking here is if you want customers that come back, you want to reflect their values in relation to your product.
Anyway. while it sounds like we ran around the block 3 times and had 3 meetings we really just went for a coffee and looked around … as we had the old graphics on a CD so we just moved things around so they’d work with us and not against us …. if it were advertising we’d be trying to buy your time …. this is really just branding, so we are merely extending the message of quality that Buhdi has started with his coffee.
Aslan Coffee May Street St. Peters
Seriously good Balinese blend at the moment …
