Benugo logoHanging sign image courtesy of Richard Heald.

Benugo provides food and drink for a wide range of businesses, with everything prepared on site.

The past couple of months have seen the opening of two new Benugo stores in Covent Garden and Luton Airport. Both carry the new Benugo branding, developed by ico Design Partners.

The branding process began with a comprehensive strategic and visual review that saw the ico team visiting all of the Benugo high street stores and many of the in-house catering operations and museum clients that the company has acquired in the last 15 years. Working closely with all the key stakeholders, ico defined a set of brand values that build on the independent spirit and entrepreneurial vision at the heart of the business and creates a platform for the future.

Key to delivering on these values was communicating the many ways that Benugo is different. ico developed a new visual language for the brand, one that has the ability to tell different messages in a memorable, charming way.

Benugo brand identity

Benugo brand identity

Benugo brand identity

Benugo brand identity

Benugo locations

A series of flexible visual assets was developed to use across the business, and a bespoke typeface ‘Benugo Franchise’ was adapted to allow all brand communication to have a consistency that was previously lacking. The Benugo logo was redesigned to create a marque that is contemporary and also increases legibility across all applications and signage.

Benugo logo

ico continue to work closely with both the Benugo team and interior designers Path as the new brand is rolled out across their high street locations.

Benugo facade

Benugo Covent Garden

Benugo facade

Benugo in store

Benugo coffee

More from ico.

Comments

I’ve never been to a Benugo café before but this identity is stunning! Next time I’m in London I’ll be checking these places out on the strength of their branding alone.

Come to think of it, do you check anywhere out without being aware of their branding?

Personally as a whole I find it, especially the illustrations, lack cohesiveness. So I am struggling here to familiarize the tone of the identity.

I’m with Robert. I like the interior and the black-and-white theme but how many fonts, fake screws, and fake engravings do we need? Is this hip, ironic, post-modern, or a hotchpotch?

I feel that the black and white branding helps the natural colours of all goods on offer stand out, which I could imagine to be very appealing. I can’t stand it in cafe’s where there is such a clash of colour I don’t know where to look!

I like the logo, well I like it all but what I’m struggeling to imagine is how it looks in one of Benugo’s shops once it’s done, what interior design are they going for, are they going old fashioned to match the posters or?

The posters are very retro I guess, but what about them in 1 year, 5 years or 10 years? Is the visual language so comprehensive that they will be able to keep this idea fresh through out the years that comes or is it just something they’ll scrap and replace with something else?

Maybe I’m missing something here though, in that case I’m sorry!

I think the branding as a whole is pretty cohesive. The variation in the imagery is what makes it interesting, to the viewer, they WANT to look at each one. I don’t understand whats no cohesive about it. The posters call back to what the company does. The job was to create images that showed all or most of the items that the company does because they are distinctive. All of these designs are clean, which means in 20 years if they choose, they could use the same style/art.

Branding should never be about the “style” of design or art. UPS’s branding “style” didn’t matter because UPS owned it, they went with Paul Rand’s design and the ONLY people who could sit and say, well, the logo is this style, etc etc were designers. Consumers only saw “UPS”. Branding successful. If a brand is relying on what is “popular” in design style, the company will ultimately fail.

If Benugo goes through owning this style, it will become their style and they only people quibbling over its style, design, or placement will be people like us. The public will be trained to see this grayish, black & white designed posters as “Benugo ads”.

Take Starbucks, all of their ads look similar but they never look the same, people obviously respond to that because they are familiar with something new to look at. There are only two distinct styles of art in the brand, the penned images which provide and old print/cultured look and then you have the clean, modern graphic designs. Each is brought together artistically through tone, image style, and structure of each poster.

MY issue is that the font of the Logo, is not repeated anywhere in the posters. It is however on the product labels. This is a disconnect for me, because the posters don’t seem to have the logo and font placed on them anywhere. If the posters are going to be the front runner for the brand, they should echo the logo in some way or at least call back to the style. The only way I see that working is if they never, ever, ever allow those posters to be seen outside the store.

Jonathan,

Unfortunately Benugo is not UPS. Any new company for that matter should establish a consistent and distinct look/feel of their identity than trying to be bipolar.

Black & White are tend to be forgettable too. So there’s nothing memorable or distinctive about Benugo’s identity.

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