Good Vibes Cantina

Good Vibes had been a sports bar and restaurant at 2903 O’Donnell Street: a red script sign with a palm tree over the door, a pink flower wall with a neon inside, the game on every screen.

In 2023 the owners reopened it as a cantina, with Latin and American plates, cocktails, music, and doors open until 2 AM at the weekend.

How do you reopen a neighbourhood bar and keep the name everyone already says?

Before we drew anything, we asked the guests. A table card in English and Spanish announced the new Good Vibes experience and offered 10 % off for a few minutes of feedback.

Round one, on 25 May, tried a bit of everything: heavy black type, sticker lockups, a hand-drawn GooD, a page of Spanish sayings, a confetti of little cut circles.

The same week we inflated the wordmark in 3D to see how soft it could get. By June the stack had settled into GOOD, VIBES and CANTINA in three colours, and on 13 June the teal turned green.

The letters are heavy, round-cornered and stacked tight. The counters of GOOD are cut as tortilla chips, each at its own angle, and the chips go on to turn up everywhere: on the stickers, round the neon, on the screens over the bar.

The palm came from the old awning. We redrew it inside a rounded square and gave it an island shaped like a smile.

The brand talks the way the room does: in two languages, with a grin. Old Spanish sayings got an English line underneath.

Barriga llena, corazón contento: full belly, happy heart. Mejor solo que mal acompañado: better alone than in bad company. And Taco Tuesdays kept going, and Wednesdays, and Thursdays, all the way round to Monday.

The menus are cream, with each section in a rounded frame in one of the three colours. Flavours, proteins and add-ons sit in small pills, so the six mojito flavours read at a glance.

The same system runs through the drinks list, the menu board outside and the to-go sheet with its QR code.

Two banners out front, 36 by 24 inches, put the plates and the drinks in slanted frames over a wall of dish names.

Inside, the screens over the bar run short neon loops: Taco Tuesday, a birthday, a nudge to follow @goodvibescantina, and the daily specials, which start life as the owner’s handwritten notes.

We built goodvibescantina.com in Framer. On a phone it opens with the address and the number to call, then the menu sorted into pills, then the ways in: delivery, events and the newsletter.

For its front page we cut a half-minute film of the room, from the first margarita to the last toast. It opens this page.

We drew the room too. A plan zoned the floor into the flower wall, main and shared dining, a lounge, a VIP corner, the DJ and the bar.

Then a rendered walk-through let the owners stroll it end to end: rattan pendants, a mural of tropical flowers, the wordmark in neon over red banquettes, and the sign on the roof.