The next Likemind Vancouver event will be held at 8am on Friday, April 15th, and hosted by Ethical Bean Café 91315 Kootenay Street (near Boundary & 1st Ave) (Click here for directions).

Free coffee and snacks will be generously provided to those who come early, so come join a group of like-minded creative professionals and start your day with some good conversation over a cup of good coffee.

Remember to confirm your RSVP on the Facebook group page so we can estimate how many people are coming (sometimes more than 50 attendees). If you don’t use Facebook, you can join our LinkedIn Group, or follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on upcoming events.

Invite a friend, and bring your travel mug. See you there!

PS – If you bring your camera along, please upload your shots and share them with the 70 other Likemind groups in cities around the world! Also, please consider sharing your appreciate for our host café by posting to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp, Urbanspoon, or your personal blog!

The next Likemind Vancouver event will be held at 8am on Friday, January 21st, and hosted by Prophouse Café at 1636 Venables St. (one block west of Commercial Dr) (Click here for directions).

Free coffee and snacks will be generously provided to those who come early, so come join a group of like-minded creative professionals and start your day with some good conversation over a cup of good coffee.

Remember to confirm your RSVP on the Facebook group page so we can estimate how many people are coming (sometimes more than 50 attendees). If you don’t use Facebook, you can join our LinkedIn Group, or follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on upcoming events.

Invite a friend, and bring your travel mug. See you there!

PS – If you bring your camera along, please upload your shots and share them with the 70 other Likemind groups in cities around the world! Also, please consider sharing your appreciate for our host café by posting to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp, Urbanspoon, or your personal blog!

The next Likemind Vancouver event will be held at 8am on Friday, August 20th and hosted by Kafka’s Coffee & Tea House at 2525 Main Street (at Broadway) (Click here for directions).

Free coffee and snacks will be generously provided to those who come early, so come join a group of like-minded creative professionals and start your day with some good conversation over a cup of good coffee.

Remember to confirm your RSVP on the Facebook group page so we can estimate how many people are coming (sometimes well over 60 attendees). If you don’t use Facebook, you can join our LinkedIn Group, or follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on upcoming events.

Invite a friend, and bring your travel mug. See you there!

PS – If you bring your camera along, please upload your shots and share them with the 70 other Likemind groups in cities around the world!

Happy New Year! The first Likemind event of 2010 is scheduled for 8am, January 15th and will be hosted by W2 Community Arts at the W2 Culture + Media House at 112 West Hastings Street (the Perel building across the street from the fancy new Woodwards building).

Coffee and treats are being provided by Salt Spring Coffee this month, so come join a group of like-minded creative professionals and start your day with some good conversation and a cup of quality, fair trade and organically grown coffee.

Remember to confirm your RSVP on the Facebook group page, invite a friend, and bring your travel mug. See you there!

PS – Can some of you remember to bring a camera and take some updated shots we can share with the nearly 70 other Likemind groups around the world?

Likemind is gaining momentum in Vancouver, with over 200 members on its Facebook Group. Events the each 3rd Friday of each month, with the next gathering on June 19th at Elysian Coffee‘s new location at 590 West Broadway, between Cambie and Ash. Bring your travel mug and be prepared to taste some of the finest coffee being brewed in Vancouver while enjoying casual conversation with likeminded professionals from a myriad of backgrounds and industries. If you miss the event, you can check out photos on Flickr and follow the conversation on Twitter.

Please spread the word and come join us for a coffee!

WHERE

There are few corners left in the urban environment that don’t have a coffee shop, and very few are consistently good. In fact, even that great tasting cup could be produced with beans that victimized the people who grow, pick and sell them.

Sourcing fairly traded, organic beans is one thing. Finding the best, the most flavourful and highest quality beans is quite another. You have to be part connoisseur and part Indiana Jones it seems. Then you have to get those beans here, roast them properly, grind them just so and then apply a combination of art, science and skill to capture all that in a cup.

Most people don’t think about all the things that go into their daily caffeine fix. Our job, along with our friends at Octopus Strategies and the guys at Elysian Coffee, was to create an identity to start to change that.

IDEAS

Elysian has a reputation of making the connection between sourcing the right beans and making a damn fine cup of coffee. In fact, they elevate the experience to something more akin to what you’d expect of fine wine. Oh yes, there’s an exact and perfect way to make a cup of coffee at Elysian (and drink it). The new brand we were asked to create needed to express this to those already in the know, and engage and enlighten those who will soon discover.

Elysian is more than just a retail coffee shop. Owned by two guys who have carved out a niche for themselves as highly engaged, experienced, methodical and passionate consultants to the coffee trade, they were also the first to bring the Clover coffee machine to Canada. If you want to start a coffee business these are the guys you want showing you how. They like to explain that they are “quietly disruptive”, rocking the industry boat just so, but enough to make waves.

Elysian is a reference to the café in the movie Sweet Smell of Success, and to the Elysian fields which were the final resting place of the blessed chosen by the gods in Greek mythology. We set out to capture a combination of the historical meaning of the name with their newly enhanced brand characteristics. Our goal was a new, fresh identity that appeals to industry clients and retail customers alike. A tall order.

WORK

We initially set out to bring a stronger element of the roman and mythological connection from the name to the logo, but what we ultimately realized was that the unusual name itself achieved this. Thus freed from iconography and styles of the past, we created elegant, welcoming, approachable and precise typography to echo the clean, clear and pure taste of the coffees clients will experience.

With the logomark we sought to evoke a sense of lightness, the idea of layers (of flavour and dimension) and a precision that represents Elysian’s approach to making coffee. There are five colours that were selected for the brand ranging from dark brown to pale bronze. Two of these colours are used in the logo itself and all suggest the warmth and richness of coffee. Applied to store signage, coffee packaging, business cards and more, this brand has great appeal for a unique coffee experience: Clean, modern, fresh and humanistic, watch for more from this quietly disruptive brand.

It’s time again for Likemind Vancouver, this time on Friday, April 17th at the Starbucks at Nelson and Mainland. Come join this growing group of very cool people for a cup of coffee and some terrific conversation. Here are photos from the last few events. Join Likemind Vancouver on Facebook to keep informed of upcoming events.

See you there!

Sorry for the short notice, but I immediately thought of you guys when I realized our next Likemind event is tomorrow morning at JJ Bean on Commercial.

My friend Piers Fawkes and Noah Brier hosted the original Likemind event in New York, but this trend of micro-gatherings happening in cities around the world.

After a period of inactivity, Richard Band and I are trying to reinvigorate the Vancouver version of this event as we host likeminded individuals connecting for a casual coffee and conversation about the issues that are important to them.

So if you’re up tomorrow morning and feel up to it, please join Richard and I at  JJ Bean Coffee House (2206 Commercial Drive) at 8:30am.

We love coffee in the studio—it’s a part of our foodie culture at Industrial Brand. In fact, we’re hard at work designing a new brand identity, collateral and packaging for a local gourmet coffee consultancy and retail franchise right now. So, as you can imagine, we’ve been researching, buying, evaluation and DRINKING more coffee than ever before. Is twitching and grinding your teeth a sign you’ve had too much caffeine?

I was particularly interested when I heard that our friends at TAXI Advertising had opened a full-on Cafe in what would normally be their reception area. Here’s an article on www.coffeevancouver.ca that describes the space. Maybe as we prepare to launch the new Industrial Brand identity we’ll open a small cafe of our own serving a custom roast of our own blend of coffee? (Oh man, I’d never get any sleep).