Option 2
Option 1
This is probably the most important entry in our little shop opening diary. I don’t care what anyone tells you, branding is essential. It can make or break a business. As an author, the one lesson I had to learn was this: if books are judged by their covers, then your cover needs to be striking.
But what is in a name or a logo? It is not a complicated question. However, the simpler the answer to that question, the lesser the impact of the name or logo. Over the years I have noticed the effort companies put into branding, especially with regards to a unique and memorable logo design. They pay a small fortune and have a team of experts chiselling away at a granite block until, at last, the company emblem appears.
Amazon, for instance, put some thought into their design. Their approach has always been to offer on-line shoppers everything from A to Z. Hence the arrow below the word Amazon to connect the two letters. Few notice that the arrow also represents a smile, providing a promise of happiness.
With a coffee shop you might think it is difficult to be unique, but give it time. Like baby names, the right name and design will come to you, no matter how challenged your creativity might be. I know there is not much scope with coffee. You are bound to come up with an image of a cup, the aroma hovering over a freshly brewed drink, or a bunch of beans beautifully displayed on a background. And that is fine! Don’t panic. Instead try to find a unique name.
Here is what we did. We scoured through all manner of coffee material, from websites, to speciality magazines, to books. I was thinking about the different types of coffee, how we use the ground beans in our garden, how the planting and harvesting takes place. Every new coffee-related word I saw was going to be the new name for our business. And it is during all this research that it came to me.
One fateful day, when I found myself a bit more philosophical than most mornings, I fully comprehended how much coffee and tea plays a part of our daily lives. I mean, we really enjoy coffee and tea. We are born, we live and we move on. And coffee and tea is there from beginning to end.
I began searching through ancient Turkish texts, Greek philosophy and old versions of a Spanish Bible, and then I found our baby’s name. Our shop was to be named: Polvo.
Final logo design
In Spanish the word means dust or earth. It was an added bonus that the term café en polvo means filter or instant coffee. Coffee in dust form. And it was sheer coincidence that our unique cookie with every cup is called polvorones, a traditional Mexican wedding cookie, referred to as dust cakes. This suited our South American theme. We decided that the registered name of our company should be Life.Coffee.Polvo. To us it symbolized the three stages of life. From dust we come, in dust we live, and to dust we shall return. Very quickly, our little coffee shop became so much more than just another shop. It had a life of its own.
The final touches were done to the design and before long our business had a face. Next came the shop-fitting, furniture, the cups and things, and the numbers part of the business. More on that in the next instalments. Feel free to track our progress here: @PolvoCoffee
