designer / illustrator / berkeley, ca

Hello! My name is Alina Buevich and I’m a designer & illustrator—sometimes my work lives online but other times you can spot it in print, at events, or even on some merch. Outside of that, I also spend my time drawing, taking on freelance projects, and collaborating on lump shop. In a lot of these projects you’ll see examples of work from my time as an in-house designer at Discord and Chronicle Books.

Any questions . ?

CASE STUDY: Peets Coffee

/ 2019
A freelance illustration project for Peet’s Coffee. They wanted to grow their popular City/State Mug Collection and the artist communities behind them. Each design was created by a local artist from their specific city and with all the proceeds going to local non-profit organizations.



Part 1: The Brief



  • Illustrate your favorite place to enjoy a great cup of coffee with a friend in your city / state
  • Use imagery to evoke the ethos of your city/state
  • Prominently include text for the city
  • No more than 3 colors (on a white mug)
  • Optional: add a visual element of coffee

    Part 2: Sketches



    The brief was very short and straight to the point so I tried to not overthink the concepting phase too much and focus on my own personal feelings towards the city of Berkeley and everything that makes it a special place. Some general themes I came up with included architecture, gardens, diversity, academics, kite festivals, etc. Of course at the end of the day though it also had to tie back into coffee. I did my best to present a wide variety of concepts but as you’ll see the in the next part I don’t think I quite hit it out of the park at this stage.



    Part 3: Further Refinement & New Ideas



    The Peets team liked the Berkeley Marina concept (Sketch 1) the most so I moved forward with the refinements for the rough sketch from the first round. While working on those refinements though I couldn’t help but feel like I was doing Berkeley a disservice by boiling down the whole city to just one very specific area. After a little bit of thinking and mulling over all the previous sketches I decided to share one more concept that showcased the city as a whole. The new concept came from my own experience biking around the city, my main mode of transportation at the time. Inspired by abstract maps and a more graphic approach, the new design featured a bike ride through the city’s landmarks with many a coffee pit stop along the way.

    Refined sketch from round 1


    New concept made in round 2



    Part 4: Lettering Details



    Once we settled on the colors (an homage to UC Berkeley) all that was left was to add details and finalize the design. Since it was such a key focal point of the design, part of this detail work included nailing down the city name lettering. The team liked the rough idea in the initial sketch but wanted to see a few different styling options and also a more standard horizontal lockup. The letterforms themselves are heavily inspired by the official city font, ITC Rennie Mackintosh, a unique and instantly recognizable art deco era typeface (probably known to most people nowadays as the font used for the tv show, American Horror Story). 




    Part 5: Final Design



    Here you can see the layflat of the the final mug design with my notations about all the various Berkeley references. I had a lot fun including all my favorite local spots (s/o Berkely Bowl) and adding in little easter eggs here and there.