Manolis Ice Cream has been an Austin staple since 2019 — built from the ground up with zero guidelines. In 2026, the business sharpened its focus and every menu got a complete redesign. Full color. Cleaner hierarchy. Built to last another seven years.
Full color. No pastries. Better hierarchy. Eight menus redesigned from scratch to match where the brand is now.
2019. A new food trailer. No logo, no guidelines, no precedent — just a family recipe and a dream of making everything by hand. Here's how the brand was born.
Manolis was a completely new business — no history, no guidelines, no precedent. The owners had a vision of making everything by hand right inside the trailer, and that craft-first ethos had to come through in every piece of design before a single customer ever tasted the ice cream.
The front-of-truck banner needed to be readable by cars driving down the street. I kept it clean and simple — the cursive script at the bottom keeps it friendly and approachable: a place that's here to make your day a little sweeter.
For the main sticker I went with a round, minimal design — just the core logo and nothing else. The quality of the products is very high and unique, so I wanted the packaging to reflect that restraint. A fussy sticker would have worked against it.
Two more examples of the sticker in context on actual items sold at the location — pints and pastry boxes — where it reads as a mark of craftsmanship rather than just a label.
This ended up being everyone's favorite. It then inspired the direction of all the other branding and promo materials.
Explorations into other color palettes and sticker designs. None of these ended up being used — the middle one was almost the front of the business card, but we went with something cleaner.
The first pastry signs used location photography as the background — Austin skyline, local landmarks — with a large serif flavor name overlaid, ingredient callouts at the top, and a dark footer listing the full description. Built fast to get the store open on day one.
As the brand developed, the photo cards got replaced entirely. The evolved version dropped the photography for the familiar artisanal logo paired with blue geometric shapes — modern, simple, and fun, consistent with everything else in the identity system.
Nothing fancy — straight to the point.
A simple design to show customers what size to order — same visual language as the rest of the identity, useful enough that it basically eliminated the sizing conversation entirely.
The menu boards are illuminated, so everything had to be designed in black and white — high contrast, easily readable, and cheaper to print since these get updated constantly as new items are added.
The site uses the main logo font but with the colors flipped — a natural extension of the identity rather than a fresh design problem. One conscious choice: no "Ice Cream, Pastries & Cakes" subtitle under the Manolis name, because the navigation menu does that job while also giving visitors something to click through.
Beyond the visual identity, I built and managed all of Manolis's social media profiles from scratch — establishing the brand presence on Instagram and Facebook, setting up profile assets, writing bios, and maintaining a consistent visual voice across every platform. The logo, color system, and typography translated directly into the social layer so the brand felt unified whether someone encountered it on the truck, the website, or their feed.
I monitored and responded to customer feedback across platforms to keep the brand's reputation in lockstep with the quality of the products. The result speaks for itself.
