Hospitality Brand Design: The Liaopastel Case Study
How to Build a Brand Identity That Grows Without Losing Its Authenticity
Why did Liaopastel need a rebrand before expanding nationwide?
Because its visual identity, which had served the brand well for years in the Valencian market, was not ready to compete in a nationwide franchise landscape. It needed to project strength and stand out from competitors whose branding was often flat and lacking a distinctive personality.
Liao and its marketing team came to Pixelarte with this very specific need. Their chain of artisan cafés and bakeries, supplied by its own production facility, was preparing to expand beyond the Valencian Community through a franchise model. New locations were already underway in Madrid, with Seville soon to follow, as part of an expansion plan to reach 200 establishments across Spain over the coming years. This growth required a hospitality brand design capable of supporting that ambition without losing what had worked so well until then.
The starting point presented a significant challenge: most of its locations are situated in neighbourhoods in towns across the Valencian region rather than in busy city centres. The expansion plan also needed to attract a younger, more cosmopolitan audience and tourists without alienating its established customer base, which tends to be older and less active on social media. The challenge was not simply to redesign a logo, but to redefine how the brand behaves so that it could speak to both audiences at once.
“Like home”: the concept redefining the business
We developed a positioning rooted in a simple idea: like home. No friction, no pretension and no need to promise something the brand is not. This hospitality branding transforms the traditional bakery into a contemporary Bakery House—a space designed not as a one-off destination, but as somewhere customers return to as part of their routine.
The same principle guides the brand’s tone of voice: radical honesty. Phrases such as “Good coffee, better bites” replace advertising rhetoric with language that is direct, useful and approachable, allowing the brand to act as the perfect host. It is a deliberately different strategy from that of its competitors, many of which tend to opt for more neutral branding with little personality of its own.
How do you design a hospitality brand identity that appeals to different audiences?
By avoiding any language that feels exclusive or overly premium and instead building an accessible, warm and distinctive system that appeals both to loyal customers and to people discovering the brand for the first time.
This was one of the most interesting aspects of the project: Liaopastel’s new hospitality visual identity needed to work simultaneously for two target audiences with different expectations, without making either feel that the brand was no longer speaking to them. This balance is essential in any branding project for a restaurant, café or bakery planning to grow: the brand must evolve without betraying those who already trust it.
Colour, typography and illustration with a distinctive personality
The visual system is built around contrast. “Liao Blue” acts as the colour anchor—a bold shade that ensures immediate recognition at the point of sale—while “Cream Beige” and white bring warmth and balance to each composition. This palette, which is unusual in hospitality visual identity design, helps the brand stand out from competitors with far more generic colour schemes and makes it more memorable to consumers.
The typographic system combines the impact of two bold type families with a human element: a set of expressive illustrations and a symbol that captures the silhouette of a house in a gestural, imperfect form. It is a direct nod to the project’s central concept.
What should a comprehensive hospitality branding project include?
A complete project covers everything from storytelling and logo design to venue signage, photographic art direction and the application of the identity system across every customer touchpoint.
For Liaopastel, Pixelarte developed the storytelling, logo design, complete visual identity system, exterior and interior signage, social media graphics, photographic art direction, illustration and motion graphics. This comprehensive approach encompassed everything from food-grade paper and packaging to spatial signage—including light boxes, window graphics and menu boards—designed to guide customers intuitively through each location.
For the product photography, we chose a raw, documentary style far removed from the artificial food styling commonly seen in the industry: close-up shots, the genuine texture of the ingredients and the natural energy of an authentic bakery production space, in contrast to the more impersonal appearance of other chains in the sector. The result is a brand that remains consistent across every touchpoint, ready to grow nationwide without losing the warmth and familiarity that helped it stand out in its home market.
What other hospitality projects demonstrate Pixelarte’s experience in the sector?
Liaopastel is not an isolated case. At Pixelarte, we have spent years working with hospitality businesses that have since become benchmarks in their respective categories. These include brands such as The Fitzgerald and Jenkin’s, which began with a single location and are now established chains operating in several Spanish cities.
Our portfolio also includes projects such as Cobel, a ham shop and restaurant in Catarroja with more than three decades of history, for which we completely refreshed the brand identity, packaging and signage to mark its 30th anniversary; and Churros Churros, another example of branding created for a food-service business with ambitions to grow.
This experience allows us to approach a project like Liaopastel with an understanding not only of design, but also of the realities of a growing hospitality business: the need for a flexible system that works just as effectively in a single location as it does across forty; the importance of signage and environmental graphics as inseparable parts of the brand; and the certainty that effective hospitality branding must withstand growth, not merely accompany it on day one.
What did we do?
- Claim development
- Storytelling
- Visual identity system
- Logo design
- Art direction
- Motion graphics
- Packaging
- Social media communications
- Venue signage
