When it comes to sipping your morning cup of coffee, chances are you have a particular blend and roast you’d prefer. You know, something that tastes like a fresh start to your day that really gets your mind going and the juices flowing. Or maybe it’s a flavor that transports you to another a place or a distant memory.
Well, Buco Coffee wants to be a part of that ritual.
“The story of Buco is pretty simple,” says Sergii Rynzhuk, Founder of Buco. “We like coffee, and we wanted to propose something new for the customer. We also wanted to become the brand with good quality coffee and fresh, stylish designs.”
Headquartered in Ukraine, Buco Coffee Manufacturer opened up shop in 2015 and began importing beans from various countries around the world, which would be roasted in-house and then sold. As of now, the brand has two lines, one dedicated to the Hotel, Restaurant, Cafe Industry (HoReCa), and the other, retail.
A year after opening, Rynzhuk reached out to Ukranian-based branding agency, Molto Bureau to redesign the packaging. After discussing the brief, they discovered the goal and challenge would be figuring out how to change the positioning of the brand and expand the target audience without losing the essence of the brand.
“At the time, the main idea for the ground coffee packaging was the conception of the countries. Thus, the imagery of owl and a representation of the countries throughout the packaging would serve as the initial point in our work,” begins Andriy Muzychka, founder and creative director of Molto Bureau.
When Buco launched the original product in 2015, the coffee packaging featured an animated owl logo as the primary brand image. While the owl would need to remain a part of the packaging, Molto Bureau identified the origin of the coffee beans as a signature part of the design as well. The big question was, how do you combine the two in a new, stylistic way?
As Buco declared themselves genuine connoisseurs of coffee culture, they decided that Molto Bureau would reinvent the owl image into a newer, stronger brand logo – a prestigious night bird.
“The renewed owl was endowed with the power of a Guardian,” starts Muzychka. “A little bit magical with a coffee branch in the claws, the owl comes to defend the most valuable of coffee beans.”
They produced two versions of the logo for the brand, one used for packaging, clothes, stickers and other elements of communication and another more minimalistic logo of the owl’s head for smaller scale uses.
Then, they had to determine what type of imagery would represent the countries of origin for the beans. After some back and forth, the team landed on showcasing the countries at twilight, which emphasized the idea of having a guardian night bird.
“Initially, we tried to portray stories using line graphics by the example of the logo style,” says Muzychka. “However, the minimalism of simple shapes became the best solution. A circle depicting the sun and the moon on the landscape of night countries would be the unifying element of the stories.”
For Italy, they opted out of gondolas and bridges and chose the arches of windows, while the design on Brazil showcases two palms illuminated against a full moon, paying homage to their jungles. Kenya, the easiest as they have personally visited the country, would display a scorching sphere above the desert with lonesome baobabs.
Lastly, the colors were determined. “We were looking for a night palette for every country, adding an emotion of mystery. So, a matte film was used to amplify the emotion for the new packaging,” chimes in Iryna.
Throughout the entirety of the process, Molto Bureau worked with graphics editors like Adobe Illustrator, After Effects and Adobe Photoshop that helped complete the main visualizations of the story in a very efficient manner. The idea and general sketches, however, were done by the old fashioned way, with pencil on paper to help the team get their ideas out in the world and to move the brainstorming process along in an efficient manner.
“We are proud of how with the use of simple shapes, in conjunction with a mellow color palette, we managed to convey the emotion of the country where the coffee beans grew,” shares Muzychka.
Moving forward, Molto Bureau believes the trust of the client and simplicity in communication served as the factors for cooperation. Throughout the design process, they created a partnership that remains as they continue to work on a handful of projects. But for now, they’re satisfied with taking that morning ritual—that absolutely necessary first cup of joe—to the next level and bringing you along for a journey across the world.
Not bad for a cup of coffee.
