box it up
Onyx Coffee Lab, Design
Boxes are made for surprises. While you know the opening of this container will assuredly reveal something, what you might know is that the act of opening the redesigned Onyx Coffee Lab coffee box, will begin before it even is in your hands.
Maybe, for you, as for me, the packaging reached out from the screen to dilating pupils registering four raised letters pressed onto sustainable board. It feels like cotton. Deferring to neither the often monochromatic black and white or an explosion of color for its bag choices, as many want to do in specialty coffee brands, Onyx Coffee Lab rides the tide of rich color saturation complimented by muted hues. This redesign stands out like an ovation to a crowd, cheering on its self-awareness, maturation and sustainability.
If Jonathan Gold can call a taco a verb -and he did- in the pantheon of cookery, I declare Onyx Coffee an adverb.
I saw it, the packaging on the box as I see most things for the first time these days, on Instagram. It’s a box! I’ve named the responses as the Allens, given that this interview happened over email and includes both Andrea’s and her husband Jon’s input.
And because this interview was conducted over the wonderful invention of email, where you see italics, are my interjected afterthoughts to the questions Andrea and Jon collectively answered.
c.: What motivated the move to do a packaging redesign, and what framed your design process?