the Buzz

Since 1890, the Carvalho Dias family has been growing amazing coffee in the highlands of Brazil. Enter Augusto: 5th generation Carvalho Dias and his friend Jason. Now the family's pride and joy is being imported directly to Portland and to your coffee cup. Follow the crop in Brazil, our progress as a start-up business, and share with us your passion for responsibly grown coffee.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Design This

After ages and ages, I think we're finally approaching the end of our label design exercise. It's been a learning experience for all of us involved in the process but I think we're nearing the end. One of our ongoing conversations as a start-up has been what are we truly selling. We have great coffee but what story do we tell? Is it the award winning coffee? The fact that it is from Brazil? The direct link to the farm? The sustainable practices behind each cup? Our involvement with charities and non-profits?

Obviously you can't say everything in a logo or on the front of a label hence the discussion. But we think we've got it. The impetus for this is the fact that we want to sell our coffee in high-end retail locations, ie. New Seasons, Wizers, Stroheckers, etc. We're picking up new accounts but we need to find a way to communicate our story effectively without actually being there in person. So anyways, here is the latest draft of our new label.

The artwork is by Augusto's uncle Teodoro and depicts the farm with the coffee plant in the foreground, the typical white houses in the middle, and the sun (which also strongly resembles a bicycle wheel). We hope you like it. We will also be renaming the individual roasts after fitting family members in the coming months. Some of this you can already see. Ernesto's Family Roast, Teodoro's Italian Roast, Mathilda's French Roast. Let us know what you think as we would love your input.

Within the next week or so we should be ordering up the labels and ready to start using them come the first of April. Big step for us. We'll keep you posted as things progress.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Schultz said...

Hey, this is Schultz. That label is totally awesome. Nice work fellas.

March 08, 2006 9:51 AM  
Blogger molly said...

Yay! That was my favorite pick of all the labels designs we checked out that night at the Horse Brass. Looks great. Like the blog idea. This is my first blog comment posting EVER. cool.

March 08, 2006 11:47 AM  
Blogger PDXBeer said...

I like PDX Beer best!

May 04, 2006 4:14 PM  

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