INDUSTRY
FOOD & BEVERAGES
CLIENT
PASSION PROJECT
YEAR
2025
EXPERIENCE
BRANDING, LOGO DESIGN, MOCKUPS, EMAIL DESIGN,
Bean House
Bean House
Bean House is a dual-purpose coffee brand that embodies adaptability, community, and style. By day, it energizes professionals, students, and creatives with expertly roasted coffee, while by night, it transforms into a lively social hub serving espresso-driven cocktails.
The Main Design Challenge
The biggest challenge in designing Bean House was capturing its “split personality” — a coffeehouse that needed to feel professional and energizing by day, but playful and social by night. A one-dimensional design would risk alienating either side of the audience.
We solved this by crafting a brand identity that balances bold brutalist typography with a playful, melting smiley icon. The flexible design system can shift tone depending on context, ensuring Bean House feels consistent yet adaptable across every touchpoint.
Brand Research and Positioning
The brand values authenticity, creativity, and versatility, striking a balance between productivity and play.
Its target audience ranges from ambitious young professionals to culturally curious night owls who appreciate design-led spaces.
Aesthetically, Bean House merges brutalist minimalism with playful and approachable design cues, creating a modern yet inviting atmosphere that feels equally at home during business hours and late-night hangouts.
Moodboard & Sketches
The design process began with a moodboard that highlighted contrasts: brutalist architecture for strength and structure, playful street graphics for energy, and minimalist packaging for clarity.
From here, sketches experimented with different ways of merging rigidity with friendliness. The now-iconic smiley was born out of this exploration, providing a warm, human counterpart to the stark type system.
Storefront Design
The storefront design highlights the brand’s brutalist-meets-playful ethos. Large block lettering and bold signage create a strong presence, while smaller, playful details (like the smiling icon on the door or window) invite approachability. The design shifts slightly between daytime clarity and nighttime vibrancy, often through lighting changes that reflect the café-to-bar transition.
Typography
Typography was central to the identity system. A bold, geometric sans-serif was chosen as the primary typeface, reflecting brutalist confidence and modern clarity. To balance this, a softer secondary typeface supports longer copy in digital and print communications, maintaining readability while preserving the brand’s bold personality. This pairing reinforces Bean House’s duality: sharp and direct for business, yet approachable and welcoming for social experiences.
Logo Design
The Bean House logo suite was developed to be flexible, adaptable, and instantly recognizable across contexts. At its core is the melting smiley icon — a symbol of warmth, playfulness, and energy — paired with bold, block typography that reflects the brand’s brutalist roots.
Primary Logo: The full lockup with the smiley icon and wordmark, used as the main identifier.
Secondary Logo: A simplified wordmark, ideal for signage or applications requiring stronger readability.
Icon-Only Mark: The standalone smiley, used for social media, merchandise, and subtle brand accents.
Responsive Variations: Horizontal, vertical, and compact lockups ensure the logo adapts to everything from storefront signage to digital avatars.
This suite ensures Bean House always presents consistently, while allowing flexibility to adapt tone and scale for each brand touchpoint.
Packaging Design
Bean House’s packaging was created with minimalism at its core — clean, bold type paired with the smiling icon. Daytime packaging emphasizes clarity and functionality with sharp black-and-white contrasts, while nighttime packaging introduces subtle bursts of color and playful layouts. This balance maintains consistency while signaling a shift in mood, reinforcing the brand’s dual character.
Poster Design
Posters for Bean House adopt the same bold typography and smiling icon but are adjusted depending on their purpose. Day-focused posters lean into structured layouts with clear messaging about coffee and productivity, while night-focused posters loosen the grid, using dynamic type arrangements to emphasize energy and nightlife. Both remain unmistakably Bean House through their visual anchors.
Email Design
The email system mirrors the dual tone of the brand. Daytime campaigns are stripped back and functional, with clean layouts, bold headers, and an emphasis on coffee promotions or business-related offers. Nighttime campaigns embrace vibrancy, incorporating the smiley icon and pops of yellow to highlight cocktail specials, nightlife events, and late-night promotions. This adaptability keeps communications engaging while maintaining a consistent identity across digital channels.
