Rapid coffee is a new P.N.W. based coffee shop. They are looking to enter the retail space with their brand new sustainably packaged cold brew coffee. The owners moved from Rapid City, SD three and a half years ago and recently started their own shop in the heart of coffee culture. Despite being far from home they wanted to bring a little piece of it with them, and decided to call their shop Rapid Coffee.
Brand Strategy
Identity system
Package design
Consumer Product
Digital marketing
While this was a passion project, the goal was to create a brand and packaging design that aligned with the vision of an outdoors-focused coffee brand. To visually tell the story and appeal to not only returning customers but new ones as well.
I started off by taking a look at the competition. There are many to choose from, but they all tend to blend together. Only a few stick out but most take on the color of the drink(brown) in their packaging design. While this isn't a bad thing there should be another primary color.
The majority of the products are glass and plastic bottles while very few are made of more earth-friendly materials.
A brand is only as good as its customers so I did some research and pulled together a few personas to have a waypoint for who I was designing. A few key things that stuck out:
- People that enjoy the atmosphere of a shop.
- They are looking for a soothing place to work or talk.
- Inviting places that are clean and minimal.
- Light, bright, and energetic but not overwhelming.
Once the initial research and a round of feedback was done I started ideating on the brand mark and other visual elements.
After a few rounds of design and they decided to go with a modern hand-lettering wordmark featuring flowing lines and rounded edges. I design a unique lettering “R” to give the wordmark character and make it memorable.
After knocking out the branding and cup design I moved to the retail package design. There were two sizes to design and give their unique features. The first was the large cold brew container. The goal was to have a stainable and identifiable package.
The single-serving design would follow a similar design but would be an aluminum can, which is also easily recycled. There would be a number of flavors to adjust for so the design needed to be flexible.
With a complete brand guide and a variety of designs for all its collateral material, Rapid coffee was set to open their first location and start selling its products in local grocery stores.
