Something new in Old Town

Prior to opening a cocktail, coffee, and small bites establishment, the owner of Persimmon needed a logo and brand that would embody their unique approach and differentiate them from other Old Town bars and eateries.

Problem / solved

1. Dream up the critters of the Persimmon-verse

• Persimmon takes a very thoughtful and artful approach – from the music on vinyl to intimate seating to crafted cocktails, everything feels masterfully curated. The branding needed to mirror the elevated yet adventurous energy and get people curious enough to walk in the door.
• The brand pattern illustrations are an absurdist collection of food and drink items, animals, trees, spices, dishes – all hand-drawn with a Saul Bass-inspired irregularity and paired with bold color combinations. The result is campy, daring, and certainly unexpected, but also balanced and elevated – just like everything else you’ll find at Persimmon.

2. Refine the design, but keep the interesting bits

• After this brand concept was chosen, the next step was to refine the logo, illustrations, and brand colors. The designs needed to strike a balance of feeling fully polished while also keeping the irregularity that makes the approach so interesting.
• This phase involved edits from our design team, measuring spacing, and resizing to account for different scales. We also adjusted the colors to ensure they were as vibrant in print as they are on-screen. We kept a lot of the handcrafted nature in the final design, drawing the characters by hand with a quick, “no-fuss” approach, and then carefully digitizing the drawing to keep all the irregularities and specificities.

3. Put the brand into action

• After finalizing the logo and illustrations, the illustrations were combined to create several different assets – a repeat pattern for the business cards and website, a wall mural that features the logo, an entry rug, and more.
• I used Illustrator’s pattern creation tools to create the repeat pattern, which would later be used at different scales for different applications such as the back of the business card. This usually involves lots of tedious spacing, but we were quickly able to find a nice balance between illustration and white space.