Reaper & Bean

Reaper & Bean is a coffee shop trying to make our everyday cups a bit more fun and as the name suggests, a bit spooky. The idea was simple: build a spooky themed cafe designed to target and attract all the coffee lovers who love horror. You know the friend who can’t stop talking about the newest horror movies? Yeah, it’s definitely for them.

They needed an identity that matched the energy. Something that was spooky, but fun enough for people to enjoy. So we got our thinking caps on and set out on the challenge to build something that combines the two worlds and carves out a story that feels like it’s made just for them.

finding the perfect Flavour

During the brainstorming session, we immediately knew that the brand had an underlying personality of being fun and we knew we had to leverage it. We needed a fun characterful base for the brand but not to an extent that it felt like a joke, but still fun enough to be engaging with the customers while having their favourite cup.

With that in our minds, we began developing the logo mark for the brand. We went through hundreds of concepts to find the right fit for the brand and eventually we did. When we had sketched out the skull cup, we knew it had the perfect amount of fun while layering the spooky elements on top of it. On top of that it connected right back to the name! It was responsive in design and fun in character helping the brand scale easily as it grows.

Once the concept was locked in, a logo suite was created for the brand so that it can stay fun and responsive across different applications and environments. Taking this as a base, we started building out the rest of the visual system to build out a story that’s fun and spooky, making it feel like it was built for the lovers of horror who just want to enjoy a good cup of coffee.

Bringing the mumsy community closer

The word mark was also customised to fit the aesthetics of the brand, including a cheeky ampersand that connected with the skull cup to give the “Reaper” a life. The letters were tweaked to match the logo mark style. The tweaks were meaningful in bringing together the logo that clearly showed its character. The intention wasn’t to make it shout that it’s spooky or for hardcore horror fans, it was designed to be just fun enough for its people to enjoy their favourite beans.

For the colours we leaned heavily on shades of purple, because midnight is when the spooks begin ;) But we knew it needed something more, an all purple palette was good but just not enough, it was too monotone for the brand’s energy. So we decided to add the lightning shade along with a lighter tweaked bone yellow shade. The result was a palette full of energy, spookiness and cups of fun.

For typefaces, we decided to use Glory for headings and Bricolage Grotesque for the rest of the things. The final assets and illustrations were designed after the character of the brand. We took the usual spooky elements and gave them the same treatment as the rest of the identity and we were finally ready. Reaper & Bean had an identity full of character and fun, ready for people to enjoy their favourite roasted beans with a side of spooky.

Applications