Modern Literary Bar

In 2016, Moleskine—the famous manufacturer of notebooks with rounded corners—opened the first Moleskine Café in Milan’s city centre.

Halfway between a café littéraire, a shop, and a showroom, the immediate success obtained by Moleskine Café prompted the opening of other cafes also abroad.

Preceding the new openings—in just a few years there were new Moleskine Cafés in Italy, China, Germany, and Switzerland—it was produced a brand manual to be used both as guide for the inauguration and the coordination of new shops.

The Standards Manual

The manual designed for Moleskine Café is one of the most thorough—a document which is essential to understand the brand strategy, to coordinate the set-up and furnishing of new shops, and to organise both special events and daily activities at the cafe.

To better understand the complexity of the project, it is emblematic that the chapter related to visual identity—which is always at the beginning of a standards manual—in this case is preceded by 45 pages which introduce and illustrate the basic principles behind the cafes.

From Architecture to Interior Design,
from Product to Graphic Design

The manual carefully specifies the position and type of all the furniture to be used in the cafes, including tables, chairs, lighting fixtures, etc. and also the features of all architectural elements such as floors, ceilings, panels, walls, etc. Every element is also illustrated with details about models, colours, sizes, materials, finishings, etc.

All the graphic elements both inside and outside the shops are also illustrated in the manual in a meticulous way. Starting from the external shop sign to digital screens placed above the counter, from menus to placemats, on to packaging and product graphics of boxes, cans, sugar packs, wrapping papers, cups, glasses, shoppers, etc.

Orientational Guidelines

Despite the accuracy and the great number of information given in the pages, more than a restrictive standards manual, the document has been conceived as an orientational guide that can be appreciated as a useful tool.

In this regard, it is important to mention that no use is made of words such as “mandatory” or “forbidden,” that traditionally characterise the information given in this kind of corporate manuals.

A Management and
Design Resource

The project developed for Moleskine Café included the writing of all the brand identity standards, the graphic development of packaging, and the full design of the brand manual.

Thanks to the completeness and accuracy of the information, the brand manual became an essential instrument to understand the identity of the brand and to coordinate the set-up of new shops.

—Nicola-Matteo Munari