Gute Stube Freisen
Client: Gute Stube · Year: 2025 · Scope: Brand Strategy, Visual Identity, Digital Design · Industry: Gastronomy
Gute Stube is a café and bistro founded in 2025 by chef Kiara Balling. What makes the bistro Gute Stube special is its focus on hearty home-style cooking and a welcoming atmosphere. The idea is to serve delicious food prepared with fresh ingredients and plenty of care, all based on traditional recipes without unnecessary frills. The goal was to reflect exactly these values in the brand identity.
The motto: Back to the Roots
To visually reflect tradition, a design approach was chosen that deliberately aims for nostalgia and timelessness. This is particularly evident in the use of a typewriter-style font, which evokes memories while also conveying a clear and minimal aesthetic. To give the menu more character and liveliness, subtle signs of wear were intentionally incorporated in the form of a fine grain texture, inspired by recipes that have been passed down through generations. At the same time, the design was reduced to the essentials in order to emphasize the underlying philosophy: the focus is on good food, not unnecessary frills.
Scalable Identity System
To create a consistent visual identity, a distinctive design language was developed, centered around a rectangle with concave corners as its key visual element. This shape appears repeatedly in the logo, the menu frames, and the allergy icons, creating a clear visual connection across all areas of the brand. At the same time, it establishes a link to the past, as similar shapes were often used in the past for items such as tickets or labels because they served practical purposes, such as preventing dog-eared corners or making them more resistant to peeling edges when applied to curved surfaces.
Starting a restaurant involves far more than just finding a location and creating the right dishes. Achim has been with us from day one, bringing all of our design projects to life. Not only are we thrilled with the results, our guests also notice every day how much passion and professionalism goes into everything. From the menu to the table displays and vouchers, Achim helped us create a perfectly cohesive overall concept. We are very grateful for the pleasant and reliable collaboration and look forward to all the projects still to come. Dear Achim, thank you so much for this outstanding work! We are confident that you will continue to bring many great projects to life! <3 — Kiara Balling, Owner