The logo is inspired by the heritage of York. We studied the runes created by the Vikings and Romans, which are indelibly marked into the stonework of the city's Roman walls and in artefacts left by the Vikings.
The logo, coupled with the Romanesque and Scandinavian-inspired fonts, creates a strong and confident premium identity, which is offset by a slightly feminine teal with a repeat pattern taking a nod from luxury brands such as Gucci and Louis Vitton.
We then focused on creating an expansive and immersive world by creating characters that reflect the different coffee's flavour profiles. This was to help differentiate the blends and single origins and each type of flavour within each.
We used AI to help start generating the characters then crafted the dioramas in Illustrator and Photoshop. This enables us to produce all the new seasonal and small-batch coffees that they produce throughout the year relatively quickly.
Because we created a lot of different visual assets, we could roll out the brand identity across the website, email marketing and social media. This expands the immersive world and enables us to communicate with customers in a fun and engaging way.
We developed a tone of voice that takes influence from Roald Dahl and Stephen Fry to add a touch of quintessential Britishness with playful, quirky language and surreal, absurd metaphors.
We created a short presentation for the launch party explaining why York Coffee Emporium rebranded. This also serves as an informative and entertaining piece for the website, addressing the feedback we received in the initial customer surveys and research.
To complement the tone of voice that we'd developed, we gave a tip of the bowler hat to Terry Gilliam's style of animation used in the Monty Python films.
Stop-frame animation and absurd, abstract use of the graphic objects are designed to bring the characters and dioramas to life.
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YORK COFFEE EMPORIUM
BRANDING • PACKAGING • DIGITAL ADVERTISING • WEBSITE
EMAIL MARKETING • PRINT DESIGN • SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT
The problem with selling coffee online is you don’t get to smell or taste it. With such a competitive market for gourmet and artisanal coffee, how do you stand out?
That was the challenge facing us as York Coffee Emporium’s sales hit a glass ceiling.
The old ‘blanding’ on the standard craft bag had no story, no character, and limited visual appeal. It didn’t stand out from the other coffee producers on Google Shopping or Meta ads.
York Coffee Emporium had to be convinced that to grow, to be stocked in retail and to take its products further afield than Yorkshire, it needed to tell its story and become more appealing from the first impression.
