The Raven's Roost Coffee Co.

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Brand Identity:

Coffee shops have always been a good place to study & read while sipping on your favorite drink, & The Raven’s Roost is the perfect location for coffee lovers with an interest in Gothic literature. With the iconic raven from one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most recognizable works as its logo, The Raven’s Roost welcomes all, with a dark academia aesthetic & drinks themed after famous Gothic works.

The Raven’s Roost focuses on fostering an environment that any coffee lover might enjoy, with a particular focus on enriching those who have an interest in Gothic literature, and weekly poetry nights for up & coming writers to share. I took inspiration from the dark academia aesthetic which mixes the darker themes of the gothic aesthetic with an academic twist to bring in bookshelves which can be filled with iconic Gothic works.

Logo:

The logo takes the iconic raven from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” sitting it within a skull shaped coffee mug. Much of the original inspiration came from the idea of “Tempus Fugit” and the Vanitas art movement, pulling in multiple darker aesthetics to create an environment which felt Gothic, even without iconic Gothic architecture to make the shop more accessible to exist in the public sphere. The logo may be modified to a simple silhouette on packaging & advertisements as long as the colors still reflect the brand & the raven itself is still able to be read.

Examples of multiple forms of the logo which work within the brand are exhibited below.

B&W Version:

As a logo should work in multiple color schemes, including a B&W silhouette, this examples The Raven's Roost logo in black #000000.

Patterns & Colors:

Below you can find an example of a style tile used as a presentation of the overall brand design qualities. Along the top are the main logos used, as well as an example of the logo silhouette lower which is noted to also be used as a major design asset. On the left hand side are some usable patterns with different color palettes of a pattern designed to look like lace, which upon closer inspection is a series of mirrored, connected, Gothic Manors. The style tile also includes the main color scheme, along with a few secondary colors which can be used to bolster the designs by adding a splash of unique color. As well as the fonts in use, and an example of how they can be formatted into a header, sub header, and body text.

Fonts in use are Gothicus Roman Regular by Aerotype and Monarcha by Isac Correa Rodrigues from Isaco Type on Adobe Fonts.

Menu:

The menu is designed to be printed on a chalkboard & hang above the ordering station with a white chalk colored version of the logo, with text, printed at the top. Drink specials are seasonal & can be switched out, and every specialty drink is themed after a Gothic work from “The Portrait of Dorian Grey” to older classics such as “Carmilla.” Aside from specialty drinks, the menu caters to normal coffee shop drinks as well, with additional substitutes & add ons for drink customization.
A special drinks printed menu was also designed to be printed & sit at tables to encourage customers to try out specialty seasonal drinks.

Packaging:

Products mainly cater to take home drink items. The exampled product below is a dark roast coffee, The New York Morning Mirror, a name which puts a spin on the post that originally published Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” Product design utilizes design qualities from the overall brand including the raven’s silhouette & the Gothic manor patterning. The coffee bag designs also include a lace trim along the brew’s information to resemble an old doily.

Website:

The website is designed as an all purpose stop for information about the shop, including individual shops hours, shop online for individual or wholesale items, as well as provide links to social medias & job applications for all locations. To stay on theme to the brand identity, the information section reads "Read With Us" to align with the Gothic literature theme of the shop. The application link is also customized to stay on brand, reading "Join the Unkindness," regarding the team who work at The Raven's Roost as a flock of ravens, otherwise known as an unkindness.

Imagery for the "shop" uses stock photos of the Mackintosh Library at the Glasgow School of Art, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which was one of the inspirations for the atmosphere design of the shop. This examples the thematic environmental design of a dark academia library with Gothic design elements and Gothic Literature themed posters.

Environmental:

While the original inspiration for the environmental design is the Mackintosh Library at the Glasgow School of Art, realistically it will not be able to look like that, and mockups would be extremely hard to find and/or make to reflect that environment. So instead, for the main mockup, i created from scratch a simple bookshelf, with stock photo Frankenstein inspired posters, and the silhouette of a chandelier along wallpaper from the Gothic Manor pattern i created. The tones are darker, however the chandelier, which would ideally be designed to mimic old candelabras, would light up the place enough to read, along with reading lights at tables.

Other environmental mockups, which were from downloaded bases not created by myself, show signage that can be used for the brand, with the logo + type for exterior & interior sign usage.

Advertising:

As a smaller coffee shop brand, advertising would not be on large billboards, but mainly through social media platforms and flyers. Below is an example for a potential flyer, advertising weekly poetry nights. This aligns with the brand being designed after Gothic literature, and specifically inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "the Raven," which is an iconic piece of Gothic poetry. This encourages customers to not only interact with literature via the Gothic literature themed products and bookshelves in the shop, but to write their own works and share them with a like minded audience.

A social media ad is also exampled below, formatted to instagram and advertising one of the seasonal specialty drinks, the Carda-milla latte, a gothic pun name for the shops spin on a classic Cardamom latte. this uses basic brand design traits such as the muted purple color scheme, the silhouette of the raven logo as well as a full color one on the cup, and a doily on which the drink sits in the mockup. The post caption provides a pun for the drink, "a cardamom latte with a BITE" to hint at the shops own spin, as well as play with the drinks name origin, a classic vampire novel.

Collateral:

Along with products designed for coffee drinkers to brew The Raven's Roost coffee at home, gift cards were also designed as additional "collateral" designs to be used at any store location, or online. The exampled gift cards below provide two potential gift card designs for a standard Halloween gift card that you could purchase during the month of October.

Medium Story:

Along with designs for the overall brand, part of the assignment was to make a "parody" medium article written as if the brand was real, and describe the overall design process with imagery. You can learn more about the brand identity & process by reading the medium article via the link provided below.

Medium article link

These designs were created under the guide of Bryan Satalino at Tyler School of Art & Architecture at Temple University in Advanced Design 3001.

This is for personal use only, and not for sale or reproduction. If you would like a similar design for your own brand, please contact me for a freelance design commission.