Ride & Roast: Designing a Logo at the Intersection of Coffee and Bicycles
- Cajvanean C. Alexandru
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
What do bikes and coffee have in common? I had no idea until I met the Toma family, who were planning to open a coffee roastery inside the same space where they already had a running bicycle repair shop.
I know it’s not an original concept, as soon as you visit Holland or the UK, you are sure to find similar ideas, but it was definitely new in Romania. And what’s not to like about a small local business that wants to bring something new to the community? Exactly.
Since riding bicycles and roasting coffee were the core of their business, they decided to call it Ride & Roast. A good name, with a nice flow and resonance, easy to pronounce and easy to remember even for a community that doesn’t speak English.
I was presented with a few logo designs and directions made with AI but with some contempt and disappointment at the same time. Sure, the logos were quite generic and lacked any sort of storytelling, but they would have been enough to get them going. However, they were too ambitious for such a beautiful idea to be presented with mediocre design. And being a local business in Timișoara, they got in touch with a local designer: me.
Although they already had a previous business, a bike repair shop, the new concept was meant to be totally new, fresh, and unrelated to the old one. Not having a previous anchor to audit and reframe, I had to go the other route: research.
Coffee culture
I must mention that I am not a coffee drinker myself, but I have designed other coffee shop logos and created labels and packaging for coffee-related products over the years.
Ride & Roast also had a few different coffee-related initiatives through time. They had a cargo bike custom-built by Flavius (the owner), and later they built a coffee van from an old ambulance, which sold coffee throughout the city for a long time. After living in Spain for a while, the Toma family returned home, where Flavius and his wife, Daria, opened a small bike shop with a coffee machine and hoped for the best.
Along the way, they were encouraged by a good family friend to take things to a different level. Today, they import fresh coffee beans of the highest quality from Ethiopia, Brazil, and Guatemala, to name just a few.
I had the opportunity to assist in the entire process of roasting, tasting, and delighting myself in the world of coffee. I was amazed not only by the taste, but also absorbed by their stories and by the knowledge they have about the product they sell. The coffee is roasted at international standards, and the bean selection process is very demanding.
Knowing the product deeply and understanding how to deliver it brings value to the buyer. Of course, you need the right audience: people who appreciate quality coffee and look for a local coffee roastery in Timișoara are not so many. But with the right knowledge, you can offer education, and in time coffee becomes an experience that you savor, not just consume.
Bicycle culture
Timișoara is a bike friendly city. No hills. This, combined with the boom of food delivery services during COVID, created space for biking not only as leisure, but also as work. A flat tire, a misalignment, or just a regular check becomes convenient to do in the shop while enjoying top-shelf coffee, rather than trying to fix it on the street, getting frustrated, and ruining your day.
The bike mechanic, as one might expect, is a dedicated individual who loves mountain bike sports. Alex practices MTB, fixes bikes, and shows care for each one. If a bike is severely abused, it might strike a chord within so be careful. Fixing, building, creating a new bike, tuning, preparing for competition, or simply fixing a flat tire all these operations happen inside a clean and organised space.
P.S. During winter, they also prepare equipment for snow sports, waxing and repairing snowboards and skis.
So there you have it: in Timișoara, you can go to Ride & Roast to drink a great cup of coffee, buy your favorite coffee selection, and fix or tune your bike in the same spot just so you can keep moving.
And for my next trick, I'll mix coffee and bicycles... Logous Maximus!
So how do you blend these two cultures under a symbol that is as unique and as beautiful as the business itself? It’s challenging to avoid visual complexity and aim instead for coherence.
The identity and logo were built around a shared mindset: things done with love for the craft and with meaning. It is a family business, after all. These people work there. Of course they want to make it as cozy and beautiful as possible. Although the doors are open to the community, the atmosphere feels safe, and you feel at home.
Logo
The word map goes from coffee to bicycles and covers everything in between. However, the logo must speak clearly.
I was inclined to propose a wordmark first, due to the beauty of the name, but an emblem also felt appropriate. I developed multiple concepts and proposals, as different and as varied as I could imagine. One concept, however, stood out and felt right both to me and to the owners.
Using a bicycle reference was the first instinct, but incorporating coffee was harder, since 90% of coffee-related logos are generic. Still, a coffee bean speaks clearly: there is coffee inside. Coffee keeps you energized, and it keeps you moving, and it keeps you rolling, and we can use the coffee beans as bicycle wheels. Not that big of a philosophy, but if it works, it’s the right idea.
Inside walls were painted turquoise, industrial decor with glass, metal and wood so I had to go for a contrasting color and a warm shade of orange was just the perfect touch. The type I picked was a thick sans serif, modern and clean and I avoided to decorate it or alter it in any form. While the logo was intended as a simple combo mark I saw good potential to be used inside a solid shape, just like a badge. I was thinking: We could create smalls tikers that can be applied on the bicycles that were repaired and it would work as well as a coffee mug print.
I also delivered a short style guide explaining logo formats, typography, and color usage for print, and to support future growth whether opening new locations or even considering a franchise. A simple way to keep consistency without rigidity.
Labels & Packaging
The roasted coffee is available for sale, not just for consumption inside the shop. It comes in simple white paper bags with a small metal valve, allowing you to smell and enjoy the aroma without opening the bag. Coffee smell is what sells the coffee.
Being a small shop, they roast in small batches so in order keep the business cost-effective, I proposed a sticker label applied on one side of the bag, containing all the necessary details: roast date, tasting notes, packaging info, farm origin, washing process, and altitude where the coffee plant was grown.
Following the style guide, I used two font families and hand-drew a series of bicycle close-ups intertwined with coffee plants pointing again the coffee and cycling relationship.
I intentionally left the label system open for simplicity and flexibility, I kept the illustrations consistent but explored various color combinations to capture aromas and flavor profiles. The labels can even adopt other brand colors for limited editions, competitions, sponsorships, or special collaborations.
Outcome
The identity is not a loud one. It is meant to be a reliable piece of design that helps this family business unite under a shared emblem.
I enjoy designing for real places. It feels right. These are brands that live through use, not presentations. Design becomes support, not decoration.
Working with Toma family and their friends opened my eyes a little more and while is not my first coffee related project, it is the first one I got to experience and understand a little more, I saw the process, I felt the lovely smell of roasted coffee, I tasted so many aromas and I took home with me so much more knowledge and wisdom and I think these experience makes you understand the world you live a little more and even love it a little more.
Nietzsche once said: “There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”In the same spirit, I would say that each cup of coffee has more to offer than just a burst of energy to get your sh*t done, it’s an entire universe in a single bean.
In the end I gifted them a custom print which is an illustration of their logo done in my specific style of stained glass. At the bottom there is a short poem that I wrote and translates like this:
As coffee roasts, the mind grows still,
It wanders back through time at will.
The wheel turns once, the mechanic sighs . . .
Some faults can fade. Some things realign.
I'm Cajva, a graphic designer from Timișoara, Romania. I work on logos, brand identities, illustrations and I hand-draw everything I make. If you enjoyed this article, there's more where that came from, and if you ever need a designer, you know where to find me.
