ODA creates brand identity for Costa Fresco

Our Design Agency, has cre­at­ed the new brand iden­ti­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion for Costa’s first ever food con­cept store. Cos­ta Fres­co will see the brand focus on a new food offer when it opens its doors on Tot­ten­ham Court Road on Decem­ber 7^th. The Shored­itch based agency of ten was chal­lenged to trans­late the nation’s favourite cof­fee brand into a food focused propo­si­tion with real stand­out in an increas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive high street context.

The scope of the job encom­passed every­thing from brand strat­e­gy and tone of voice for all com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in-store mes­sag­ing, to iden­ti­ty cre­ation and all design ele­ments includ­ing print, sig­nage, wall art, pack­ag­ing, dig­i­tal menu boards and point of sale. The agency also cre­at­ed an online brand film at www​.cos​ta​.co​.uk/​F​resco and local OOH cam­paign. The cre­ative idea: ​“The Barista, The Bak­er, The Hap­pi­ness Mak­er Est Lon­don 1971” is firm­ly root­ed in the warmth and her­itage of the Cos­ta brand, while also intro­duc­ing an iden­ti­ty for Cos­ta Fresco’s food propo­si­tion as the Anglo-Ital­ian bak­ery. The agency worked close­ly with Cos­ta to iden­ti­fy a role for cur­rent brand assets through­out the cre­ative execution.

The brand’s well-known bur­gundy colour pro­vides a cof­fee anchor, and the sub­tle use of Costa’s icon­ic wave pat­tern pro­vides cohe­sion and famil­iar­i­ty around the restau­rant for cus­tomers. New sub-brand ele­ments were intro­duced to dis­tin­guish Cos­ta Fres­co and bring real food cre­den­tials to the iden­ti­ty. They include a fresh colour palette, a hand­writ­ten type­face sug­ges­tive of the laid back style of the food, and new style of rus­tic pho­tog­ra­phy, evi­dent in dig­i­tal menu boards and pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al. Impor­tant­ly, the dis­tinc­tive tone of voice and mes­sag­ing through­out the store cel­e­brates qual­i­ty food with Costa’s char­ac­ter­is­tic warmth. Cos­ta Fresco’s sig­na­ture prod­uct inspired by Ital­ian flat­bread, and named The Rus­ti­co, for exam­ple, is signed off with a fun call to action, ​“enjoy the flat­ter ciabatta.”

Our Design Agency’s Strat­e­gy Direc­tor, Sarah West­wood, said: ​“The team at Cos­ta are fan­tas­tic and this was an excit­ing project for us to be lead­ing. They loved our response to the brief which was to con­sid­er the com­plete sub-brand iden­ti­ty. We looked at how the brand com­mu­ni­cates, as well as how it looks. Be it a car­ry bag, a piece of wall art or a nap­kin, we viewed every touch point as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to express Cos­ta Fresco’s gen­uine personality”