Everywhere you look, small micro-roasting operations and coffee houses are trying to establish themselves with bold, fresh coffee packaging designs.
However, standing out in a competitive niche like that requires a strong understanding of what makes a quality product and more than a little creativity in your presentation to build a recognizable brand.
Collaborating with talented artists to create a consistent ‘feel’ for the packaging is one effective strategy. While, experimenting with limited edition design variants or fun, gimmicky packaging ideas can help keep subscription-based customers coming back for more.
Sure, we’ve discussed the practical considerations that go into choosing the right materials for coffee product packaging. But there’s nothing better than some inspiring design ideas from across the globe to get your wheels spinning.
So, here’s a curated list just for you.
Methodical Coffee
This Greenville, South Carolina coffee company has already been the subject of at least one other design blog. So, I might be beating a dead horse with this one.
But they’ve certainly nailed what it takes to design an eye-catching Doypack. I also, really like what they’ve done with their product photography.
For starters, the bags are beautiful and easy to read. The design involves a lot of hand-drawn floral linework, softly diffused water-colour pinks, blues, greens, and a little bit of orange for the leaves and petals.
And their “Play Nice” steeped coffee bags were a smart way to deliver their most popular roast in a convenient tea bag format. So, extra points for innovation.
When it comes to novelty, Process Coffee definitely has an edge. Both for their slick, blank VHS style ‘box sets’ and the nod to 90s skater culture.
Each ‘episode’ is a limited stock order in a variety of designer-friendly gradients. That feature the growers in a collab format that puts production front and center.
It’s a fun gimmick with more than a bit of charm to carry the whole thing. And, I’ve never seen a coffee company take pointers from influencer culture to promote their brand in quite this way before Process.
Friedhats is a really interesting subscription-based micro roast operation from Amsterdam that’s taken an entirely different, fresh approach to coffee packaging.
Although their whole bean coffees are shipped in bags and boxes, each order comes with a reusable, washable glass bottle with a resealable lid and a removable label for each coffee.
Probably because the labels are a standout feature. Whether intentional or not, the artwork has a very funky, skater edge. And, there are an ungodly amount of label designs to collect and admire.
You’ve got your country labels, colour variants, and even secondary label designs, with more than a little of that classic ‘rubber hose’ art style popularized by early Disney and Fleischer studio cartoons.
And storing your whole-bean coffee in old-school-looking pill or vitamin bottles is definitely a conversation starter.
Brandywine Coffee Roasters may be one of the most budget-friendly coffee and tea packaging design ideas on this list.
All of their coffee comes in adorable, screen-printed bags with hand-drawn illustrations that feel straight out of a colouring book.
This small-batch approach to packaging and the use of a single artist help create a feeling of consistency while also allowing the company to switch things up.
And it’s a strategy several small roasters have been using to keep customers coming back for more.
Red Rooster Coffee is a small-batch roaster from Floyd, Virginia, with a vintage illustration style that contrasts nicely when compared to the colourful, flat design work that’s become trendy thanks to corporate giants like Starbucks.
Unlike many entries on this list, the illustration style shifts back and forth from scratchy lithographic linework to flat minimalism, depending on the project.
Unsure what your print options are? Here’s a quick video explaining 10 different options, including lithography).
This allows for a lot of experimentation with font combinations and colouring. While their logo, the white background and bag choice do a lot of the work maintaining a consistent brand ‘feel’.