Stego Coffee · Identity · Round one
Plates as beans
A mark that reads at 16px in a browser tab, survives being stamped in one color on kraft paper, and doesn't look like a children's dinosaur brand.
Where it stands
favicon.svgThe placeholder
The concept is right. The drawing isn't.
Stegosaurus back plates doubling as coffee beans is a real visual pun — both are a tapering form with a crease down the middle. That's the part worth keeping. Reduced to one color, as above, three problems surface.
- 1The eye is 2.2px on a 64 grid. It vanishes at the one size a favicon has to work at.
- 2The plates only read as plates because they're a different color. In one ink they merge into the head.
- 3No crease on the plates, so the bean half of the pun never lands. It's just a dinosaur.
The studies
01 — 08 · literal to abstractreversed
Plate Row
The animal removed, its signature kept. Three creased plates on an implied back line — the shape you'd recognize on a bag from across a shop.
Watch — the creases are the whole pun and they're the first thing to blur at 16px.reversed
Full Profile
The literal read. Everyone gets it instantly, and it has the most personality at large sizes — a shop window, a tote, the top of a page.
Watch — legs and eye are the detail that dies first. Closest of the eight to the kids' brand the brief rules out.reversed
Bean Plate
One plate, drawn once, with nothing else in the frame. The most durable mark on the sheet — it is a solid silhouette, so it cannot break.
Watch — durable and quiet. Without the row or the animal around it, it may read as a leaf.reversed
Back Line
The arc of the back as a horizon, plates tilting off it with the curve. The most graphic of the eight and the easiest to extend into a pattern for packaging.
Watch — the 4px arc thins to under a pixel at favicon size. May be a bag mark, not a favicon.reversed
Cup & Steam
Plates rising from a cup where the steam would be. The only direction that states the category outright — useful if the mark ever has to work with no name beside it.
Watch — the cup is the most-drawn object in the category. Cheapest concept here; included as the control.reversed
Bean Spine
The bean is the body; the plates ride its back. The tightest fusion of the two shapes on the sheet — one object doing both jobs rather than two objects sharing a frame.
Watch — the plates sit on the bean rather than growing out of it. That join is what a second round has to solve.reversed
Stamp Roundel
The row contained in a ring, sized for a rubber stamp on a kraft bag — the cheapest packaging you can run and still look deliberate.
Watch — containment costs you size. The plates inside are 62% scale and the first to fill in when inked.reversed
Plate in Bean
A plate cut out of a solid bean. Both shapes present, neither drawn twice. The most abstract and the most scalable — a true hole, so it holds on any ground.
Watch — abstraction has a cost. Needs the name beside it for a year before it can stand alone.How to judge them
in order · stop at first failureBlur it
Step back from the screen. Is there still a distinct shape, or a grey blob? Nothing survives that fails here.
Read the small one
The strip under each mark is honest — those are real 16 and 24px renders. If the idea vanishes, it isn't a favicon.
No color crutch
Everything here is drawn in a single color already. Nothing is allowed to depend on a second one to be legible.
Light on dark
The dark chip in each strip. Solid marks fatten when reversed; hairline marks thin out and disappear.
Does it say coffee?
Someone who's never heard the name should guess coffee, ideally dinosaur too. Coffee is the one that has to land.
Next
Pick two, not one. Directions on this sheet answer different questions — 03 and 08 are built to survive a favicon, 02 and 07 are built for a bag. A small roaster usually needs one of each, drawn from the same idea so they read as a family.
The numbers are handles for feedback, not a ranking. Say "03, but with the crease from 01" and the next round gets somewhere.
Then the real work: refine the chosen curves by hand at large size, write down clear space and minimum size, and settle the wordmark — for a bag, the logotype usually carries more weight than the icon does.