Description:

Bustle came to us as posBoss. A typical business to business technology-first SaaS brand.
The excellent team there came to us as they saw their current brand did not capture their true essence as a company. Like many technology companies they were a software brand marketing to their customers, not a brand in their customer’s world selling software.

Bustle’s ideal customers are independent-minded café and hospo owner operators. The original operators, those with character and a point of view. They know the kind of venue and experience they want to deliver, they own and run their own place because they love hospo, love working with people, making and sharing great food, drinks and personal experiences.
You could interact with their old brand and not know immediately that they were used by the best of hospitality, people like Daily Bread, Satya, Swings and Duck Island. You wouldn’t know they were run by a team that had owned bars and cafes and were totally, truly part of the hospitality world.

Our brand idea is to embody “great hospitality” — to be a brand all about sharing, enabling, supporting and championing all that is great in hospo. Be a tool which makes all of the business bits work for them, so that they can deliver more great hospo and spend time on the things that make their spot special.

The goal for the brand was to become synonymous with Bustle’s hero customers, to look, feel and behave more like a hospo brand than a generic software product, and be known by all as the best way to run a hospo business.
We set out to make a brand that could show they were truly in hospitality and selling software, rather than a software brand selling to hospitality. Capturing the true energy, love and commitment to hospo the company had.

The visual brand elements, at every touchpoint, are derived from the world of hospo — textures and materiality found in cafés, illustrated little character logos found on signage, eclectic typography, and layouts you might see within receipts, menu cards and sandwich boards.

The Bustle identity finds every opportunity to execute like a hospo business would. For example, creating physical menus to display product features, and creating t-shirts and merch that look more like your local natural wine bar than a corporate.
Bustle intentionally leans into the slightly chaotic buzz and fast moving energy of cafés and small owner-operator spots. The videography captures the hustle and bustle of a busy café, filling cups and orders, flipping burgers — there’s a constant upbeat, always on the move energy in these places.

Bustle was the name we evolved the brand to in order to capture the sense of movement, hustle and bustle that marks a great hospo spot and the energy and life of the visual identity is the embodiment of this approach. We hope you like it as much as we enjoyed working with the team at Bustle to make this.