The Bean

A full brand identity rebrand for The Bean, a specialty coffee roaster and café from Mediaș, Transylvania. The system is built around a lowercase “b.” mark with a coffee bean hidden in its counter, a warm dark-roast palette, and an editorial serif-meets-monospace type pairing — carried across cups, packaging, signage and the full café experience.

The Bean had already earned a real local reputation. Three cafés across Mediaș, Sighișoara and other places, its own roastery, loyal regulars, but the visual identity didn’t match the quality in the cup. The mark, type and packaging felt generic and inconsistent between locations, blending into every other small-town café instead of signaling genuine specialty coffee. The goal: an identity as considered as the roast, ownable enough to scale across all three locations.

I started from the product itself. The bean. The identity is anchored by a lowercase serif “b.” with a coffee bean concealed in its counter and a petrol-blue period as a quiet signature. A dark-roast palette (espresso brown, petrol blue, cream) paired with a warm display serif and monospace support type gives the brand an editorial, specialty-grade feel. From there I built the full system — cups, bags, aprons, origin labels, signage and social — so every touchpoint reads as one brand.