{"id":8,"date":"2026-07-17T10:30:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T10:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/?p=8"},"modified":"2026-07-17T10:30:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T10:30:32","slug":"winning-arah-coffees-8th-anniversary-logo-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"Winning ARAH Coffee’s 8th Anniversary Logo Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why I entered<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2014 and you have to make every design decision carry its own justification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2014 all without a creative director sitting across the table from me to sanity-check every direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The process<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Anniversary marks are deceptively tricky. They need to feel celebratory without tipping into gimmicky, and they need to still look like the brand<\/em> \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2014 without losing its identity in any of those contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the win<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Winning was really just the start of the next phase. I put together a content strategy to make the most of the moment \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What it reinforced for me<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re a coffee brand (or any F&B business) thinking about a rebrand, a milestone mark, or just a stronger visual identity \u2014 I’d love to talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u2014 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,4,3],"tags":[9,11,8,7,10],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arah-coffee","category-coffee-shop","category-design-competition","category-identity-design","tag-arahcoffee","tag-behindthework","tag-designcompetition","tag-logodesign","tag-ricksdesign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15,"href":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ricksdesign.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}