Steep Boba & Juma Ventures

Services

Art direction, brand identity, brand refresh, brand system, signage, environmental graphics, web graphics, photography

Team

Lucia Fernandez-Palacios, Mason Moore, Alvin Yu, Leslie Gomez, By the Locals (Interior Design Firm)

Project

Refreshing two brand identities to unify them into a flexible, low-cost visual system used across physical retail space, pop-up spaces, carts in professional sports venues, and online.

Juma Ventures, a nonprofit social enterprise organization based in San Francisco, acquired an existing boba tea shop as an expansion of their paid job-training program for young adults from underserved communities. They needed a brand refresh for the boba concept which could stand on its own while also visually aligning with Juma's established brand identity.

With a limited budget and no opportunity for a full rebrand, the challenge was to design an updated visual system which could work with Steep's existing logo while remaining flexible, low-cost, and scalable.

Key Themes

Alignment

I crafted a bright new color palette for Steep by pulling hues directly from their products. Bubble shapes throughout the design system allude to the boba pearls in their tea. These combined elements create a cohesive identity while raising the tone of Steep's current logo and better aligning the brand with the fun, colorful tone of the product.

Product Forward

I centered photos of Steep's products in their brand identity because their beautiful drinks are visually enticing. This formerly missed opportunity removed the barrier of translating their product from an idea to an actual visual representation, putting one less space between the product and potential customers.

Social Media

I chose colors that aligned better with boba tea content performing well on social media, increasing opportunities for Steep to generate business organically on platforms like Instagram.

Cost Effective

I used simple, repeatable elements and visual assets that were already on hand, such as photos of drinks, to keep the system cost effective to scale and replicate. This was important to Juma as a nonprofit because their resources are limited and they could not afford to risk large amounts of capital on this venture.

Thinking Ahead

I also kept in mind Juma's future plans to invest in updates to Steep's storefront and interior. The new color palette provided Juma with low-cost options for updating the store with just paint. The colors would stand out against the plain metal and glass exteriors of the surrounding buildings, making Steep an eye-catching and warm presence to draw in more foot traffic.

Steep's identity prior to the brand refresh was minimal. The new brand system is scaleable and recognizable across venues, including their impending pop-up location and a potential expansion of their retail presence in other permanent locations.

I employed Anton as the primary font for Steep and added Franklin Gothic, Juma's font family, for use in subheaders and body text to visually align the two brands.

Left to right: Client and San Francisco Mayor, London Breed, with posters at grand opening event for Steep's pop-up concept supported by San Francisco's Vacant to Vibrant Program.

Steep's new brand system shined for the cameras when San Francisco Mayor, London Breed, stopped by their pop-up location.

The flexible brand system alleviated stress and increased efficiency for Juma when expanding Steep's retail presence in professional sports venues. These spaces brought a unique set of design challenges in the form of highly specific requirements from the venue's master concessionaire, put in place to avoid conflict with other partner branding. In the hustle and bustle, the new brand system helped Steep to stand out from other vendors while meeting the standards of the master concessionaire.

Before

New Concept Mockup

The system also provided an easily replicable framework for integrated marketing to tell the story of Juma Ventures as a nonprofit and its relationship to Steep in online spaces.

Results

The brand system's bright colors, bold fonts, and product-forward approach shined in print and digital news media when Steep's pop-up location was visited by San Francisco's mayor. The brand also effectively translated on the small screen via social media.

The system also performed beautifully in unexpected real world scenarios. Its ease of implementation saved the day when I was not available to create table tents for a last minute Steep catering event and another team member without a background in visual design was able to use elements I had already built to make visually on-brand table tents in time for the event.

The system easily scaled for new spaces, print, and online media as Juma expanded Steep's presence in Oracle Park and PayPal Park and opened a secondary location in another neighborhood in San Francisco.

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