Spilt Milk Bar Brand Identity

Australia has gelato fever! It’s a market flooded with Italian-inspired gelato brands that have lines of people scaling sidewalks outside their stores. We were challenged with the task to create a new gelato brand that disrupts the Italo-centric market by creating something fresh and truly Aussie.

Positioning the brand as the Milk Bar bandits of the gelato world, our design balances the nostalgia of the classic corner store - the Milk Bar, with free-wheel’n Aussie attitude & modern hospitality. The logo typography was designed to express letters being dripped together to form one word. Our secondary icons, a melting scoop and corner shop black cat became the start of a world that is always melting and a mascot who's always waiting for the next spill. We also gave the brand a library of clip art to hero attitude, in big statements like: 'Melt Maniacs' and playful logo alts.

After launching in late August, 2019 in Orange NSW, the Spilt Milk Bar will be launching another Ape to permanently live at the Sydney Show Grounds in 2020. There are plans to open two new stores in 2020 in rural Australian towns (locations TBD).

Immersing ourselves in the history of Australian ice cream culture we were inspired by the traditional Aussie corner store, the Milk Bar, which faded out of popularity in the late ‘90s but was a daily haunt of children and adults in the ‘70s and ‘80s. We gave our brand the name Spilt Milk Bar, a playful, messy, modern interpretation of the beloved bodega in collective Australian consciousness. This then informed our design idea, and throughout the process we applied fresh upgrades to the mixed business signs, sayings, and details that built such a loving culture around the nostalgic corner shop.