In my first meeting with the church staff we spent considerable time brainstorming the concept behind each logo.  They had already determined the name of the four coffee brands that they would be selling, and with that, they had very clear ideas about the theme of each design.

The only one that didn’t have a clear idea was the main logo for the entire Lutherans Mug Up! project.  I originally came up with a simple mug of coffee with the steam rising off of the mug forming a cross.  That idea was quickly abandoned since it never managed to look quite right.  Still, I knew that a mug or a coffee cup should be associated with the main logo.  What had been suggested for one of the other four coffee logos in the project was to use Martin Luther’s rose or seal.  It is the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, and it seemed like a very good idea.

Martin Luther was the seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation, which rejected the Roman Catholic Church practice of indulgences.  This meant paying money to be freed from God’s punishment for one’s sins.  Martin Luther went on to form the Lutheran Church.  He had his seal, or Luther’s rose as it has come to be known, made in 1530.  Martin Luther explained that the cross inside a heart is meant to remind anyone to have faith that Jesus saved us all through crucifixion.  The white rose stands for joy, comfort and peace through one’s faith.  The ring around the rose symbolizes that the blessedness of Heaven lasts forever and has no end.

At first I simply sketched out Luther’s seal on the side of the coffee cup, but then I began to look at pictures of coffee and how designs can be made in the foam.  These designs inspired me to have the Luther seal as a foam design with other religious symbols woven throughout the logo.