Sophie’s Tavern has been located in the heart of Camden, NJ since they first opened their doors in 1933. It wasn’t until they recently renovated the building that they actually thought about having an official logo.

1. Concept

Sophie’s wanted something that reflected the building since it has remained largely untouched through the years and is very visible in the community. It is also one of the few remaining original buildings as Camden is undergoing a larger revitalization process and will help reflect the history of the tavern. Other than that, they wanted a pretty hometown feel for a local watering hole that everyone loves going to.

A few images of Sophies Tavern to work from.

2. Sketches

I did  a few quick sketches and sent them to the folks over at Sophie’s Tavern to get there opinion.  I did a few “classic” bar and beer label layouts to get a feel of how the building was going to interact with the text andwhat the overall shape was going to be.

Sketches from my trusty Moleskine.

3. SketchUp

Since the building was going to be so important to the logo I really wanted it be accurate.  And since I had never actually been to Sophie’s Tavern myself, I decided to rebuild it from the pictures using Google’s free SketchUp 3D drawing program.  This was a first for me but I wanted to challenge myself to do something new and learn a new program at the same time.  (There are some great tutorials for SketchUp all over the web, especially YouTube.)

Getting the basic dimensions and shape of the building in Google’s SketchUp.

Adding the doors, windows, chimney, awnings, stairs and shading.

4. Mock Up

I took the building into Illustrator to turn it into a more simplified vector shape and applied it to some of the sketches/layouts from above.

5. Final

We all decided the mock up in the middle best suited our original goals of featuring the building and it’s history, and making it feel like a hometown, neighborhood bar. It still needed some work so I added some details to the text and cleaned it up a bit.

6. Conclusion

Concepting, sketching and deciding to use SketchUp proved once again that working through the entire creative/design process leads to great results. The black and white version of the logo will work great in any application; menus, signs, flyers, etc.