Lottie & Lola

A warm café identity in kraft, blush and cocoa, with a small hand-drawn mark that stamps everything from coffee bags to cake boxes.

Client: Lottie & Lola Café
Role: Brand identity, packaging, illustration
Year: 2024

Overview

Lottie & Lola is a concept identity for a neighbourhood café and bakery. The feeling I was after is the one you get when a place has been there for years: unhurried, a bit worn in, genuinely friendly.

Kraft stock does most of the work. The brand sits on top in blush pink and cocoa brown, with a hand-drawn cup-and-steam mark that can be stamped, printed or embossed.

About concept projects. This is self-initiated work made to explore an idea and show the full process. No client results or figures are claimed for it.

The opportunity

Cafés live or die on their takeaway packaging. It is the thing customers carry down the street, put on their desk and photograph. It has to look good in the hand, not just in a brand guide.

The system also needed to stretch across coffee, baked goods and merch without buying a different design for each.

Creative direction

Two typefaces, two colours, one mark. The wordmark is a friendly serif with slightly uneven letter widths so it reads as printed rather than typed.

Labels are deliberately small, leaving most of the kraft surface bare. Restraint is what makes the pink feel warm instead of sugary.

Process

Naming and tone → mark sketches → type and colour tests on real kraft samples → packaging system → stationery and loyalty cards.

Services provided

Brand identity
Logo mark
Packaging system
Illustration
Stationery
Mockups

Final work

Outcome

A packaging-first identity that a café owner could take to a printer tomorrow: bags, cups, sleeves, jar labels, cake boxes, cards and a stamp-ready mark.

Concept project. No commercial results are claimed.

Related work

All work