Maal

Self-initiated concept

Freya

A café and restaurant

Client
Freya
Change
A café’s name, menu, and table, set in one drawn hand
We did
Identity
The Freya all-day menu, photographed on an orange café chair in sunlight.
The all-day menu. A concept, not a commission.

01The ask

Freya is a café we invented, so a client could see the whole method before paying for it.

It serves cinnamon scrolls, toast, and matcha through the day, from one menu. A café’s identity is rarely met as a logo. It is met as a menu, in daylight, by someone deciding what to order, so that is where we set the test.

The ask

Freya is a café we invented, so a client could see the whole method before paying for it.

Freya is a self-initiated concept. We made it so a client could see the whole method before paying for it.

It serves cinnamon scrolls, toast, and matcha through the day, from a single menu.

A café’s identity is rarely met as a logo. It is met as a menu, in daylight, by someone deciding what to order. So we set the test at the menu, the hardest surface in the business. A guest has about ninety seconds to decide what to order.

The journey

The problem

“I have ninety seconds to decide what to order.”

Most guests decide at the table, with the menu in their hands.

Where the effort goes

Walking past

Some of the effort

Be legible at walking pace

The drawn name at the size it is met from the footpath.

Checking first

Declined

Not a content plan

A café that has not opened has nothing to post.

At the table

Most of the effort

Hold the hand on the menu

A drawn wordmark, retraced to 402 curves, that carries the menu.

At the table

Some of the effort

Carry it onto the table

Three plates, each holding the same hand.

02What we did

We drew the wordmark, set the all-day menu, and carried the same hand onto three plates.

The name is drawn by hand, because a café writes its own name by hand somewhere every day. We set the palette and the type against the menu first, then printed the menu and shot it in daylight.

What we did

We drew the wordmark, set the all-day menu, and carried the same hand onto three plates.

The name is drawn by hand, because a café writes its own name by hand somewhere every day. Everything on the table carries the same hand.

We retraced the drawn wordmark to 402 curves, so the site can redraw it live. It signs itself when you point at Freya on our work grid.

Then we made the things a café prints. The palette and the type were set against the menu first, and the menu was printed and shot in daylight.

Three plates had to hold the same hand. The scrolls carry the name, the line, and its footnote, the toast sits on orange, and the matcha carries the panel and the prices.
Freya: toast on a white plate on an orange ground, with the name drawn above it.
Freya: the matcha plate, with the menu panel and prices.

Toast on orange, and matcha with the panel and the prices.

The Freya menu on an orange café chair, in close-up.

The all-day menu, in daylight.

Freya: the cinnamon scrolls plate, with the name, the line, and its footnote.
The Freya wordmark, drawn by hand.

The cinnamon scrolls with the name, the line, and its footnote, and the drawn name, retraced to 402 curves.