Wide Eyes Open Palms seeks a classy yet warm logo for our specialty coffee + seasonal food Cafe

WEOP or WEOP and WIDE EYES OPEN PALMS

We are Wide Eyes Open Palms. Some folks call us WeOp or WEOP. WeOp is certainly about the literal, beautiful awakening you get from the delicious coffee or herbal beverages we serve. And it's the organic pastry and food that we lovingly make with our open hands. But it's more than that. It's a feeling. That feeling when the Universe delivers a perfect gift, moment, experience, image, meal, drink that fills you with such pleasure and contentedness. That's what we're about. Sure, the food and coffee is great. But we're about that radiant glow you experience when you step into our sacred workspace. It's something quite special.

The company is owned by Kat McIver and Angie Evans. Both have over a decade of experience in the service industry and have dreamt for many years about creating their own café together. Angie directs the FOH, coffee and beverage program. Kat runs the kitchen, pastry production and BOH. The dream of WeOp came to life in November of 2013. We started hosting our underground brunch club, Backyard Brunch, at our home, doing creative pop-up events and residencies around Long Beach, CA, and working weekly farmers markets. After 3 years of establishing a presence in the Long Beach community, WeOp is just weeks away from opening the doors to our first brick and mortar cafe at 416 Cherry. This location will give us the ability to provide more hours for our regular clients, an expansion from only pour over coffee and cold brew to a full espresso menu and an expanded farmers market driven pastry and cafe menu (soups, salads, farm fresh eggs and tartines, etc).

WEOP has had the same logo since we first started the business. Opening the new cafe seems like the perfect time to finally take the plunge and upgrade our branding. Something fresh, more current and communicating the quality and high standards, but also warmth and welcoming. We're not coffee snobs, though we are passionate about education and empowering people around the amazing taste experiences we create. We're doing all this awesome stuff and we need a logo to help communicate that, one that people will remember, that can take us to a new level. The length of the name has definitely been an issue, and some folks have had a hard time saying the full 4 word phrase. So we're thinking we'd like to really focus on the acronym. Some people have also been confused about how to pronounce WEOP. We always say, like a co-op, referencing the collectivity of the space. Whatever visual way can help convey that it is two syllables (not something that sounds more like woup). Also, the current logo hasn't worked very well in a lot of applications because it's so tall. We'd love something that fits well in a square or circle or even a more horizontal rectangle. Something that will work in social media applications. We are more interested in focusing on the feeling and less on the LITERAL (hand and palm) interpretation of it. So if it could feel more apothecary or botanical. WE DO NOT LIKE "W" THAT CROSSES (like railway)

Our target demographic is pretty diverse, which reflects the make-up of our fair city. Our largest demographic is definitely women between the ages of 18-50. Two queer women (who are a couple), owning a business together, tends to attract ladies. Some issues that we've come across in the past when trying to work with a designer before was that it felt like the logos were very specifically directed at hipster design aesthetics, which isn't really our thing. It often felt masculine and cold. We like clean, danish modern and we like vintage, like pyrex bowls, starburst clocks, and generally shit from the 60s. In the cafe, we will be using cute vintage thrift store dishware and cups. We are spiritual, burn sage, read tarot cards, love crystals, believe in positive energy, but want to be careful to avoid cultural appropriation. We want the logo to feel like a perfect mix of clean and modern, yet handmade. Something about it that still communicates a coziness, femininity or softness. We are the new specialty food and coffee, but we care and we make everything with passion and love. Fine dining meets warm cafe. Artsy and maybe a bit funky, but clean. Handmade, but sleek.
We also think it's a big deal that we are a really green business. We compost everything, use organic and/or local wherever possible and use the most ecologically sustainable products we can find.
We are really hopeful that someone out there can capture the feeling of this very special cafe that is at the heart of this Long Beach community. I want to be able to see the logo on the window, on t-shirts and mugs! Something that people are going to be so excited to represent.

CRUISE US ONLINE:
http://www.wideeyesopenpalms.com
http://www.facebook.com/wideeyesopenpalms
http://www.instagram.com/wideeyesopenpalms

Words we and others associate with us:
Quality
Handcrafted
Classy
Knowledgable
Passionate
Organic
Strong
Hardworking
Loving
Fancy
Creative

Fonts we use on our menus:
FUTURA
CENTURY GOTHIC

We are more interested in a logo that is in black/white/grey so we can have the vinyl logo in white or gold(kinda old school) on our front window. We can put it on mugs, our vintage van(1972 Chevy), and on the top of the label for some of our product packaging. We have an herbal tea line wideeyesopenpalms.com and the labels we make have no logo on them, just our name. I would love to get the logo on them so that our high quality brand can start getting more "brand" recognition.

We have included our old logos. We also have a very full pinterest with different images and things we like. http://www.pinterest.com/we_op
We can provide any information needed or more images if needed. Thank you for your consideration for taking on this very special project!

WHAT WE DO NOT LIKE:
Cross "W" like railway
Super cursive fonts, unless hand drawn and not swirly
An obvious eye and palm (we are looking for something more abstract and an eye and palm is definitely not necessary)
SARIF FONT