10 years of Bluestone Lane Coffee
I first came across Bluestone Lane in 2016 when we moved to NYC and I was trying to get my hands on a Flat White. Little did I know that New York’s coffee scene mostly revolves around getting a cup of batch brewed filter coffee as fast as possible. Enter, Bluestone Lane—an Australian inspired coffee shop chain which has steadily grown across the states. Not only do they serve great espresso drinks but also a good range of food and a chill friendly vibe. Ideal brunch spot.
Fast-forward to recently where (thankfully) we still have one in our neighborhood in LA and I spotted some of their signage celebrating their 10th anniversary. I HAD to take a closer look and see which fonts they were using as I loved how their marketing campagin looked.
The playful use of shifting the baseline for alternate characters in ‘AUSTRALIA’ imediately caught my attention as it’s not something you see done too often. Pairing that with some great font choices and the bold yellow color and you are on to a winner.
Fonts: Moret & Europa
The serif font used here which I absoluetly adore is Moret from The Northern Block. With its condensed forms and sharp features it makes for great display / heading use. It has been paired with the geometric sans serif Europa from EuropaType which draws inspirtation from both Futura and Gill Sans so has a familiar feel to it (yet isn’t as commonly used so stands out a little more). Overall a stellar font combination using the Bold weight of each.
Typography
As I mentioned the modulating baseline is the key here with this design, and while I think this could go too far if overused it certainly works very nicely in this text lock-up. They re-used this same element across a few background images on the blog, social posts, and sidewalk banners.
To achieve this same thing for your designs you could use a couple of approaches with Adobe Illustrator. First you can use the Baseline-shift setting in the Character Panel, in which you would need to select every other character and increase the size of the shift (which by default is always 0pt). Alternatively, you can use the Touch Type feature by hitting Shift+T. This will alow you to grab characters individually within a text object and gives their own boxes to move around, re-size, etc. This effectively lets you set the Baseline Shift and Kerning settings together in a more visual, hands-on manner.
The ‘WIN A TRIP TO’ text looks to use the Arc Wrap setting with around 15% Bend. You can achieve a similar look by using the Type on a Path tool and using an oval shape, although that may end up being more finicky.
8
For those of you following along with the launch of Make Type Work, I recently featured Eight from CAST in Fonts I’m loving rn: July 2023 so I was thrilled to spot it in use irl! This graphic was used on the entry door to the cafe and adds nicely to the overall celebratory vibe of the campaign.
There you have it, a mini break down of the type used by the creative team at Bluestone Lane. Nice work, team!
Bonus if you are curious, the logotype for the brand is Neutraface (I believe specifically Neutraface No. 2 Display Titling) which you can purchase directly from House Industries.