my.3pm - Brand eXperience

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my.3pm

Brand Identity Renewal

May – June 2021

Also featured on World Brand Design Society

First opened its door in 2006, Chang-il Coffee (창일카페) is a young coffeehouse chain based in Seoul, Korea. Since then, the store has quickly gained popularity for its friendly, warm, and cozy environment, which contributed significantly to the drinking experiences of the visiting customers. Based on the busy street of Myeong-dong (명동), in 2018, Chang-il Coffee opened its second store in the Namdaemun (남대문) area before launching its third branch in the luxury Cheongdam-dong (청담동) area.

With its rapid expansion, Chang-il Coffee required a brand identity renewal to better position itself for future growth. In this project, we sought to redefine Chang-il Coffee’s core values to create a unique brand identity for the coffeehouse chain. Furthermore, we also sought to develop a consistent brand experience to help Chang-il Coffee better connect with its audiences.

Brand Renaming

To begin the project, we at LNM Production cooperated with the team at Chang-il Coffee to draft a new name for the coffeehouse brand. After various discussions, we decided on the name “my.3pm” which combines two singular words: “my” and “3pm.” The word “my” represents the personalized experiences that my.3pm has been delivering to its customers. On the other hand, the word “3pm” represents the brand’s challenge toward the belief that one should not consume caffeine after 3pm. For my.3pm’s owner, a good cup of coffee should be enjoyed at any time of the day as the true value of a cup of coffee lies behind the fact that it accompanies their consumers through their daily journeys and emotional moments. Last but not least, the period mark “.” acts as both a separator to emphasize the personal touch of the word “my” and a bridge to join the two ideas together.

Brand Core Values

Along with renaming the brand, we also sought to redefine the core values of the business. Unlike its competitors, my.3pm seeks to deliver a good coffee drinking experience on top of good coffee quality. This is an idea that has accompanied the business’s owner over the past 15 years. What’s more, the brand focuses on creating a personalized drinking experience for every visiting customer and aims to make every cup of coffee a companion assisting the visitors’ journey of the day.

Brand keywords: Personalized / Experiences / Companion

Brand Slogan

Our project team also created a slogan to accompany the new brand identity. Centering around the idea of accompanying customers on their journeys with every cup of coffee, we chose the slogan “together with you” (Korean: “그대와 함께”) written in lowercase.

Visual Identity Development

Playing with “Time”

As the new brand concept suggested, my.3pm not only challenges scientific beliefs but also aims to create a personalized experience, or “time,” for the customers coming here. Understanding this philosophy, we chose “time” as the focal for the brand’s visual identity development.

“Modern” but not “Intrusive”

As a business, my.3pm naturally wants its identity to stand out from the shelves. However, as a brand committing to being customers’ companions, my.3pm also wants its identity to be not intruding or, as the owner said: “not intrusive.” To fulfill this requirement, we selected two fonts: “Neuzeit Grotesk” from URW Type Foundry and “Le Havre” from Insigne Design. We also chose the standard “Noto Sans KR” and the “Nanum Pen Script” created by Sandoll Communications for the Korean fonts. We chose PMS 533 C (PMS 282 U for uncoated papers) and PMS 720 C (PMS 2009 U for uncoated papers) with their accompanying variations as the primary color palette for the brand.

Bringing “Seoul” into the brand - Modular Motifs

With all three of its stores based in the busy neighborhoods of Seoul, my.3pm also wanted to incorporate the capital of Korea into its identity. Combined with our customer and market research results, we decided to bring the three neighborhoods where my.3pm’s stores are located (Myeong-dong, Namdaemun, and Cheongdam-dong) into the brand’s identity by turning them into abstract graphic motifs that could be applied independently or modularly.