feature.: Spring Is In Full Bloom on Your Coffee Bag.

bag it up

spring comes in the bloom by leaf and for coffee culture, by package.

here’s a look at four of our nation’s beautiful coffee packages that transport us to the spirit of spring while drinking coffee from flowers blossoming all around the world.

Methodical Coffee, Greenville SC

Put this on a shelf.

There’s method to the package madness that has the culture anything but mad. A beautiful bag of watercolor flowers holds space for blends  and single origin coffees that get the care of detailed attention through color and design.

Speaking of color, hues of violet purple, steel and stone gray among a washed out Bosc-pear-brown interlock for a color way that speaks coffee.  A package that feels maintains a strong presence with flower petals grounded in the culture’s signature plant species.

Using patterns and text to give voice to its character and visual aesthetic, the design by local artist Annie Koelle, “took the lines from [my] artwork and developed a light pattern that I could put text over.”

The three year old brand, opened in February 2015,  didn’t let lack of dollars inhibit going all in on a tactile bag experience – all bags are hand stamped – that make a coffee consumer not only want to own a bag, but drink it to the last shake of roasted bean.

Lord Windsor, Long Beach CA.

Ride the wave.

Lush. Lusher the better?  Lusher the environment, the better the coffee – the fruit that grows in countries like Kenya and Guatemala from which six years and running, Long Beach roaster Lord Windsor sources.

The current bag – debuted in September 2017 – in-house by the Long Beach locals improves on their first design, which now yields colorful floral and botanical illustrations, almost nearing the great outdoors of their corner coffee shop.

Green leaves, branches and simple text tell the story of coffee’s origin and destination allowing the drinking details to play along with minimal and smart copy – country of origin, region, producer, and roast date.

Allowing their wallpaper to lead with inspiration, Lindsay Ries Windsor and Noah Rodriguez worked with a hand-drawn design by an employee, that was then manufactured in China by Savor Brands out of Hawaii leading to a wildly colorful remake with a quad seal box bottom, foil lined pouch that has a gas valve and zipper.

“With our packaging, we wanted to represent who we are, and what we want our brand to me. We wanted the bags to be an overflow of our mental dialogue about coffee; wild, pretty and easy-going all at the same time. We wanted them to settle easy on the eyes, but have enough psychedelic detail to appease the spontaneity of our shop and coffee,” said Wade Windsor.

Sweet Bloom Coffee Roasters,  Lakewood, Colorado. 

Smell the flowers.

 

It’s a family affair. As story has it, Laurel, wife to Andy is an illustrator whose botanical illustrations were perfect for the creative task at hand: create a flower driven package showcasing their namesake and the action of coffee tree upon its ripening by plant and extraction: the bloom.

The illustration is an inverted design with layers of the components of a coffee plant including leaves, berries and flowers.

Laurel explains,

“So our designers were “The Made Shop”… They suggested that it be an etching, and the reason for that is that you can get really fine, uniform lines with etching, and also there are no shades of gray. It’s either black or white.

I just made this branch here, with the buds, and the flowers, and the berries, and a few extra flowers to add to the design.”

Monochromatic, classic and simply screen printed from the back of the bag to its bottom, Sweet Bloom’s packaging leaves you turning it and your eyes all the way around so as to not miss a thing, including printed brew instructions.

It takes a village, literally.

Roastorium, Corpus Christi, Texas.

Pop goes the package.

 

Bold and beautiful is not referencing a soap opera here, but a brand who believes that big on bright is right, for the package that holds coffee’s brightest star, the bean.

There are three hues, light blue for a light roast, yellow for medium and red for strong. The illustration on the bag comes from none other than the coffee cherry tree itself with a background pattern outlined in white and a top pattern colored in a light sky blue, leaf green and oat milk beige.

Although “a small mom and pop roastery on the shoreline of Corpus Christi, says co-owner Spencer Weber. For me, the design arose simultaneously with my interest in tropical plants – “although I’ve been involved in coffee for fifteen years, it was only as we launched our business that I found myself intrigued by the endless exotic variety of lesser known tropical fruits.  We’ve planted many fruits at our house over the past years, and coffee is certainly more – but not less – than another tropical fruit.

My wife has spent seven or so years of her life in eastern cultures, primarily Indonesia and Fiji. I think the focus and the lushness of the design both arise from her influence,” said Weber.

Together, with Nina of Weekday Studio, illustrator Travis Bailey and designer Rachel Thompson, Roastorium as a package – with the  admonition ‘drink good coffee’ on its rib –  came into physical existence. After announcing the name of the coffee and its origin, one row of ‘coffee’ liner notes suggest its character ever so lightly.

“We show coffee flowers and fruits on our bag – it’s where everything starts,” concluded Weber.

Bag it up.