Client
Lenah Crawford
Role
Brand identity, packaging
Made at
Independent
Scope
Brand identity
Packaging
Duration
6 weeks
Background
Coffee Koi began as one person roasting at home and selling to the people standing in front of her. The packaging had to hold its own beside corporate coffee on a market stall without losing the sense that somebody’s hands are on it, and the koi had to read as character rather than as a sea life theme. The goal was a system that could hold a stall on a Saturday morning and still make sense on a café counter two years later.
Approach
The first direction leaned into detailed illustration and layered information. Lenah felt it had become too complex to communicate, and she was right, so the work was stripped back rather than refined further. What came out of it is a single anchor: a koi turned into a coffee cup, drawn as one clean white line against bold, flat single-colour backgrounds. A stall is read at arm’s length and decided on in about a second, so the restraint is doing the work. Roast date, origin and flavour profile were reorganised into an order that can be scanned rather than studied.
Outcome
The drawing stays constant and the colour carries the variation, so the range holds together across sizes as one brand. The result is packaging with the character of something made by hand and the discipline to scale.
