Intermission Café branding

Intermission is a roaster and a café based in London’s West Hampstead, “aiming to change the rhythm of the world while being at the forefront of sustainable coffee”.
Their graphic identity was designed by Fieldwork Facility using New Burns and Basetica. Illustrations by Tomi Um.

Founder and Creative Director Robin Howie told The Brand Identity how they found inspiration in the largely obsolete phone-based time service:

For accurate time-keeping, there was a telephone number that you could call to get the exact right time, spoken in a calm voice that would announce the time after three beeps. This contributed to the logotype’s decision to be all lowercase, providing three dots above the ‘i’s – reminiscent of an ellipsis.

“Everything perfectly led back to time, so we adopted an ellipsis as our logo and after that, the rest of the identity quickly fell into place,” he adds. Fitting with the character of the visual language, the type needed to be bold, welcoming, and optimistic. Howie further explains that “we also needed the dots above the ‘i’s, the full stops and the ‘o’s to all be as circular as possible for it to all pull together.” With this in mind, Basetica from 205TF “achieves this perfectly.” New Burns, a serif typeface from Eliott Grunewald, was chosen to carry this idea into the logotype; adding quirky gravitas and elegance to the identity’s primarily rounded and welcoming character.