Soulstes
Year: 2024
Service(s): Brand Strategy, Logo Design & Visual Identity
Soulstes is fed up of the elitests dominating the coffee industry purely for profit. These big corporations lack community, personality and care; however what they do well is convinience. Why can’t we have a coffee experience that has it all? Soulstes is more than just premium coffee, it’s a celebration of life’s joyful moments and the soulful bonds we create; and we want to pass that feeling onto everybody that comes in contact with our brand.
Evan from Soulstes came to me needing a full brand identity system for his new Florida Coffee Brand. The branding had to deliver a premium, sustainable and soulful feel for the brand that showed off the celebration of community and the spirit of the summer solstice.
The Concept
From the get go we knew the logo had to have the composition of a bohemian style sun with rays. So the main task was to create a "face" or internal part of the sun to make this logo unique to Soulstes. This concept leans into the spiritual side of the brand; I started researching symbols of the soul and figured that we can create something really nice by embodying the circles of life. By creating these two overlapping circles we create the circle of life containing the mind body and soul (I know fitting right?), by adding another circle, we create this surrounding life which represents us living in the moment. If we then connect the mind and the body the surrounding life we create these two beautiful merging shapes that represent the soulful bonding; one of the brands biggest values. Once we marry this all together, Boom. We have the mark.
The Logotype
For the logotype I chose this beautiful typeface Gelica which marry's up the to the logomark perfectly. The type had to exude this friendly, relaxed yet sophisticated feel to it. The brand had to have a slightly retro and nostalgic feel to it so by choosing this sans serif type with slightly rounded edges, it hit the nail on the head.
Typography & Colour Palette
The primary typeface I selected for Soulstes was a beautiful typeface called Gelica, what I love about this typeface is that it's an extensive font family, which essentially means we have many different weights and styles to play with when creating graphics and text layouts throughout the rest of the visual identity. Gelica is elegant and sophisticated, yet fun and approachable which was important for the brand. I bonded it with a Secondary typeface called Bungee, which hones in on the bohemian side of the brand. By using these two typefaces we create this cohesive type system.
The colour palette chosen; Soulstes Sage, Soulstes Wild, Soulstes Sun and Soulstes Cream. The greens evoke this sense of beautiful beginnings, tranquility and calmness, then the injection of this beautiful yellow colour really brings out the excitement and enthusiasm of the brand.
The Logo Suite
Soulstes is going to have a lot of touchpoints as it's such a diverse brand. From Print materials, merchandise, coffee cups, packaging to digital materials, social media, websites and much more. Therefore I created a diverse logo suite for them which gives them lots of maneuverability and options with their logo. The brand is also going to have a big merchandise arm, so having these different logo variations gives them the ability to have a few different t shirt designs.
