Average Joe's Coffee Co.
Some briefs hand you a concept immediately — like being handed a cup of perfectly brewed coffee. This was one of them.
Average Joe's — a coffee shop that's anything but. The brief called for a brand that was friendly, eclectic, and colorful, with a personality that leaned into the joke of its own name because in reality it's a place that calls itself average while being entirely intentional about everything it does.
I started by imagining the space. Mismatched chairs that somehow work together. Colorful cups an an assortment of shapes and sizes that don't match but feel like they belong. Plants in corners and windowsills. The kind of place where someone settles in for two hours with 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 — hand-drawn, loose, warm. I wanted the illustration to carry the same energy as the space I was imagining: a little imperfect, full of character. The organic shapes throughout the system follow the same logic, hand-drawn rather than constructed, giving the whole identity a human quality that a more polished approach would have lost.
The wordmark was a study in contrast. Revla Round brought the right energy to "Average" — quirky and characterful but still legible, with a warmth that kept it from feeling too edgy. For "Joe's" I needed something that went further: Blue Soak, a typeface that genuinely looks like dripping coffee, modified just enough to feel ownable. The tension between the two words is intentional. They shouldn't match. That's the point. The tagline — (We're Really Not Though) — is set intentionally small and light. It's not meant to announce itself. It's there for the people who look closely, a quiet wink that rewards attention. The kind of detail that makes someone smile when they catch it.
The Color Palette
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 rust (which I'm filing away for the right place) at the very end, and suddenly everything clicked. It's an actual café ingredient — a flower that produces a vivid blue-teal color in drinks, obscure until you've encountered it, and then completely unforgettable. That felt exactly right for a brand called Average Joe's.
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, and I wish it was a real place I could do some work and enjoy 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.
This project was completed as part of Lucy Eden's Year of Briefs — a 52-week challenge to build range, practice craft, and keep designing.
