For hungry stomachs and minds.
The Ginkgo is a hypothetical café based in New York City. There are two versions of this project. One of them I completed with a group, which has a more classic coffee house style. The second is my own version where I explore themes of ancientness and knowledge with the ginkgo tree.
Let's look at the original idea first.
This version of the Ginkgo focused heavily on simple graphic elements. We wanted to have a cafe that felt fresh and deeply New York. We went for a very clean and new look using only Adobe's Illustrator to create the graphics. Together we chose the ginkgo tree to represent how our cafe was classic and reliable the same way ginkgo trees are long-lived and strong. We also chose to omit the "The" from the name to truly be minimal with our branding.
Mockup of our fall ginkgo tree park event.
But I was in love with the idea of the ginkgo tree and how old it was. While we were researching I found out that ginkgo trees are actually very very different from a standard tree. Their fruits were used in ancient east Asian countries in memory enhancing medicines, among other things. This tree inspired me to create a branding package for a library-cafe combo in a fantasy setting. I wanted to really push the concepts of ancientness and wisdom to their very limits.
I decided to use stamp carvings for the graphics of this project. The ginkgo leaf in the logo is a stamp I carved in real life, imported into Illustrator, and outlined.
THE GINKGO BRANDING UNDER CONSTRUCTION
