Responses by Michael Hester, principal and creative director, Pavement.
Background: The purpose of the project was to update the branding and packaging for Terranova Coffee Co., a craft roaster located in Sacramento, California. With a recent change in ownership, the roaster wanted to update the brand identity to reflect its new organic coffee practices that it had worked hard to instill into its business. In terms of target audience, the roaster hoped to attract a larger audience interested in organic coffees as well as discerning third-wave coffee aficionados. It became apparent and necessary to update the brand identity that had existed for close to a decade.
Design thinking: Since 2010, Terranova Coffee Co. has been family-owned and -operated in Sacramento, America’s farm-to-fork capital. Its coffee is 100-percent certified organic, always ethically sourced and roasted fresh each week in its legendary 80-year-old roaster. To visualize this commitment to organic coffees and time-honored craftsmanship, we reimagined its brand identity to captures a modern organic ethos. Earthy, unpretentious and artistic, the brand identity is centered around an illustration featuring a stylized coffee plant growing from a mug. This playful symbol serves as a reminder of Terranova’s dedication to organic practices and lends a timeless energy to the brand.
Challenges: Capturing the organic ethos without feeling cliche or crunchy. Instead, we leaned into a more playful solution that featured an illustration of a coffee plant growing from a mug as the centerpiece of the brand identity.
Favorite details: We are extremely proud of how the illustration for the brand identity turned out. It perfectly captures both an organic ethos while still being fun and playful. It served to attract a larger audience by avoiding the tropes commonly found in coffee branding of being overly minimal and stark.
Visual influences: For us, the ever-sophisticated work of Louise Fili always serves as ample inspiration when approaching a food and beverage brand. Her use of typography and illustration will always be timeless. We were also heavily inspired by mid-century illustration styles and illustrators, particularly Charley Harper. Both of these influences gave us a solution that is, hopefully, timeless and eye-catching on shelf.
Specific project demands: Dialing in what an organic brand represents with the client posed a little bit of a challenge for us. We knew we wanted to avoid common solutions found within this space, but how? These common solutions give instant recognition, but they don’t allow a brand to stand apart and stand proud on the shelf. We went through an extensive moodboarding exercise to dial in this look with the client, which proved extremely helpful in setting both expectations and the creative direction for the project.
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