Palio Coffee
Art Direction | Web & Branding
Four years ago, I unexpectedly connected with the owner of Palio Coffee while I was on my way back to Oregon. The owner needed a new website and brand identity overhaul. I was excited to work on this opportunity with him. The inspiration behind the name “Palio Coffee” derived from “the Palio,” a century-old horse race, runs through Siena, Italy. Palio Coffee strives to preserve the age-old traditions of hand roasting coffee from the first crack to finish.
Logo Design
I wanted to preserve the Palio Coffee brand’s essence, but update the logo so it would look more modern and appeal to a younger audience. We decided to keep the iconic horse image used in his original logo. The horse is an essential signifier of his brand and ties in the traditional coffee roasting and horse racing method. I knew that if we changed the icon too much, his loyal customers would not be happy with the brand redesign.
In the end, after two rounds of revisions, we decided to go with the second series of changes and chose version 5 in that draft. To mark the business start date, I incorporated the year his company was born to present a timeless feel. After the logo rebrand, the next step was designing the packaging.
Business Cards
We decided to keep the business card design minimalistic. The logo is the star of the show, so we used Palio’s navy and orange color palette for the cards to create contrast. We used Moo.com as our vendor to print out the cards. Moo is an affordable service to print out high-quality business cards.
The Packaging
Although colorful, the previous packaging design read as dated. We wanted to keep the system on the brand, so we were inspired by the new logo design to guide the new packaging design. The natural craft’s look with the black ink gave a timeless vibe that will carry the brand past current trends.
Brand Identity
Logo | Palio Coffee derived from “the Palio,” a century-old horse race run through Siena, Italy.
Color palette | Orange, navy, gray, white and charcoal.
Typography | We wanted to use a similar line weight as Palio’s old logo, but give the design a modern twist. We settled on Regina Black as the primary font and Montserrat as the secondary font choice. Regina comes off older and timeless but still looks more modern than a traditional Serif font.
Site Design
We built the site in Squarespace so that the design would shift seamlessly from desktop to mobile. The site design incorporates Palio’s signature bright color palette with an effortless minimal vibe.
