Five design directions

Five designs of the same coffee shop. You pick one.

One price. Five designs. You pick one.

Spindle Row Coffee has a menu, a set of opening hours, an address and a telephone number. Every direction below carries all four and gives them a different shape. One of these shapes is the one your customers would meet on a Monday morning.

Spindle Row Coffee is a business we invented so there was something real to design for. It is not a client of ours, and its street, telephone number and menu prices reach nobody.

  1. Direction 01

    Riso zine

    Two spot inks pressed on cream stock, one systematic misregistration, and a single column read top to bottom like something that came off a press.

    The menu becomes
    A printed price list in groups. Every line is a name, a note and a price, set as text a search engine can read rather than a photograph of a board.
    Hours and location become
    A timetable with its exceptions printed underneath — Christmas, the summer close — and a live open-or-closed line standing above it.
    The voice
    Plain and declarative. Short sentences, present tense, and every adjective earned by something on the same page.

    Skip it if you want the shop to read expensive. Two flat inks and visible grain read as craft, and craft reads as small.

    Spindle Row Coffee

    Specialty coffee

    Menu

    Espresso
    £2.80
    Macchiato
    £3.00
    Batch brew
    £2.90
    Pour over
    £4.20

    Opening hours

    Monday
    07:30-16:00
    Saturday
    08:00-16:00
    Sunday
    09:00-14:00

    Find us

    14 Spindle Row, Halden Bridge

    Contact

    01632 960 274

  2. Direction 02

    Receipt

    One narrow measure, monospaced and ruled like a till roll, printed from the top of the page to the bottom and never widening.

    The menu becomes
    A single continuous column with dot leaders running from each item to its price, sections parted by dashed rules, every figure aligned on one right edge.
    Hours and location become
    A trading-hours block stamped at the foot of the roll, with the address and the telephone stacked under it the way a receipt prints them.
    The voice
    Clipped and factual. Labels rather than sentences, and every line short enough to fit the roll.

    Skip it if your customers browse before they buy. A receipt answers a question; it does not start one.

    Opens in this frame

  3. Direction 03

    Broadsheet

    A newspaper front page: a masthead, an edition line, and the whole business set in narrow columns divided by rules.

    The menu becomes
    Classified columns. Narrow measures of small type under section heads, read across the page rather than down a card, prices flush to each column's right edge.
    Hours and location become
    An edition line across the top of every page — town, day, open until, address — printed the way a newspaper prints where and when it went out.
    The voice
    Reported. A headline, a standfirst under it, and copy that says who did what and when.

    Skip it if your list is short. Columns need volume, and six drinks across three columns look like a page that lost half its content.

    Opens in this frame

  4. Direction 04

    Gallery label

    Everything hung on one strict left rule and set small in a great deal of space, so each item arrives as a museum caption rather than a menu row.

    The menu becomes
    A wall of specimen labels. Each coffee carries its provenance at the same weight as its price — origin, process, varietal, roast date — and the price is the last line rather than the loudest.
    Hours and location become
    One small plaque, set once, low on the page, in the same caption type as everything hung above it.
    The voice
    Curatorial and sparse. Nouns carry the meaning and the sentences stay in the third person.

    Skip it if somebody needs to know you are open while standing in the rain. This one is built to slow a reader down.

    Opens in this frame

  5. Direction 05

    Spec sheet

    A dense table is the page. Column heads, units in every cell, and rows a reader scans instead of prose a reader reads.

    The menu becomes
    One table: item, size, milk, allergens, price. A legend sits beneath it, the units are stated in the head, and the whole thing holds its shape down to a phone.
    Hours and location become
    An operating-conditions block. Days, open, close and notes as rows, with step-free entry, transport and the 20mm door lip stated in the same table.
    The voice
    An engineering manual. Every claim carries its unit, and the caveats are rows rather than asterisks.

    Skip it if the room is the reason people come. A spec sheet is excellent at facts and has nothing to say about warmth.

    Opens in this frame

You meet Spindle Row twice on this site: once as a finished five-page website, and here as five shapes that same website could have taken. Yours arrives the same way, built around your business instead of ours.

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