Mar 16, 2020
Elixr Coffee Packaging
It took me two years to sit down and write this, so you’d better smash the hell out of that clap button at the end to make me feel like this was worth it.
This was another project introduced to me through Ryan Greenberg, who curates a fantastic rotating artist/muralist program at Elixr. So first and foremost, thanks Ryan!
Now, to give you a little background on me and coffee: I’ve never drank a full cup in my life. I naturally wake up with the same energy as the Kool-Aid man so I don’t think I really need it. I’ve sipped and it’s not for me! Regardless of my indifference, I did know that Elixr was top notch in the coffee scene, so I was very excited that they would ask me to help out with their brand.
The same but different.
Elixr has a super loyal following here in Philadelphia, so our goal was to just button up the brand a little bit without changing it too much. We started by updating the logo a smidge. We kept the familiar wordmark, but introduced the idea of a simplified Chemex behind it. Inside of the Chemex, we tried to abstractly represent the process of making coffee — like when it’s dripping through the filter.
Tiny delights.
When we first started talking about updating the packaging, Evan, Mr. Elixr, suggested I visit a local shop called Rikumo, a home goods store that sells beautiful Japanese made items. He said that he’d like for Elixr’s coffee packaging to feel at home in a shop like that. If you’re in Philly, I’d highly recommend visiting, because the space is so beautifully designed and everything in there is so thoughtful, so considered, and just generally delightful to hold in your hand. So that was my goal: how can I make something that is genuinely a delight to hold?
The coffee packaging scene is all over the place. All kinds of different bags, boxes, bottles, foils, tubes, textures, tins, and whatever else. Where these folks are getting their printing budgets? I couldn’t tell you. All I know is, we wanted to create something that felt unique in this space, but understated. Elixr’s main shop is tucked away in a secret little nook off of a busy street, yet it’s constantly packed, like we’re talking Penn Station on the day before Thanksgiving packed. So I kind of wanted to toss that understated ethos into their packaging as well. How do we dial everything wayyy back to the simplest it can be, while still maintaining that special feeling of a hidden gem?
So we thought, let’s put it in an average-to-small-sized cardboard box! Groundbreaking, earth shattering, I know, I’ll pat myself on the back over the next thirty paragraphs, don’t you worry. But in all honesty, we loved the idea of a box because it just felt like a little present. A present you could give to someone or give to yourself, as a treat. It’s easy to make a regular cardboard box so I really tried to make sure that opening it felt like a delightful process that had a few little special moments along the way. And plus you could reuse it or recycle it. Environment! Sick!
The box itself isn’t made of any fancy material, it’s just a 5" x 8" x 2" cardboard box, sealed with a sticker. But instead of just popping a logo on there and calling it a day, we wanted it to be interesting and recognizable from every side, so we put ELIXR on one side and COFFEE on the other. That way when you stack up the boxes on top of one another on a shelf, they read ELIXR COFFEE over and over and over.
Then as you opened the box you were greeted with a wide eye that was meant to feel like you were being accepted into the illuminati or something like that. But less back channel government conspiracy group and more like a sleepy regular person group.
On that note: You may have noticed that a lot of things on the packaging are flipped upside down and you may think that I did this to be trendy or cool or laying the groundwork for the next DaVinci Code novel but the truth is the language barrier between me and my supplier that I found on Alibaba was so difficult that I didn’t know how to read the template I was given so I just designed the box to be able to be read any way that you held it or flipped it.
Inside the box, we sealed the coffee in a semi-transparent frosted-like bag. This was BY FAR the most difficult, most under-appreciated aspect of the packaging. I don’t know why I was so hung up on doing this, but it was the Achilles’ heel of this entire project. This freakin bag kept me up at night. Not because I couldn’t sleep but because I was on the phone with my suppliers in China who could not grasp the concept of this frosted material whatsoever. It took lots of math, trial and error, overseas shipments of the wrong material, and late night chats on WhatsApp with a woman who was definitely way too young to be working in this factory, but it got done.
Overall, I’m still happy with how it looked when it was perfectly tucked inside of the box but I always want everything to be one step better. Ideally, I would have liked this bag to have a pattern or a logo printed on it, but it just ended up being way too difficult to get the bag manufactured on its own, let alone print on it. I hope the customers enjoyed it because I got a ton of grey hairs FOR YOU. ALL OF THIS FOR YOU.
The anti-coffee snob system.
One thing that I learned throughout this process is that coffee can get real complicated real fast. You can get hung up on the details of elevation, region, process, tasting notes, grind fineness, brew ratio, water temperature, duration, and whatever else very easily. All so you can pretend to taste the nuances of clementine on the tip of your tongue. You don’t taste it, stop lying to yourself. Lol, JK. Have fun and enjoy things.
Anyway, I wanted to strip all of that back as far as we could to create some trust. The roasters at Elixr care so so much about every roast, so why not let them do all of the hard work for you? Just sit back and enjoy that warm bean water while you scroll through a rambling medium post about coffee packaging where the writer blames you for his own shortcomings and calls you a liar.
Each box is sealed with a sticker on top. Which was another element meant to nod towards Elixr’s craftsmanship. This box was sealed by hand ~*just for you*~.
The system itself is very simple. Their signature blends are meant to stand out and feel a little more illustrative and fun, while the single origin coffees are built to be a little more refined, and straightforward.
In the past they had used the outline of the country/region that the coffee had come from, but even when I try to give Americans the benefit of the doubt the truth is I don’t think a shocking majority of us could point out where Colombia is on a map let alone what the shape of it looks like. So I just set up a very minimal system, where the classification was at the top, the name of the coffee in the middle, region at the bottom, and tasting notes on the side with a bright colored background. No fuss, no bother brother. This system also paved the way for fun collaborations with Elixr’s friends/clients where they could drop a logo or an illustration in that space without a ton of heavy lifting from a designer.
Sticker Illustration Style.
Like I mentioned before, each of the blends have a special illustration to go with them and this is where I got to have some fun. I started with the Beekeeper and kinda got lost in the sauce from there. I went to the library and took out a book of bees and scanned in all of my favorites. The illustration ended up being a blend of a few different kinds of bees and maybe even a fly? Not sure that last one is a bee?
The two other blends we illustrated were called Treehouse and Weekender which were pretty fun to concept on (Remember: good work comes from good naming). For the Treehouse, we kinda took a see-say route to it and made a house shape out of branches. For the Weekender I was spinning my wheels on what to make for about a week so I asked Chara what she thought and she immediately shot back with lawn chair on the beach! Have I sat on a lawn chair on the beach? Absolutely. Does it sum up the vibe of a true weekender…you betcha. Who’s sitting in a lawn chair on the beach on a Tuesday? Absolutely no one. So I went about illustrating that and the background was meant to be a muted nod toward the Endless Summer movie poster. Now ya know.
The Lunar Lander.
Yes, this one gets an entire section all to itself. Evan said he was working on a very special seasonal espresso called Lunar Lander (It recently won the 2019 Roast Masters award for best espresso blend so he was definitely on to something). Anyway, he asked me to make an illustration for the label and anyone who knows me knows that I love space and anything to do with it. So was like,“iwillabsolutelydothisandspendwaytoolongonitbecauseiwantit
tobeperfectineverypossibleway.”
I had so much fun pulling reference photos for this, looking at vintage NASA stuff, Charley Harper paintings, and arcade game cabinets. It took a very long time to get things feeling right and some pieces aren’t exactly 1:1 of the real LM but it was one of those things where you’re smiling the entire time you’re making it. I even tossed in the little Chemex logo as a fun easter egg. And people usually ask me what the 18 is for and it’s just to represent the year that this came out. Plus I try to put a 187 in most projects haha.
For the photoshoot, I was brainstorming with my photographer friend Ian Shiver and he had showed me an experimental photo of his where he made a shoe look like it was floating in space and I was like YO! We’re going to vacuum seal this thing and make it float in space!! After two vacuum sealers, a pole, some duct tape, and a windex spray bottle here we are.
Around the same time that I finished up this illustration, I got asked to be in a poster show about childhood memories and I really wanted to use the lander again because I spent a lot of my childhood reading about space and I really wanted to print this illustration on a larger scale to pay off those .25 inch legs. So I asked Evan if he would be chill with me making a poster out of this design and he was totally down. I put together a piece commemorating the Apollo 11 mission that we sold to raise money for art supplies at a local Philly school. Design for good, who woulda thunk? It was printed on Orange Light Glo-Tone by Awesome Dudes Printing, thanks Ralph.
We won a Design Lab Award.
In 2018 the boxes just started hitting the shelves when the Elixr team traveled to the specialty coffee expo in Seattle where they submitted the new packaging at the veryyyyyyy last minute and to literally everyone’s surprise it won the Design Lab best packaging award! I’ve never won any kind of award for anything design-related (Thanks for nothing Young Guns), so it was a really nice feeling. I put in a lot of work to make this box feel special so it was nice to get some recognition for it, pretty sure we beat out the Stumptown rebrand which felt prettayyyyy pretty good.
Where are they now?
After reading this, I know you’re going to be like, “I can’t wait to see these for myself!” Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves there young wild bean lover. Some of Elixr’s clients were having a hard time explaining to their customers that there was coffee inside the boxes and it just led to some not-so-great confusion, which led to us designing some placeholder bags to send to them so they could sell the coffee in a more traditional vessel. Once the bags came in, the boxes just sort of faded out a bit because they were difficult to order and the bags were slightly cheaper. So the boxes are no longer. RIP. You were here for a good time, not a long time. Heaven has gained another angel and another piece of my heart.
The new bags follow a very similar system that we laid out before and use the same illustrations. They also transform the logo into a pretty colorful pattern on the sides which is fun. Hopefully, I’ll get to spend some more time on the next version of this packaging, maybe we’ll bring back the boxes? Maybe we’ll put it in an artisanal leather satchel? WHO KNOWS?
A 5LB disaster.
We also designed new 5LB kraft bags to roll out with the boxes and let me tell ya, it didn’t go well. I don’t know if the supplier was lying to us about their materials or something but these things were bursting at the seams on a regular basis. Not great Bob. The perils and language barriers of Alibaba are very real. Evan eventually got it all sorted out and they no longer burst in shipment, but it was just the cherry on top of an extremely difficult ordering process. The 5LB bag designs are very simple and just use the same wide eye design that was on the inside lip of the box.
Lil bonus poster.
While we were working on the packaging/rebrand, Elixr hosted a cello duet session in their shop as a collaboration with the Philadelphia Orchestra Musicians. We put together this poster where the two dudes were the represented as the instrument playing itself. I went to the event and it was magical, these guys shred and they also played some Nirvana which was dope and beautiful at the same time.
Thank you, the end.
I hope you enjoyed this case study, sorry it takes me years to write them. If you or someone you know needs any design, branding, packaging, whatever feel free to reach out to hello@smith-diction.com. We are particularly interested in working on a small hotel or Airbnb project at the moment, so if that is you…you get to skip the line.
Special thanks to Evan and the team at Elixr for being the literal nicest people I know. And to Ian Shiver who shot the beautiful conceptual packaging photos. It’s not easy to make a cardboard box look that good. If you need any kind of photography done Ian is your guy.
If you’re reading this during the Life in the Time of Corona please consider buying some coffee online while you’re quarantined at home. It really helps small businesses like this keep their lights on and pay their employees. Stay safe out there and wash your freaking hands!
