LE FLâNEUR CAFE

28.01.12

Owners of Hawthorn café Le Flaneur asked our help to create a unique Melbourne café with a French twist. 

The name Le Flaneur comes from the works of 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire, who the owner is very passionate about, and Baudelaire also became our inspiration for the visual identity and fit out.

Pages of Baudelaire's poetry books were glued to one wall and varnished, with other walls clad in timber to give a soft moody ambience, whilst also highlighting the feature wall.

We decided to create custom furniture for the cafe, and designed a large communal table, which we called the Frankenstein table because it was made by integrating five different recycled tables into one. 

To give a natural fresh feeling and an interesting point of difference, we incorporated tree branches that reach through the centre of the table up towards the ceiling with a small bird house perched at the top.

The chairs used are a mixture of old Australian country chairs repainted in our chosen colour scheme, and custom chairs designed by Studio Equator.

The key to our overall design is to mix two totally different worlds into one, and this concept was extended to our custom chairs where we combined the top of the old country chairs with modern Eames chair bases.

For the back wall behind the café counter, we wanted to again use re-purposed materials that would make a statement whilst still keeping in line with the rest of the décor and fit out.

After speaking with one of our suppliers, we saw an opportunity to recycle old vinyl floor tiles that they would normally rip up and throw away.
We instead asked them to throw them our way, then had an artist stencil shapes on them for use as custom wall tiles.  We also re-purposed fruit boxes as functional and charismatic shelves.

Polished concrete floor and a simple counter clad with tiles on the top and front were specified to offset the other décor details, and industrial work lights were used as pendant lights to tie in the different elements.

In developing the visual identiy we designed custom typography for the Le Flaneur logo, as well as a series of illustrations.  These were inspired by old French style illustration, but as that style is quite serious we used animal heads on human bodies to give it a more fun and playful feeling.

Our visual identity was applied to business cards, the menu and was also printed on fabric to make custom cushions for the bench seating.

The menu we designed to emulate a newspaper, giving it a fun point of difference, while also allowing us to incorporate some of Baudelaire's writing to further tie the graphic and décor elements together.