Some briefs hand you a concept immediately — like being handed a cup of perfectly brewed coffee. This was one of them.

Average Joe's isn't your average coffee shop. The brief called for a brand that was friendly, eclectic, and colorful. A place that leans into the joke of its own name while being entirely intentional about everything it does.

I started by imagining the space. Mismatched chairs that somehow work together. Colorful cups in an assortment of shapes and sizes that don't match but feel like they belong. Plants everywhere, tucked into every corner and spilling onto windowsills. The kind of place where you can get lost in a book, where a conversation stretches past a second cup, where the coffee is quietly excellent and nobody is in a hurry. The brand needed to feel like that room.

Building the Identity

The coffee cup came first — a hand-drawn cup, loose, warm. I wanted the illustration to carry the same energy as the space I was imagining: a little imperfect, loaded with character. Each shape in the branding is hand-drawn. Nothing polished, nothing too clean. Everything feels touched by a real person.

The wordmark was a study in contrast. Revla Round brought the right energy to "Average" — quirky and imbued with character but still legible, with a warmth that kept it from feeling too edgy. Joe's needed to pop so I went with Blue Soak, a typeface that genuinely looks like dripping coffee and modified a bit to make it is own. The tension between the two words is intentional. They shouldn't match. That's the point. The tagline "(We're Really Not Though)" just sits underneath, soft and small, like a sneaky inside joke if you’re paying attention.The kind of detail that makes someone smile when they catch it.

The palette was a process of elimination — not uncertainty, but refinement. It started with a rich terracotta alongside a warm cream and deep dark brown. Yellow arrived and eventually merged with the cream, warming it into something richer. The caramel lightened. The purple showed up and immediately felt right. Each iteration wasn't a wrong answer, just a step toward the right one.

Butterfly Pea arrived last, swapping out the terracotta (which I'm filing away for the right project) at the very end, and suddenly everything clicked. Butterfly Pea is a real flower, turns drinks an amazing blue-green, and it’s kind of a hidden gem unless you’ve had it before. That’s exactly the kind of offbeat vibe Average Joe’s needed.

Bringing it to Life

The to-go cup also marks a personal first — my first completed surface pattern! I'm working through Bonnie Christine's Surface Design Immersion program, and my coach Melissa Lee helped me bring it to life. The pattern pulls from the same hand-drawn elements as the rest of the identity, so it feels like a natural extension of the system rather than a separate layer.

The to-go cup wraps the cup in the brand's full visual language. The favicon simplifies the drippy J from the wordmark into a high contrast icon recognizable at any size. The storefront mockup was the final check: does this feel like a real place you'd want to walk into?

I think it does. Honestly, I wish I could park myself there with a good book or my laptop and a Butterfly Pea Latte. Now who has a real coffee shop that needs a designer?

Next up — which I'm VERY excited about — is a book shop! It's already brewing.