Branding the Barista Bot
A short manifesto on branding and working with professional creatives on your brand's visual potential.
Everyone loves a good critique. Pop culture gets its kicks, and websites get their clicks by harshing on the latest rebrand or ripping a new brand’s entry into what is most likely a saturated market. Is there anything new to say!?! Will there be another Swoosh, Arch, or Apple?
Is there time to create a longstanding brand position in the age of fleeting digital experiences?
I think so.
When you build a brand story early in the process, your pro forma and sales strategy have a foundational story to build from — a why before the what and the how.
For your brand to make a mark, you must filter out the noise and focus on the attributes that make it unique.
Branding a project is an act of compromise. The trick is to compromise without regrets.
Without delving into how the sausage was made, I wanted to briefly highlight the high-level process we went through to get to our branding — Logo, Fonts, Colors, and Mark.
First, consideration was put into which designer to work with on this project. I have used Studio DeWalt for branding work, including tmrw.coffee and Begin the work over the past few years. Evan and Julie are incredible designers and brand constructors — their work speaks for itself. They are amazing!
But sometimes you have a designer in your peripheral that you want to do more work with. In this case, Bryan Couchman of Bryan Couchman Design had a portfolio of work that I kept going back to as visually opinionated in a way that aligned with what we were thinking for Barista Bot. I had just finished another project with Bryan, commissioning seven bags from his handmade line of bike bags — Steady Co., for a Lake Surf Co. pop-up shop inside Woodshed Coffee & Tea. His dedication to detail and craft made him a great candidate for this project, as we wanted to find personality in the crowded bot and AI-oriented branding space.
Working with Bryan was a blast; I appreciated his approach and thoughtfulness in the design process; he did not jump to sketches too soon but spent time with me to better understand the project, my values, and how I saw this brand living in the world. In the initial project discovery phase, we settled on four words to describe the brand:
Approachable
Agile
Nimble
Reliable
Bryan created a description based on our conversations. He did a phenomenal job editing my diatribes into short consumable “statements,” which elevated the words into the following brand attributes:
Approachable: With the negative associations made with “AI” and automation, it’s essential to communicate the non-invasive nature of the service provided by Barista Bot.
Agile: Technology should complement our lives, not control it. Barista Bot strategically adapts to users’ preferences, eliminating the users’ need to learn new behaviors or skills.
Nimble: Barista Bot’s success depends on its ability to be flexible and adapt quickly and efficiently to whatever task it has been given.
Reliable: Whether it’s a coffee order or registering a vehicle, users should feel confident in Barista Bot’s ability to efficiently and securely complete any task it is given.
As we completed the Brand Attributes, Bryan began his visual exploration process, which I’ll keep confidential. He was continually checking in and asking questions for clarity. I very much appreciated his process as he explored what could be.
At the milestone defined in the contract, Bryan delivered three visual directions for me to give my unfiltered responses. He also explained the direction with his opinions, which I greatly appreciate. Branding is a creative process that combines the views and vision of the founder with the vision and opinion of the creator. An excellent collaborative process needs unfiltered opinion to understand the context from which the opinion was derived — it takes confidence to state your opinion and no ego (on both sides) to find an appropriate compromise.
After some back and forth, we settled on the direction you see today; Bryan then delivered a full Brand Guidelines document, snippets of which can be seen below:
When you embark on a branding journey, there is a lot of trust put into the process, knowing that your vision and the designer's interpretation must align to create a mark that has long-lasting potential. Time will tell with Barista Bot. Brand affinity is an ongoing relationship with the consumer, which includes product development, customer support, and market success. As well as the customer’s feelings toward the mark, end product, and support. Branding is a dance, and what we bring to the ballroom is confidence in our perspective and the attributes behind it.
Update: Currently, we are pursuing a trademark on the Barista Bot icon and have filed all the appropriate papers with the USPO.
From a branding perspective, it is beneficial to add a TM to all of your logos when you are pursuing a registered trademark (®), and you’ll see a TM beside our mark to designate this as an unregistered trademark while we wait for the filing to clear.
