Zero-Gee Bar

Branding for a modern luxury cocktail bar inspired by ASTROLOGY

Background

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I'm a fan of fiction and futuristic stories, and I love drinking cocktails. I think space and cocktails share various traits, for example how they can be presented as both mysterious and dreamy.

People like to explore the unknown, whether that be space or trying out new cocktail flavors. So, one day I was checking 'Brief Box', a website that offers design briefs for designers to practice with. There's a cocktail bar that launched a branding design brief, so I was thinking "Why not create a fictional cocktail bar with a space theme"? 

Challenge

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Create brand-related content and main website.

My Role

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Branding design,

website design

Timeline

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Summer 2019 

Deliverables

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Logo, menu, website

Industry

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Food & drink

Kickoff

It all started with the name;

exploring the brand voice.

I think the journey to discover the name of a brand is a quick and efficient way to explore the brand voice. ​My approach to naming was to come up with as many space-themed words as I could and see what could be used in terms of building a cocktail bar name with a strong concept behind it.

Brainstormed and researched space-theme topics for brand voice

🔸 Visualise keywords

​Descriptive language helped me develop my research into images. From images, I could then define my design direction.

Define design direction by grouped image

Define

Zero-G: Feel weightless

💡⚡️  Why did I choose this name?

'Zero-G' is short for 'zero-gravity'. I went with 'Zero-Gee' because it felt less scientific or academic, but rather added a bit of funk to it. The reason I went with a name based on gravity was that gravity is mankind's link to Earth; it keeps us grounded and stable. When we talk about experiencing the feelings of being in space, no gravity is the most common thing people will think of. So the careful choice of wording can really help set a vibe of being in space. When you enter this bar, your connection with Earth is suspended for a bit.

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According to the brand position and keyword visualization, I built brand attributes to lead to further development. I describe the brand as premium, dreamy, modern.

🔸 Target audience: Modern, classy women/men

The Zero-Gee bar aiming at an atmosphere of exclusivity, but delivered in a casual and relaxed way, aimed at successful professionals ranging 25-44 years old.​

Personas

Design

Branding: Logo, typography, color

The brand design is based on the idea that space itself is a dark place, but it also has elements like lights and planets which are full of color. Space itself is not dreamy or intriguing but we make the connection based on our emotions which makes it so fascinating and full of stories.

The visual inspiration reflecting the brand spirit.

From left to right: Artwork by Pilar Zeta, Music cover, Illustration by Marvin Bileck

🔸 Logo: Design a flexible asset that can be modified into visual elements

The logo design should inform the audience that this is a space-themed place and it should give people the feeling of being somewhere modern, exclusive, premium, unique.

Logo sketches inspired by space-themed objects

The logo design is based on the idea that space itself is a dark place, but it also has elements like lights and planets which are full of color. Space itself is not dreamy or intriguing but we make the connection based on our emotions which makes it so fascinating and full of stories.

Logo sketches inspired by earrings and interior products with abstract shapes

Logo decision

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After exploration, I chose this abstract shapes that can has a lot of potential to be modified to visual elements and applied a foil effect (see below) to show the premium vibe of the logo.To achieve a flexible logo design, this logo is built in such a way that it can be manipulated to achieve various versions that fit the function of the bar's different-themed events, music, celebrations or networking events.

Logo with foil effect

Logo: a planet-shaped object with the manipulated shape of 'z' and 'e'

Logo extension designs

🔸 Typography

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Inspired by the high-end, modern, exclusive brands in skincare products, alcohol and clothing brands. I chose one which is not too feminine to retain a more neutral tone.

Part of the typography inspiration images

Typography for website and menu

🔸 Color and texture

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The color scheme choice is based on a timeline of 'sunset to night time, back to sunrise'. The dark color can reflect the background color of space, the bright/luminous colors can reflect the starry galaxy.

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The texture choices aim to enhance the sense of luxury and exclusivity for the brand identity.

🔸 Visual elements

​The logo I designed for this brand is versatile and disassembled. I turned the geometric shapes into different objects to form visual patterns. I use these patterns in the coasters and gift bag's design as well.

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There are two backgrounds for all the visual brand assets. The gradient-colored background between light blue to yellow represents the time connection between night and day (sunset to sunrise), the dark blue background represents night time.

Two versions of pattern design

Usage of visual elements

​Below I present the usage of the visual elements in mockups.

Coasters with light gradient background

Coasters close-up image

Coasters with dark color background

Gift bag designs

Design

Menu design

The brand design is based on the idea that space itself is a dark place, but it also has elements like lights and planets which are full of color. Space itself is not dreamy or intriguing but we make the connection based on our emotions which makes it so fascinating and full of stories.

The material of the night-time menu will be leather

The material of the daytime menu will be a frosted-texture plastic finish.

🔸 Menu layout

​To build a space-theme vibe menu, I used lines to represent orbits, and consider menu heading as planets. It is important to choose the context and background color in an easy-to-read format.

Sketches for menu

Menu layout design

Design

Website design

Website home page

Navigation menu in Phone version

Home page in

Phone version

Reflection

What I learned...

I made this project back in the 2019 summer and looking back at this project in 2021, I'm still happy with the naming convention and the brand direction. There are definitely many things I would do differently if I started this today, across menu and the website too.

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For the website design, I didn't follow basic UX principles back then and visually speaking, it wasn't even close to 'alright'. If I was going to redesign the website, I would focus on:

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• Following WCAG 2.1 and at least pass level AA 

• Better visual hierarchy

• Rethink the decision of using images underneath text

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Even though I'm not entirely satisfied with the results of this project, compared to more recent work I've done, my personal growth is the real takeaway from this.