There’s a particular kind of nervous energy that comes with entering a design competition. You’re not just pitching a concept to a client who already trusts you — you’re putting your work up against a field of strangers, all chasing the same brief, all hoping the same jury sees what you see. So when I found out my entry had taken first place in ARAH Coffee’s 8th Anniversary logo competition, it landed somewhere between relief and disbelief.
Why I entered
After 15 years running Ricksdesign and building a portfolio anchored in F&B branding, I’ve learned that competitions are a different muscle than client work. There’s no back-and-forth, no discovery call, no chance to ask “what does success look like for you?” You get a brief, a deadline, and a blank canvas — and you have to make every design decision carry its own justification.
ARAH Coffee’s brief for their anniversary mark was exactly the kind of challenge I look for: a brand with real character already in the market, celebrating a milestone, needing a mark that could hold its own across packaging, merchandise, social, and in-store signage — all without a creative director sitting across the table from me to sanity-check every direction.
The process
Anniversary marks are deceptively tricky. They need to feel celebratory without tipping into gimmicky, and they need to still look like the brand — not a one-off sticker slapped onto existing identity. I went through several rounds of iteration, pulling references from coffee culture, milestone typography, and ARAH’s existing visual DNA, before landing on a direction that felt distinctly theirs rather than a generic “8 years” badge.
The goal was always the same: something that could live comfortably on a coffee bag, a tote bag, a wall mural, and an Instagram grid post — without losing its identity in any of those contexts.
After the win
Winning was really just the start of the next phase. I put together a content strategy to make the most of the moment — sharing the process and the final mark across Instagram, Behance, and LinkedIn, not just as a portfolio piece but as a way of opening a conversation with other F&B brands who might be looking for the same kind of strategic, ownable visual thinking.
What it reinforced for me
Competitions like this are a good gut-check. They strip away the comfort of an existing client relationship and force the work to speak entirely for itself. Winning ARAH Coffee’s anniversary brief reminded me why I care about strategy-led design in the first place — a mark only earns its place on a cup or a wall if it’s built on something more than “looks nice.” It has to carry the brand’s story forward, in a way that people notice even if they can’t articulate why.
If you’re a coffee brand (or any F&B business) thinking about a rebrand, a milestone mark, or just a stronger visual identity — I’d love to talk.