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Project context | Solution | Process | Reflection

Punctual Coffee (Punctual) is a coffee business created with my friend and business partner, Jordan.

Campers, cyclists, and adventure seekers usually take an AeroPress along for their adventure. Still, the coffee accompanying their AeroPress is generally old or must be manually ground to a specific size and weight. There are better, more lightweight coffee experiences than this.

We created Punctual Coffee to give adventure seekers the coffee they want and need. Punctual is adventure-ready. It's freshly ground, dosed to exact specifications, and is never instant. We package the coffee in simple, environmentally friendly, lightweight packets.

Creating a brand

Punctual began with a vision, and we baked our values into the company from day one. We worked iteratively on our branding as we unpacked the problem and opportunity space within the coffee market. I then designed layouts and brand concepts, including typography and logo. We then moved into messaging and copy development, advertising, and product design. The elements of our brand were crafted by understanding our target audience, mission and vision, and the values we hold dear.

Positioning

Punctual products have purpose and longevity. The company aims to provide lightweight, convenient, accessible coffee and gear for every adventure.

Design and responsibilities

My Co-Founder and Chief Designer role includes business operations, product development, and the entire design process and output. I remain responsible and accountable for every design decision, down to designing each custom icon.

Visual Language

Logo

After many iterations, we settled on the metaphor for time. We used italic typography to convey movement and adventure. It's also bold, like our coffee.

Typography

We decided on the GT-Pressura family from Grilli Type. The choice is inspired by how machined metal letters look when stamped onto shipping boxes.

This combination of a traditional "grotesque" sans-serif and the grounded-in-reality personality of the rounded edges and corners reflects the "polished DIY" aesthetic we want the brand to convey. Adventures can be messy, muddy, scratchy, tiresome, and long. This only means that your cup of coffee should pick you back up. Punctual helps move people through their adventures, just like our typography.

Color and photography

Punctual's organic color palette helps the brand come to life through adventure.

The colors are reminiscent of utilitarian, high-contrast stamped letters like one would see on a boy scout tent or the side of a vintage delivery truck.

Lifestyle photography is where the brand shines, with mixes of vibrant colors behind our muted brand color. Our photos highlight the realness of adventure. There's mud. There are chilly mornings and long hours spent putting up tents. Punctual continues to stay true to what adventure means.

ad·ven·ture

"an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity."

Icons

The brand name Punctual presupposes a level of direct communication. As a result, we use custom-designed iconography for instructions and product categories. These were all hand-designed by me for the company.

Packaging

Thinking about how a product exists in physical space differs significantly from designing for a digital device. We tested packaging that works from varying distances and orientations to connect the viewer to the brand immediately.

Coffee tasting

An excellent coffee brand starts with great coffee. To understand consumer preferences, we tested five unique coffee blends in a double-blind study to understand our target audiences' preferences.

Collecting samples

We did some digital scrapbooking to understand imagery that best suited the visual language and metaphors. You can see this exercise below.

We used this exercise as the starting point for two potential brand paths to explore:

Clipped and zipped

• Tactical

• New

• Purpose built

Mended, and well-loved

• History

• Better with age

Style tiles and brand treatments

Logos

The logo evolved substantially over time. Here is how we landed on the final design. 

Being your own client

One of the most demanding and rewarding aspects of building Punctual Coffee is being my client and trying "self-workshop" concepts. This creative freedom comes with the challenge of starting with a blank canvas. Unlike many of my client's projects, this one was about as foundational as it gets (we didn't even have a name when we started). We started with brand principles, target personas, and a mission, vision, and values early in our process. Building the brand with core principles helped reduce subjective reactions and instead acted as a guide.

One thing I would do differently next time is to go a bit wider with the brand research. Many tools are available to analyze and better understand our target audience's preferences. Running a diary study of the coffee rituals of our target audience would have helped us get a better sense of their relationship with coffee. This analysis would help us playback and reflect on our brand design and value proposition with the people we care about most—coffee lovers.