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LAVA Leander

LAVA Leander.

Brand identity for a hookah lounge and café in Cedar Park, Texas. The owners were starting from scratch and knew what they wanted to be, but not what it should look like. Positioning, visual direction, the mark — all of it was open.

Brand DesignLogo DesignSole Contributor2024

The Concept

Two things that are already the same shape.

The top platter of a hookah pipe looks almost identical to an espresso saucer. That’s the whole mark. One silhouette that reads as both, with no layering and no explanation required.

The owners had a concept and a location but no brand direction, so the visual language had to do that work too. Black and dark maroon because the place is a lounge, not a coffee shop. It should feel a little serious.

On light

LAVA logo in brand colours on a light background

On dark

LAVA logo in white on a dark maroon background

Process

Many ideas, one direction.

The first round of sketches went wide. Illustrated hookah pipes, type treatments where the hookah shape became a letterform, integrated wordmarks, abstract vessel forms. Most of them tried too hard to announce what the place was.

The shift was stopping trying to combine the two things and looking for where they were already the same. The cup-platter-as-hookah-saucer read was right there.

Eight hand-drawn thumbnail sketches showing a range of logo directions: illustrated hookah silhouettes, type-integrated approaches, and abstract vessel forms
Thumbnail sketches. The range runs from literal hookah illustration to type-driven approaches to abstract integrated marks. Most were eliminated for being too illustrative, or for trying to explain the concept rather than embody it.

With the concept settled, the next question was proportion: how much cup, how much platter, how the stem element sits between them. Three directions, each shifting that balance.

Mark refinement direction one
Mark refinement direction two
Mark refinement direction three

Concept refinement. Different ways of showing the same idea — testing how the form could express the dual nature of the space before committing to a direction.

Once the mark shape was locked, the element above the cup became the decision. Six shapes tested across the flame-to-smoke spectrum.

Six flame and smoke shape explorations ranging from angular flame to wispy smoke lines
Flame and smoke explorations. Testing how much the shape reads as fire versus steam, and how ambiguous it could stay.

The typeface decision followed the same logic. Six options across weight and case. The high-contrast serif in the top row earned it on stroke variation alone.

Six typeface explorations for the LAVA wordmark across different serif styles and cases
Type explorations. Six options testing weight, contrast, and case — finding a typeface that could sit next to the mark without competing with it.

The System

Three lockups. Every background covered.

The system covers three arrangements: icon and wordmark together as the primary lockup, wordmark-only for tight horizontal spaces, and icon-only for small applications. Each exists in colour, black, and white.

Primary colour lockup: icon and wordmark in brand colours on white
Black lockup: icon and wordmark in black on white
White lockup: icon and wordmark in white on a maroon brand background
Colour icon-only mark on a white background
White icon-only mark on a black background
Wordmark-only in black on a light background

Two colours. The near-black carries the wordmark and mark body. The dark maroon is reserved for the flame. It’s the only element in the mark that carries warmth. That restraint is intentional.

In the World

It’s on the building.

The mark went from a Figma artboard to a fabricated sign on a commercial building in Cedar Park. Working with the sign company on specs, material decisions, and installation was a different kind of education than anything screen-based.

LAVA Cafe and Hookah Lounge backlit exterior sign glowing at night. The mark and wordmark are rendered as dimensional letters against a dark sky.
LAVA storefront entrance in daylight, white dimensional letters and colour mark mounted above the glass door on a dark wood panel facade
LAVA branded paper coffee cup in the foreground with an espresso machine pulling a shot behind it, the black icon and wordmark on a white cup

Reflection

First client. A few things I won’t forget.

This was my first freelance project. The design work was manageable. Working with a client for the first time was not.

They picked the one I liked least.

You design for the client's business, not your own taste. Once I understood that the mark they chose actually worked for their context, the preference gap stopped mattering.

Communication is half the work.

First-time business operators don't always know how to give design feedback. Asking better questions and translating vague reactions into a clear direction mattered more than any individual design decision.

Handing off a design is its own skill.

A file that looks right in Figma is not a file that's ready to fabricate. Working with the sign company on specs, colour mode, and material tolerances made clear that the design doesn't end when the visual does.