JHB

Graphic design · Packaging

Three roasts you order by number

A mobile espresso cart in Pretoria. The logo, and a 250g coffee bag built around a number.

Client
Urban Barista Roastery
Year
2020
Scope
Logo, Packaging, Range concept, Repro
Three Urban Barista coffee bags in duck-egg teal, numbered 87, 22 and 34 in coral, ochre and mustard.
The range. One number to each roast.

(Overview)A cart gets a few seconds and about two metres. Everything on the bag had to work at that range.

(The brief)Urban Barista runs a three-wheeled espresso cart and a small roastery in Pretoria. They needed a logo and a 250g retail bag. The cart moves, so there was no shopfront to design and no shelf to fight for. Naming each roast with a number rather than an adjective gave customers something short to ask for and something large to look for.

The Urban Barista logo: a hand-drawn three-wheeled espresso cart above the name in distressed capitals.
The logo. The cart is the client’s own.
The three Urban Barista bags standing on the counter of the espresso cart, the machine and grinder behind them.
The range on the cart it sells from.
Printed packaging film running over a steel roller, carrying the repeating Urban Barista panel sequence.
Front, back and both side gussets, repeating across the film.

(The constraint)Three colours had to carry four panels. Teal, ochre and black, across the front, the back and both side gussets.

(What shipped)No. 22, the medium roast, went to production in November 2020 with its own barcode and a full repro file: front, back and both gussets, carrying the blend story, the brewing icons, the storage lines and the roastery address in Waterkloof Heights. No. 87 and No. 34 were drawn as colour concepts for blends that could follow. MTT Roma Heavy sets the numbers, Meta Serif Pro the roast lines.

Colour

The three Urban Barista bag fronts side by side in teal with coral, ochre and mustard numerals.
The three fronts.
A No. 22 bag standing on the service counter of the espresso cart.
On the service counter.
Roasted coffee beans scattered across a duck-egg teal surface.
The beans, on the brand teal.
The No. 22 bag open beside a pulled espresso in a white cup.
250g, and what it is for.

A number is easier to ask for than an adjective.

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Most of these are still in use.

Contact

David Muirhead & Associates. Book and website, 2014.

A dark panelled interior design studio at night, lit by a brass picture light and the screen. The David Muirhead site is open on a large display on a burl walnut desk, with a fan of fabric swatches, stone samples and a rolled drawing laid out beside it and boucle chairs pulled up.