Designing a logo for The Atrium Café at 1000 Lakeside
Formerly The Real Cooking Café, The Atrium Café is a bright, airy, inviting eatery sited in the lobby of the Lakeside 1000 office complex. They came to us at Team Locals Media for a new name and a rebrand. We threw ‘Atrium’ into the ring — it had that open, welcoming feel to it, and also sounded pretty catchy — and that's what we went forward with.
As inspiration, Atrium's manager handed over one of the pieces of food packaging they were ready to roll with post-rebrand — a baguette sleeve, adorned with a leafy pattern.
And so the design process began. Here's what happened:
Okay, so, leaves. Color? Green. Done. We started out with a slab typeface — always a good way to get a feel for the letters — and tried a handful of font pairings. And that was the first concept sorted.
What if we threw the leaf and fork motif around the logo in a neat little circle? Works nicely. We didn't use this for the logo, but it lived on as a lock-in on packaging and posters!
Nope, green isn't enough. Need to throw some actual leaves in there so people know it's the real deal. And, woah, what if we stabbed a fork through the ‘U’? Negative space is the best.
We ultimately decided to abandon the fork for the logo. Felt like too much. The leaf became the central decoration of this, the final logo — so much so that it became one of the characters. Done!
PHOTOGRAPHY AND POSTERS
Next, we conducted a food photoshoot at Atrium, getting pictures for posters to promote the meals on offer in the café. Here's Jeeves photographing the salad:
We broke out Lightroom and Photoshop for the retouching, and delved into InDesign for the posters themselves — a trio for jacket potatoes, paninis, and salads. The unused circle concept lives on!
