BETSY ETHIOPIAN COFFEE
Brand design for a small coffee roaster in Oklahoma
Branding, Illustrator, Photoshop
BETSY Ethiopian Coffee is a small business, owned and operated out of Oklahoma City. They specialize in everything from light roasted whole beans to dark roasted and spiced coffee grounds. In order to get their business started, they needed a logo and basic package branding for their various roasts.
ABOUT
01 Consult
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02 Sketch
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03 Design
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04 Mockup
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01 Consult ✴ 02 Sketch ✴ 03 Design ✴ 04 Mockup ✴
01 CONSULT
When building a brand from the ground up, I make sure to take the time to set up a comprehensive consultation with my client(s). While consulting the client about what they were envisioning for BETSY, some key details came to the surface: They wanted the colors to speak to the organic nature of the beans, illustrations to tie the process back to nature, and a brand font that would make them stand out on the shelf. These details were a great jumping-off point for the brand and allowed me to flex my artistic abilities in tangent with the design.
02 SKETCH
Rapid ideation is an important step of my process. Though solo, I try out as many fonts, shapes, logos, wordmarks, and organizational structures as possible in one hour. I then take my favorite results from that brainstorming session and begin again until I find a winner. Through this method, I sometimes end up landing on a logo born out of a mistake, such as an incorrectly outlined shape, or maybe I stumble across a font that I never would’ve considered, had I been aiming for a final product. This playful method of designing allows me to open the aperture on what I’m focusing on, mess up, try again, and end up with an final product that’s both unique and within the ask from the client.
03 DESIGN
After landing on a unique bean logo that kept the organic vibe the client was looking for, I decided to move forward with a beautiful wide, bold serif font that would jump off the shelves and grab the shoppers’ attention. The client was looking for 8 design variations for their 8 different roasts, so through matching earth-toned colors with the nature-inspired illustrations within the logo, the BETSY brand came together in the final design.
04 MOCKUP
In order to help the client visualize the final product, I like to create a few mockups of their products. It’s always much easier to see your brand in action, rather than just imagining how it could function.