A Window Painting Experience
Recently, I had the pleasure of collaborating with Roastar Coffee Shop painting their windows to help draw more customers in. Roastar offers an array of treats from coconut latte’s to tofu bánh mì, and we wanted to show these all off with the art!
The Brief:
I originally approached Roastar with a window painting opportunity, as I wanted to explore window art and gain more experience. They kindly took me up on the offer, and had quite a few reasons to need more advertising in their window. Here are the problems we aimed to solve through my illustration:
- Roastar coffee is on East Street, Bromley and faces the sun most of the day, which makes it difficult to see into the shop and what it’s about.
- The shop counter with the coffee machines, pastries and menu’s are all at the back of the store, so even if you look in the window, it’s still tricky for passers by to see at a glance what’s on offer.
- The window does already say ‘coffee’ and ‘coffee roastery’. Even then potential customers assumed it was a place to buy coffee beans or coffee makers, but not realising it is firstly a café!
- In addition, after seeing the coffee and pastries, many people passing by ask if Roastar have sandwiches for lunchtimes! So we need to make that clear too 😄
- Roastar offers bánh mì, a Vietnamese baguette, which they wanted to show clearly illustrated in the window as not everyone knows what bánh mì is, and some customers aren’t that ‘adventurous’ with trying new foods. We hope an illustration of the delicious baguettes will tempt them to find a new dish they can enjoy!
- The final important element to show was that the Roastar is pet friendly!! There’s already a pet friendly sticker on the window but they’d like to include a dog in the illustration to make it extra clear.
After our inital discussion of the project and what the aim for the illustration was, I began taking photos of the windows and elements of the shop to help sketch out my ideas. Then we have a second meeting to change anything the client doesn’t like or wants to emphasise more. This was the sketch I presented for Roastar. You can try spot the difference with the final window further on!
Of course, no project is without its challenges. Midway through the painting process, I encountered an very unexpected hurdle. The weather outside. I know, I’m painting inside, how has the outside affecting me?! Turns out with old windows, the direction the windows faced with the sun and having a steamy coffee shop, condensation began to sink and peel off the paint!! 😱 It was sooooooo frustrating. I came back to see my work mangled and peeling off. We took some very deep breaths, and with determination to not let myself and Roastar down, I found a solution. POSCA pens! I’d been painting with acrylic and I think the weight of it and any parts I’d painted with a slightly watery brush were ruined with condensation.
You can see here the left photo was after I’d first painted, then the centre and right photos of the sunken text and wrinkled lines where the paint had moved with the water over a few days and re-dried in a different place!!
FYI – there’s literally nothing on the entirity of the internet I could find to help me with this problem. I searched for DAYS!!! All window artists say acrylic is fine, even the man at the art store said I’d have no problem with that paint, they’d used it before to pain windows too! 🤯
Yes, it was quite the painful morning when I had to wash off half my work (about 2 days of painting) and do it AGAIN!!! But it was a very valuable lesson. Time costly to me, but I’ll not be making that mistake again 🥲. Also a huge huge thank you to Roastar here for being so gentle and considerate as I took longer to complete this window than ever intended. And supplying me with coffee and tofu bánh mì.
THE SOLUTION WORKED!! From now on, I’ll mix paint and POSCA pens as the pens are much faster to work with but they don’t have a large colour range. Also never paint in bad weather with a window that has condensation!! Better to wait for a good week where there’s none so the work can have sufficient time to dry. This will be in my questions for future clients 😄
Despite the HUGE setback, I’m so proud of how the window turned out. ❤️ You can now see clearly all Roastar has to offer. We split the full illustration into 3 sections to cover the windows left to right: Coffee, Community, Café.
The first window to the left displayes a map of Vietnam, highlighting Dalat, where the coffee is sourced from, followed by the beans you can buy as gifts or for home brewing, and the different equipment they sell for brewing. It was important to emphasise Vietnam as the Vietnmese coffee is the core of Roastar, as well as the owner’s heritage. Along with including the Vietnamese phin filter coffee brewer next to the V60 drip and french press.
The second thin window and door focused on the family and community of Roastar. The dog and child to show the store is family and pet friendly. Then Lucy the owner in her Roastar apron welcoming customers with coffee and a large welcome written above her on the door.
Side note: the child is Lucy’s little boy, so cute!!
The third window on the right has everything café related. From the cakes and pastries to the Conti coffee machine! Here we highlight the fact you can sit in or take away, as well as the multiple food options of bánh mì, sandwiches, toasties, pancakes, cakes and pastries. Obviously I painted a croissant here, if you know, you know.
I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to Roastar Coffee Shop (Lucy 💖) for the opportunity to collaborate on this project. Their support and enthusiasm was so appreciated, and it ended up being a great learning curve for me. I now have lots more options for my window art than before!
In the end, though challenging, the window painting for Roastar Coffee Shop was a really valuable experience. It’s a great example of how you can really use illustration to explain your business in a easily comprehendable way. My illustrations are really enouraging people to come in and see what Roastar is about. It’s proving very effective and really brings light and colour to the front of the shop. Together we’ve put in a lot of creativity, patience and perseverance, and I am proud to have the final result. Here’s to many more colorful collaborations in the future!
If you’re in Bromley, UK, BR1 – Please go check out Roastar Coffee!!
Holly Jones Creative 