Marylou’s Coffee is a chain of shops established in 1986 in the United States. This coffee chain is decorated as a pink retro diner and serves gourmet coffee as well as quick breakfast foods. The owner and employees pride themselves on their quality customer service and great products, they maintain an inviting local coffee shop atmosphere. Through the redesign of their branding identity I wanted to represent a warm, inviting and fun, friendly coffee shop that is recognized by its pink packages and decorations.
The logo was made to reflect the friendly and personal customer service that customers love from Marylou’s. A signature represents a personalized service and special connections. It gives the feeling that every cup of coffee is made uniquely for the customer and signed as a testament of appreciation, which also reflects the friendly and inviting atmosphere at Marylou’s coffee shops. The signature is hand-drawn and retro-inspired to create a light-hearted and fun look. I replaced the apostrophe with a small heart, which represent the passion and love that the founder has for her business and the appreciation she has for every customer.
The purpose and the development of this identification and poster is to encourage families to come indulge themselves in Francophone culture and spend a night out with their loved ones, their friends and their community. The project goal was to create a poster, program and ticket that worked as a cohesive identity for a festival in our hometown.
To appeal to the demographic, which consists of young families, I created a happy-go-lucky character called Chip. He serves as a spokesperson and as a mascot for the festival along with his mother, father, sister and his pet seagull (the seagull representing the birds who try to steal fries from customers). The bright and warm colors used and the light-hearted quality of the characters in the final festival identity appeals to families. The poster, the program and the ticket are 50’s inspired to reflect the time when French fries and poutine became popular in North America and the time that poutine was invented. The program is cut on a diagonal and when fully open reveals little rooftop like shapes. While the ticket has both perforations and cuts meant to look like fries. Each “fry” can be ripped off the ticket and would count as a free sample to use at the specified chipstand from the list that is participating in the festival.
My cultural background inspired me to create this cookbook, and my goal in the end was to produce an authentic French Canadian cookbook. The content features my grandmother’s and my mother’s special recipes as well as shares a few short stories and memories from my family and my culture.
I took the opportunity to explore photography and decided to photograph the ingredients from the recipes opposed to the finished meals I managed to create appetizing and colorful images to go with the recipes.This book is targeted towards young families and moms who have an interest in cooking. This audience would be interested in simple and uniquely French Canadian cuisines that are not too pricey and are family friendly. I used the colors from the Franco-Ontarian flag as the main color palette, to reinforce the cultural aspect of the recipes. The flag is composed of green and white, green representing the spring and white representing the winter in Ontario. I translated these colors to the outside hardcover and the fly pages. By using uncluttered layouts and soft imagery I aimed to achieve a warm, homey and inviting feel. Similar to the feeling of visiting your grandmother and being greeted with great food made especially for you.
Since authentic French Canadian cookbooks are not widely available in stores or in libraries, I wanted to inform anyone looking to learn about this rich heritage and shed some light on French Canadian foods.
