Caf­feine Hits #1

Q+A with Tom Allan, from Napier-based design agency Band about a recent rebrand­ing pro­ject for boutique cof­fee roaster Hawthorne Cof­fee. The design reas­sembles ele­ments of litho­graph illus­tra­tion in the form of a styl­ised Hawthorn bush. From ProDesign 106 with addi­tional images.

Hawthorne cup.

Hawthorne cup.

ProDesign \\ Tell me about your cli­ent – how did you come to work with Hawthorne and what were their expect­a­tions or require­ments in terms of design and pos­i­tion­ing?
Tom Allan \\ Tom and Ben­ita Ormond are good friends with an eclectic style. Our stu­dio indulges in plenty of their cof­fee so it was a nat­ural pro­gres­sion to work on the rebrand. They wanted a brand with longev­ity and a time­less feel, but with a con­tem­por­ary twist to reflect their style. It needed to have a qual­ity feel to reflect the award-winning status of their cof­fee and be care­ful not to upset the rela­tion­ship that exist­ing cus­tom­ers have with the old brand. Hawthorne wanted a look that wasn’t eas­ily pigeon-holed – not an iden­ti­fi­able design style or from a par­tic­u­lar era.

ProDesign \\ What was the scope of your work? What’s the concept behind the work and how do the vari­ous com­pon­ents work?
Tom Allan \\ It was a full rebrand which included pack­aging, sta­tion­ery, sig­nage, web and an ad cam­paign. The concept we cre­ated was to take old European litho­graph illus­tra­tions, cut­ting them up and mak­ing them grow into a ‘Hawthorne bush’. This has enabled the brand to grow and change with dif­fer­ent applic­a­tions and medi­ums, enabling it to be more organic.

ProDesign \\ You only have to look at the shelves of the local super­mar­ket to see that cof­fee is a com­pet­it­ive mar­ket. Hawthorne sits in the boutique cat­egory. Is its cof­fee sold at retail or hos­pit­al­ity out­lets, and if so did that effect the design out­come?
Tom Allan \\ Yes it did affect the design. As you say, Hawthorne sits in a boutique cat­egory, so it is stock­ing organic stores, cafes and, say, in the super­mar­kets it is found in the fresh pro­duce sec­tion not the aisle – so it is not really com­pet­ing dir­ectly with loads of other cof­fee brands. This gave us more free­dom with not hav­ing to be so in your face.

ProDesign \\ Speak­ing of pack­aging, what’s the per­cep­tion you want to cre­ate in people’s minds?
Tom Allan \\ Yep, we wanted to cre­ate a nat­ural hand­made qual­ity feel – using stick­ers and stamps – and util­ising exist­ing off-the-shelf bags to lower pro­duc­tion costs

Hawthorne cup.

Espresso blend black packaging.

Espresso blend.

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