Azra

Located in London's Leyton Tilbury Road arches, Azra is a community-focused coffee shop by day and an authentic Afghan restaurant by night. Named after the founders' Hazara heritage, the restaurant serves as a celebration of their community's enduring kindness and resilience. This mission is deeply embedded in their all-female kitchen team, who view their culinary work as a vital way to preserve cultural traditions and honor the freedoms of Afghan women.

Drawing on their own design backgrounds, the founders personally built the restaurant's interior to reflect this rich heritage, incorporating traditional cross-legged seating and bespoke ceramics commissioned from local makers.

To capture Azra's cultural significance, we developed a brand identity as a modern tribute to the region’s artistic history. We crafted it around traditional Afghan motifs, including the abr (cloud band) cartouche, which is historically used to frame and elevate important writing. The chosen typeface is also inspired by the typographic traditions of the region.

Afghanistan’s rich textile heritage was essential to the brand’s identity. To capture this, we designed generative patterns inspired by traditional weaving techniques and integrated them into a custom digital tool, allowing the team to effortlessly generate an infinite array of brand patterns.