La Jarra De Guadalajara
When tasked with creating a restaurant or cafe of my choice, I wanted to do something that would pay homage to where I come from. With my family being from the Mexican state, Jalisco, I wanted to reference a native tongue twister (others known as a trabalengua in Spanish) about the nearest big city, Guadalajara.
“De Guadalajara vengo. Jaras traigo, jaras vendo. A medio doy cada jaras. Que jaras tan cara traigo de Guadalajara.”
Trabalengua (Mexican tongue twister)
From Arrows to Jars
The original tongue twister used the term ‘jaras’ which translates to ‘arrow’. When thinking of a cafe, I wanted to do something that felt connected to Mexico while still being fun and modern, so I then changed the spelling from ‘jara’ to ‘jarra’ which translates to ‘jar’. In Mexico, Jarras are traditional clay jars that are used to serve a multitude of drinks from water to coffee. Tying this cultural item into a cafe just felt important to me and the goal I had set out for myself.
image taken from Verveculture.com
Designing La Jarra
Going into this project, I knew I wanted to reference the iconic shape of the traditional jarra. Given the menu items revolving around fruit, my original concept was to create a pear-like jarra and use that as a logo. Upon reworking my original ideas I decided to create a logomark to brand La Jarra De Guadalajara that combined the jarra with the G from Guadalajara.
Similarly, I wanted the color scheme to somewhat reference that of Mexico’s national flag. In order to avoid the feeling of Christmas, I decided to leave a majority of branding to be white and red with promotional shoots introducing the aspect of green. This will allow that connection without being too overbearing.
Salud!
With a design finalized, I then went in and plugged in the content for the menu. All of the drinks and food are items I loved during my childhood that I am sure any Mexican-American holds close to their heart. I decided to create finalized mockups on Adobe Dimension to showcase how the products would look if the cafe were truly up and running.
