DESIGN: Habibi Sheesha Lounge

A new hookah lounge has opened in Niagara Falls, NY called Habibi Sheesha Lounge. Serving over 70 different flavors of sheesha, the lounge also provides a menu with a variety of beverages—soda, smoothies, shakes, etc—and a mix of American and Middle Eastern snacks/desserts.

Asked to create a logo, menu, and business card, the first step was figuring out what to do for iconography. Playing around with different Arabic motifs, the Egyptian flag colors, and the idea of a hookah, my first designs went in the direction of elegant patterns and flowing curves. Using the idea of the tubing’s spirals, I came up with these examples that ended up being more abstract than the client liked. Not all was lost, though, as the motifs would be reappropriated later on.

Wanting to let their customers know it was a hookah lounge—hoping to reach a new base from colleges and the young business professionals crowd—they wanted a hookah to be incorporate in their logo. So, after creating the device as a vector silhouette, I began playing around with the tubes in a more authentic, symmetrical way. After many failed attempts I discovered that by disconnecting their actual pathways in graphic elements would make it cleaner and more stylized. Throwing in a simplified version of the motif in the background to fill its space and add more contrasting color finished the job and the logo was complete.

After that the branding elements for the business card and menu came together by using more allusions to the Egyptian flag and making the spiral design a larger part to those ends. Below are examples of both.





Located at 3016 Pine Ave., Niagara Falls, NY, definitely stop by and check Habibi Sheesha Lounge out. An authentic Egyptian experience complete with a monthly belly dance performance makes it fresh idea for those looking to try something new in Buffalo.

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