Onsen Coffee is a little design exercise of taking a brand logo and subtly adding it to a image as a way of advertising.
Without blasting the brand logo in the customers face, does mixing it into another image make it better for the company?

Simply adding a company logo image to every item available makes everything look same same.

While this supposedly increases brand awareness, does repeatedly flashing the same image at someone really promote it, or should it first and foremost be something cool whilst making the brand secondary.

When we started developing Giraffe and Elf and finalised the company logo we put together some silk screens to try out the logo on different apparel.

As we've investigated further products and promotional items we've come to realise than simply having the same logo image across a range of items begins to look repetitive. We live in a world where printing has advanced to the point where every type of surface can have an image on it. Having that same image constantly repeated simply diminishes the impact it has.

Giraffe and Elf's mantra involves designing and developing, simply copy-pasting the company logo onto item X Y and Z seems like a shabby way out. Why not take something that still identifies the company and include it into something that on initial inspection isn't noticed.

This could add value to each style of the company logo while keeping it fresh, individualising a simple branded promotional item.

Tailoring a design to suit the items on which it is presented is often attributed to a product line but overlooked when the company logo is involved. This is most obvious when a long rectangle logo is shoehorned into a square or circle shaped item.

Graphic design is to be used to an advantage, adding a statement of quality, care, texture, tone, and more to anything that is being produced. Having someone take a second look at an item, because it isn't simply a repeated image, is going to leave them with a more memorable impression.

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#design