Design Challenge and Design Ideas

Java Republic wanted an illustration that would tell the story of their coffee, from its origins in places like Costa Rica, Brazil and Sumatra, to the physical journey over land and sea to Ireland, to the roastery in Dublin, and finally to the customer. The client wanted to tell a story of passionate expertise, with emphasis on their dedication to working with the suppliers’ communities. The design had to be adaptable to a wide variety of formats and be consistent with the new Java colour branding.

How the brief was fulfilled

I worked with the designer to create an image that would evoke the journey of the coffee. We decided to use the flowing lines of the linocut style to evoke different energies involved in this journey: sun, wind, water and steam, in a swirling composition that winds its way around the edges clockwise. The bold marks of the linocut, the evidence of something hand-made, would reinforce the hand-made, human message. But it also had to be workable in many other formats and crops, so it is filled with detail throughout. This distributed quality allows it to succeed equally on coffee packs, vehicle livery, signage, paper cups, biscuit and sugar packaging, and online branding. The Java purple is the main colour, with a secondary palette of more muted tones to help pull out different features of the design.