June 2025
Island Monkey Cafe
Backstory
This project started when one of my friends reached out to me on social media with a question: “I’m thinking of starting my own small coffee cart business next summer and I’m struggling with the logo. My plan is to draw one up by hand that I like, but I don’t know how to convert it to digital. I’m not techy enough and ChatGPT is no help”. This was exactly the opportunity I was looking for to get some experience in graphic design.
On paper, the task was fairly simple. I had a clear starting point. My client had a sketch of her vision on a piece of paper. I just needed to turn it into a dynamic, scalable graphic that would stand out, yet still adhere to the idea conveyed in her initial sketch.
The Original Sketch
The sketch I was given to work from was actually really nice to have. It provided a clear starting point and gave me all the context I needed to establish the layout. The main decisions still left to make were the font and the colour scheme. So, I opened up Pixelmator Pro and got to work. It took a bit of playing around, but within a few hours I had a first draft. And as you’ll see below... it was rough.
The First Draft
My first draft was something that I felt would have been a waste of time to iterate on. One of the reasons it looked so strange was because I thought it would have been a smart idea to just merge a bunch of shapes together to create the monkey instead of using the pen tool. I quickly learned that this approach was terribly inefficient and didn’t provide much flexibility. I also hadn’t fully dialled in the colour scheme, and (if I remember correctly) the Vancouver Island graphic in the background was a no copyright SVG that I found on the internet. I sent that file on a one way trip to the trash and started a fresh project.
Starting from Scratch
This next iteration was completed after a couple days, and things were starting to come together. After watching a couple tutorials on how to effectively use the pen tool in my design software, I was feeling confident enough to give it a shot. The monkey was now properly traced (and expanded upon) as opposed to eyeballed, and unconventionally assembled. We had the idea to add palm tree leaves sprouting out of the tail, and I spent more time than I care to admit using the pen tool to trace a screenshot of Vancouver Island from Google Earth for the island graphic in the background.
Making Progress
My client was quite pleased with how the second revision of her logo looked. There were a few things missing though. She wanted a more “handwritten” style on the text, and I also had forgotten to re-add the drink to the monkey’s hand (to be fair, I was working on the logo at around 11 PM). This next revision brought the monkey’s drink back, as well as changed the font to something with a bit more of a handwritten feel to it. However, the font felt a little off and the monkey’s drink looked out of place with it being an entirely different colour scheme from the rest of the design.
Finishing Touches
There were a couple other small changes I had to make before we called it finished. For starters, I had to find a way to more seamlessly integrate the monkey’s coffee cup into the design so it didn’t stick out like a sore thumb, and I also had to switch the font to something a little more playful.
On the topic of the font, this was where I had to think outside the box a little bit. My client was happy with the new font that I had picked, but wanted to see if I could retain the original letter “I” that she had drawn in her sketch. I traced it with the pen tool, and tried to finely tune it as much as possible so it looked consistent with the rest of the letters in the typeface. It was a relatively small change, but it brought the text together much nicer than before.
The Finished Product
