STEPH’S NOTES:

My twenties were fueled by coffee, and this coffee was often purchased at the likes of Dulce Cafe in Little Tokyo and Copa Vida in Pasadena. Both of these cafes were at some point led by Frank La, who went on to create a coffee company and cafe called Be Bright.

I was initially asked to design icons for a coffee quiz that was the cornerstone for Be Bright’s coffee beans subscription site. Frank and his wife Michelle liked the geometric and playful icons I made for them, and this led to the creation of business cards, and later down the line, a menu to hang up on their Smorgasburg tent. Once they opened a brick and mortar cafe in Los Angeles, they asked me to make an expanded menu based off of the Smorgasburg menu.

Their initial branding deck did not include illustrations, so it was interesting to create an illustrative style that would fit in with their name and existing branding. I was also designing menus for other cafes at the time, so I read up on the psychology behind menu design and incorporated my findings in creating a menu that was intuitively organized and easy to read for the customer.