The Challenge
Founded in 2011, Soul Origin grew rapidly to more than 150 locations across shopping centres, food courts and airports around Australia. The coffee and food offer was strong, but the brand wasn’t keeping pace with the scale of the business. Visibility, distinctiveness and recall in busy retail environments were falling behind consumer expectations and competitor activity.
The strategic challenge was clear: elevate Soul Origin’s presence in a highly competitive QSR landscape, strengthen its reputation for quality coffee and fresh, made-daily food, and inject a more distinctive personality into the brand so it could win attention from a distance and loyalty over time.
The Insight
In a food court or airport, customers make decisions in seconds. They’re not just choosing a coffee or a salad; they’re choosing the brand that feels the freshest, most trustworthy and easiest to understand at a glance. Soul Origin didn’t just need a new logo – it needed a strategic platform that could guide every future decision.
We started with an in-depth workshop with the original founders and key stakeholders to uncover ambitions, diagnose current challenges and map consumer expectations. The insight: if Soul Origin wanted to sustain growth, it needed a strong strategic framework – a north star that linked brand, product and experience – and a visual identity that could scale across hundreds of sites and touchpoints without losing its crafted, handmade soul.
The Creative
From the workshop, we developed a clear brand strategy that would act as a guiding beacon for future growth – clarifying what Soul Origin stands for, how it should behave, and how it should show up visually and verbally in every context.
This strategic backbone ensured that every design decision, from logo to uniforms to point-of-sale, worked together to strengthen recognition, communicate quality and express a confident, modern QSR coffee and food brand.
A logo that smiles back
For the new Soul Origin logo, we wanted to embody quality and craftsmanship while giving the brand a simple, memorable mark. We selected a sophisticated, premium-leaning typeface and custom-modified it to hide a subtle smile between the S and the O – a discoverable detail that rewards a second look and reinforces the brand’s warmth.
That smile became a flexible brand asset in its own right – able to stand alone as an icon, sit proudly on packaging and signage, or work as a recognisable device across campaigns and digital channels. It’s both a quality signal and a personality moment in one mark.
Illustrations, packaging and the crafted story
To reinforce Soul Origin’s “crafted, handmade” positioning, we created a series of bespoke illustrations inspired by traditional woodcut techniques and reinterpreted them in a contemporary way. These illustrations capture provenance, care and detail, then are combined into simple, modern collages that feel at home across every brand touchpoint – from packaging and in-store graphics to uniforms, menus, the website and point-of-sale displays.
Packaging became a major lever in driving recognition and recall in busy retail environments. We designed an iconic system with bold colour blocking for instant identification at a distance, paired with witty, educational copy that reinforces the brand’s personality and talks directly to customers about freshness, ingredients and craft. The result is packaging that doesn’t just carry the product – it carries the story.
Uniforms, communications and guidelines at scale
We treat uniforms as moving billboards, not afterthoughts. For Soul Origin, apparel was designed as a powerful platform to amplify brand personality, convey values and even educate – pieces that staff are proud to wear and that customers could imagine wearing themselves.
To support marketing and local area activity, we developed a versatile suite of advertising and communication assets, easily adaptable to any product, offer or message. The focus was always on freshness, appetite appeal and a strong, ownable brand voice that could cut through in crowded food courts and social feeds.
Finally, we codified everything in a comprehensive brand manifesto and in-depth style guide. Together, they define the brand’s vision, tone, design rules and standards across every part of the business – ensuring consistency from franchise to franchise and across every touchpoint, from digital to in-store to packaging.
The Soul Origin brand manifesto is a declaration of the company’s core values and vision, guiding every aspect of the brand’s communication and customer experience. The accompanying style guide provides detailed instructions on logo usage, colour palette, typography, and imagery to ensure a unified look and feel. This style guide not only maintains brand consistency across all customer touchpoints, but also supports the rollout of updates to existing stores and ensures a cohesive identity throughout the entire network.
Soul Origin – From Food Court Favourite to Standout QSR Brand
Client
Soul Origin
Industry
Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) – Coffee & Fresh Food
Expertise
Brand Strategy
Logo Design
Visual Brand Identity
Copywriting
Packaging Design
Signage & Wayfinding
Uniform Design
Environmental Graphics
Menu Design
Photography Art Direction
Point of Sale Design
Social Media & Digital Design