THE GUITAR SOCIAL
Role: Branding designer, illustrator, photo editing
Developing printed materials for the Guitar Social, a guitar community offering lessons and music events based in a venue that also doubled up as a bar and cafe. The business was suffering from not having a cohesive identity. While the guitar community, going for 10 years, was thriving the bar was not getting enough customers in on a regular basis. The building was used for three purposes but the brand identity felt muddled, which despite the venue's central location meant it was being overlooked.
I had the task of creating graphics that helped establish a cohesive identity for the Guitar Social, so that it would become known as a bar, cafe and community.
The venue, pictured above, already had a distinct vibe that felt homely and like hanging out in someone's living room which really reflects the brand ethos that it is first and foremost a community, and should feel like a bar where everyone knows your name. That itself is a huge USP in central London. Filled with lots of different patterns and textures and decor such as a vintage barber's cabinet and posters of musicians, I was keen to reflect the venue in the graphics.
One problem was that the bar had put a lot of effort into the selection of cocktails on offer but because the vibe was more cafe than premium cocktail bar customers weren't often aware of this and it made it harder to sell and justify the prices. I designed a cocktail menu that would highlight that cocktails were something the bar specialised in.
The design would look cohesive in the space and that link cocktails and guitars. The venue had all these interesting textures so I brought that into the menu design to give it a quality feel. Collage was a good method to retain the uniqueness and quirkiness of the business, making up a simple image from lots of other elements - the cocktail glass is made from materials to do with guitars including the body of a guitar, tab music, and a microphone.
I created a design that invited customers to look closer, and pique their interest about the guitar part of the business. I used lines and circles as geometric shapes that appear a lot in guitars (strings and the centre of the guitar and also in tab music) as repeated motifs for the graphics for the business. These help add structure and modernity to the designs.