Branding
FilterKaapi NYC Branding
A full brand identity system for FilterKaapi — a South Indian filter coffee brand founded by a Kannada couple in New York City. The work covers brand story, logo, colour, typography, iconography and usage rules, built around a wordmark that carries a Kannada character into a global café context.
Year :
2025
Industry :
Cafe
Project Duration :
4 weeks
A coffee brand carrying a specific kind of homesickness
FilterKaapi was founded by a Kannada couple in New York who missed the taste of real South Indian coffee. Their intent was not to open another café — it was to reintroduce decoction brewing to a market saturated with lattes and espresso, and to do it without flattening the culture it came from.
That created a specific design problem. The identity had to be legible and confident on a New York street, while staying honest to Bengaluru. Too much authenticity and it becomes a niche import; too much global polish and it becomes another minimalist coffee brand with a vaguely ethnic name. The brief was to hold both.
A wordmark rooted in language
"Kaapi" is Bengaluru slang for coffee — casual, warm, unhurried. That informality became the anchor for the mark. The wordmark sets Filter and Kaapi as a single unbroken unit, with the Kannada character "ಟ" built into the lettering rather than sitting beside it as decoration.
This was the most consequential decision in the project. Placing the script inside the Latin wordmark means the two writing systems share the same baseline, weight and rhythm — the culture isn't a badge applied to the logo, it's structural. The usage rules protect this directly: the guidelines explicitly forbid separating the "ಟ" from the wordmark or altering the spacing between Filter and Kaapi.
Colour drawn from the plantation, not the café
The palette follows the journey of the bean rather than the aesthetics of coffee shops. Filter Green (#124834) comes from the estates of Chikmagalur — the leaves and soil rather than the roast. It carries freshness, balance and rootedness, and it also does the practical work of separating FilterKaapi from the browns and creams that every competitor in the category defaults to.
Black (#111111) provides contrast and structure. White creates the breathing room the brand's "unhurried mornings" positioning depends on. A tan accent (#BB9457) picks up the decoction and the copper of a traditional tumbler. The guidelines define emotional tone — calm, natural, authentic, reliable — alongside concrete usage rules for packaging, digital, interiors, uniforms and merchandise.
Typography and rules for a brand that will be applied by non-designers
Lexend was selected as the primary typeface. It was originally designed to improve reading comfort, and its rounded terminals and even proportions mirror the hospitality of South Indian café culture while its modern sans-serif construction keeps the brand credible in a global urban setting.
Iconography is standardised on Material Icons — a deliberate constraint. A brand of this size does not need a bespoke icon set; it needs a consistent one that any future vendor can extend without commissioning a designer. The manual closes with explicit placement guidelines and a don'ts section covering rotation, cropping, effects, low-contrast backgrounds and proportion changes.
The output is a working document. A packaging supplier, an interior fabricator and a social media manager can each pick it up and produce something that still looks like the same brand.
More Projects
Branding
FilterKaapi NYC Branding
A full brand identity system for FilterKaapi — a South Indian filter coffee brand founded by a Kannada couple in New York City. The work covers brand story, logo, colour, typography, iconography and usage rules, built around a wordmark that carries a Kannada character into a global café context.
Year :
2025
Industry :
Cafe
Project Duration :
4 weeks
A coffee brand carrying a specific kind of homesickness
FilterKaapi was founded by a Kannada couple in New York who missed the taste of real South Indian coffee. Their intent was not to open another café — it was to reintroduce decoction brewing to a market saturated with lattes and espresso, and to do it without flattening the culture it came from.
That created a specific design problem. The identity had to be legible and confident on a New York street, while staying honest to Bengaluru. Too much authenticity and it becomes a niche import; too much global polish and it becomes another minimalist coffee brand with a vaguely ethnic name. The brief was to hold both.
A wordmark rooted in language
"Kaapi" is Bengaluru slang for coffee — casual, warm, unhurried. That informality became the anchor for the mark. The wordmark sets Filter and Kaapi as a single unbroken unit, with the Kannada character "ಟ" built into the lettering rather than sitting beside it as decoration.
This was the most consequential decision in the project. Placing the script inside the Latin wordmark means the two writing systems share the same baseline, weight and rhythm — the culture isn't a badge applied to the logo, it's structural. The usage rules protect this directly: the guidelines explicitly forbid separating the "ಟ" from the wordmark or altering the spacing between Filter and Kaapi.
Colour drawn from the plantation, not the café
The palette follows the journey of the bean rather than the aesthetics of coffee shops. Filter Green (#124834) comes from the estates of Chikmagalur — the leaves and soil rather than the roast. It carries freshness, balance and rootedness, and it also does the practical work of separating FilterKaapi from the browns and creams that every competitor in the category defaults to.
Black (#111111) provides contrast and structure. White creates the breathing room the brand's "unhurried mornings" positioning depends on. A tan accent (#BB9457) picks up the decoction and the copper of a traditional tumbler. The guidelines define emotional tone — calm, natural, authentic, reliable — alongside concrete usage rules for packaging, digital, interiors, uniforms and merchandise.
Typography and rules for a brand that will be applied by non-designers
Lexend was selected as the primary typeface. It was originally designed to improve reading comfort, and its rounded terminals and even proportions mirror the hospitality of South Indian café culture while its modern sans-serif construction keeps the brand credible in a global urban setting.
Iconography is standardised on Material Icons — a deliberate constraint. A brand of this size does not need a bespoke icon set; it needs a consistent one that any future vendor can extend without commissioning a designer. The manual closes with explicit placement guidelines and a don'ts section covering rotation, cropping, effects, low-contrast backgrounds and proportion changes.
The output is a working document. A packaging supplier, an interior fabricator and a social media manager can each pick it up and produce something that still looks like the same brand.
More Projects
Branding
FilterKaapi NYC Branding
A full brand identity system for FilterKaapi — a South Indian filter coffee brand founded by a Kannada couple in New York City. The work covers brand story, logo, colour, typography, iconography and usage rules, built around a wordmark that carries a Kannada character into a global café context.
Year :
2025
Industry :
Cafe
Project Duration :
4 weeks
A coffee brand carrying a specific kind of homesickness
FilterKaapi was founded by a Kannada couple in New York who missed the taste of real South Indian coffee. Their intent was not to open another café — it was to reintroduce decoction brewing to a market saturated with lattes and espresso, and to do it without flattening the culture it came from.
That created a specific design problem. The identity had to be legible and confident on a New York street, while staying honest to Bengaluru. Too much authenticity and it becomes a niche import; too much global polish and it becomes another minimalist coffee brand with a vaguely ethnic name. The brief was to hold both.
A wordmark rooted in language
"Kaapi" is Bengaluru slang for coffee — casual, warm, unhurried. That informality became the anchor for the mark. The wordmark sets Filter and Kaapi as a single unbroken unit, with the Kannada character "ಟ" built into the lettering rather than sitting beside it as decoration.
This was the most consequential decision in the project. Placing the script inside the Latin wordmark means the two writing systems share the same baseline, weight and rhythm — the culture isn't a badge applied to the logo, it's structural. The usage rules protect this directly: the guidelines explicitly forbid separating the "ಟ" from the wordmark or altering the spacing between Filter and Kaapi.
Colour drawn from the plantation, not the café
The palette follows the journey of the bean rather than the aesthetics of coffee shops. Filter Green (#124834) comes from the estates of Chikmagalur — the leaves and soil rather than the roast. It carries freshness, balance and rootedness, and it also does the practical work of separating FilterKaapi from the browns and creams that every competitor in the category defaults to.
Black (#111111) provides contrast and structure. White creates the breathing room the brand's "unhurried mornings" positioning depends on. A tan accent (#BB9457) picks up the decoction and the copper of a traditional tumbler. The guidelines define emotional tone — calm, natural, authentic, reliable — alongside concrete usage rules for packaging, digital, interiors, uniforms and merchandise.
Typography and rules for a brand that will be applied by non-designers
Lexend was selected as the primary typeface. It was originally designed to improve reading comfort, and its rounded terminals and even proportions mirror the hospitality of South Indian café culture while its modern sans-serif construction keeps the brand credible in a global urban setting.
Iconography is standardised on Material Icons — a deliberate constraint. A brand of this size does not need a bespoke icon set; it needs a consistent one that any future vendor can extend without commissioning a designer. The manual closes with explicit placement guidelines and a don'ts section covering rotation, cropping, effects, low-contrast backgrounds and proportion changes.
The output is a working document. A packaging supplier, an interior fabricator and a social media manager can each pick it up and produce something that still looks like the same brand.