Brewing a Brand Identity

Project Overview

Timeline: October-November, 2024
My Role: Brand Research, Visual Identity, Brand Book Design
Tools: InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop

Subko is an award-winning specialty coffee roaster and bakehouse with a deeply subcontinental soul. For this project, I worked with publicly available brand assets to decode their visual language and put together a brand book that captured who they are.

This included their tri-script typography, organic colour palette, hand-sketched illustrations, and the warm craft-driven ethos behind everything they make.

The most interesting part was the insight hiding underneath their visual identity. Subko's entire aesthetic is rooted in the nostalgia of the Indian subcontinent (think old tea houses, roadside coffee stalls, regional scripts). But their audience is largely young and global, people who have probably never lived any of that. So the brand's social media translates that nostalgia into something their audience already knows, like old school candy, Bugs Bunny cartoons, and pop culture references. It feels familiar without being exclusive.

Decoding an identity that already existed, rather than building one from nothing, pushed me to think more like a brand strategist than a designer. This project made it clear to me that building brand guidelines is exactly the kind of work I want to do.