Logo Design | Rebrand
Spring 2023
Instructor | John DuFresne
The UpTowner Cafe
The Upowner Cafe is a non-chain restaurant located in St. Paul, Minnesota. The restaurant offers homemade breakfast and lunch. Its originality makes the restaurant a great place for locals to feel at home while enjoying the location of the place.
Because of its ownership, The Uptowner Cafe has not made an upgrade to its brand and logo. The purpose of this project was to make a new stationery system and logo that could later be used for branding.
The logo represents the word “Up” which is playfully included in the name. The “U” shape represents the buildings that are around the location of the restaurant, and the “p” positioned inside as a negative shape, gives the logo a more modern feel without taking away the essence of the restaurant.
Throughout the stationery, the logo is placed on all items as well as important information about the restaurant.
Insights
I enjoyed this project! it might seem like it was easy, but I had a lot in mind when coming up with the logo. I arrived at lots of solutions and liked most of them.
My favorite part of the project was going to the restaurant. My research included waiting 10 minutes to get seated ( I went there at lunch hour on a Saturday morning…) which wasn’t that bad, and ordering a ( definitely) generous breakfast meal while I studied the restaurant and its overall vibe, as well as the customers and cooks. Hopefully, I didn’t come off as a creep.
I concluded that it was a lovely place, though smaller than I thought. With this in mind, my adventure of creating a logo started.