Priya Raman
Brand and editorial designer for people with something to say
I design identities for organisations that have earned the right to be taken seriously and are tired of looking like everyone else. Most of my work starts with a founder who can explain their business perfectly in conversation and cannot explain it at all on their homepage. The gap between those two things is the job. I close it with typography, restraint, and an uncomfortable number of questions. Fifteen years in. Still convinced most brand problems are writing problems wearing a nice coat.
Toronto, Canada
Featured Projects
Meridian Coffee — full identity
A twelve-location roaster that looked like a hundred-location chain. We took the logo apart, kept the wordmark, and gave every shop back the right to feel like the one on your street.
The Longform Review — editorial system
A quarterly print journal that needed to survive its own success. A typographic system flexible enough for a 9,000-word essay and a two-line poem, and rigid enough that a volunteer team cannot break it.
Halfway House — naming and identity
A transitional housing charity that had been apologising for itself in every piece of collateral for a decade. The new identity does not apologise.
Gallery
Meridian Coffee — packaging system, six roasts
The Longform Review — issue 14, spread
Halfway House — wayfinding, Dundas Street
Meridian Coffee — shopfront, Kensington Market
Services
Brand identity
Naming, wordmark, type system, colour, and the rules that keep it intact after I leave. Six to ten weeks, and you get the arguments as well as the artwork.
Editorial and print
Books, journals, reports, and annual reviews. Typographic systems built to be handed to a team that is not me and not trained.
Brand audit
Two weeks, one document, no new artwork. What is working, what is quietly costing you, and whether you actually need a rebrand or just need to stop doing three specific things.
Testimonials
“Priya asked us questions our board had been avoiding for four years. The logo is lovely. The clarity was the point.”
“We came in wanting a refresh. She talked us out of it, fixed three things, and saved us about forty thousand dollars. Then we hired her for the real thing eighteen months later.”