Caribou Coffee
Brand Refresh
Branding, packaging design
Caribou Coffee underwent a brand refresh to attract younger consumers while maintaining appeal to its core audience and expanding beyond coffeehouses. The refreshed brand expression promoted positivity, approachability, and humor through vibrant visuals and playful packaging featuring positive messages.
Client
Cue Design Agency, Caribou Coffee
Role
Brand Designer
Year
2023
Duration
4 months
The Challenge
Refreshing the Caribou Coffee Brand presents a multifaceted challenge that involves addressing several key issues. Some of the challenges to consider in this case study are:
- Attracting Younger Consumers: The coffee market is highly competitive, and appealing to the younger demographic poses a unique challenge for a brand that has a strong association with its core audience.
- Maintaining Core Audience Appeal: While attracting younger consumers, it was essential to ensure that the brand refresh did not alienate its loyal base of customers.
- Extending Reach Beyond Coffeehouses: Caribou Coffee sought to explore new markets and opportunities beyond the traditional brick-and-mortar coffeehouse setting.
The Approach
To address the challenges, the Caribou Coffee brand refresh team developed a concept centered around promoting positivity, approachability, and humor. The key elements of the approach were as follows:
- Vibrant Visual Identity: Geometric shapes and hand-drawn illustrations were introduced to revitalize the brand's visual identity. This fresh and modern design language was intended to resonate with younger consumers and evoke a sense of excitement.
- Engaging Brand Experience: The team crafted an immersive brand experience by infusing the coffeehouses with the new visual elements. This extended to the online platforms and mobile app to create a seamless, cohesive, and interactive customer journey.
- Playful Packaging: The packaging design featured positive messages with a playful twist. This added an element of fun to the coffee-drinking experience, reinforcing the brand's approachability and sense of humor.
Project Goal
Create a refreshed Caribou Coffee brand expression that attracts younger consumers while maintaining appeal to the core audience and extending its reach beyond the coffeehouse.
Project Objectives
- Strengthen the brand
- Reinforce its iconography
- Stand apart in an increasingly competitive market
- Appeal to a new target audience
Persona
By developing a detailed persona like Emily, we gain insights into the preferences, behaviors, and pain points of our potential customers. This enables us to tailor the brand expression and experience to meet their specific needs and desires.
Design Concept
Our concept revolves around promoting positivity, approachability, and humor in the Caribou Coffee brand. Through vibrant visuals like geometric shapes and hand-drawn illustrations, we'll craft an engaging brand experience. The packaging will feature positive messages with a playful twist, adding a fun element to the overall concept.
Inspiration Wall
Sketches
The chosen sketches ultimately laid the foundation for the brand's new visual identity, serving as a guide for the creation of digital assets, packaging materials, and coffeehouse décor. The team's dedication to crafting vibrant and playful visuals resulted in a captivating brand experience that embraced the brand's heritage while enticing a new generation of coffee enthusiasts.
Sketch 1.0
Sketch 2.0
Visual Elements
In our concept, we have carefully selected a range of visual elements to create an engaging and memorable brand expression for Caribou Coffee. These elements work harmoniously to evoke a sense of positivity, approachability, and fun.
Vibrant Colors
We have chosen a vibrant color palette that includes warm tones like oranges, yellows, and reds, contrasting the Caribou Blue. These colours energise the visual identity and create a welcoming atmosphere, inviting customers to experience the brand's uplifting personality.
Geometric Shapes
To add a modern and visually appealing touch, we incorporate geometric shapes throughout the concept. These shapes serve as backgrounds or borders, creating a cohesive visual language that is both dynamic and engaging. They provide a sense of structure and playfulness to the overall design.
Hand-Drawn Illustrations
One of the standout visual elements of our concept is the use of hand-drawn illustrations. These illustrations capture Caribou Coffee's North woods Minnesota roots and convey a sense of nature, adventure, and joy. Smiling faces, nature-inspired motifs, and coffee-related visuals infuse the packaging and brand materials with a warm and relatable charm.
Playful Typography
Typography plays a crucial role in expressing the brand's approachable and fun personality. We have selected a handwritten font that combines legibility with a touch of playfulness. This choice adds authenticity and warmth to the visual identity, making it more relatable and inviting for the audience.
Positive Messages
A key element of our concept is the incorporation of positive messages. We prominently feature these messages on the packaging, creating an uplifting and inspiring experience for customers. Phrases like "Enjoy Life" are displayed in a playful and visually appealing manner, reinforcing Caribou Coffee's optimistic and engaged view of life.
The Result
By combining vibrant colors, geometric shapes, hand-drawn illustrations, playful typography, and positive messages, our concept ensures a visually captivating and cohesive brand experience. These visual elements work together to create an engaging and memorable identity for Caribou Coffee, attracting both existing and new customers with a sense of joy, approachability, and positivity.
We have created a collection of vibrant stickers that feature the brand's visual elements, including hand-drawn illustrations and positive messages. These stickers are designed to spread joy and positivity, allowing customers to personalize their belongings with uplifting visuals and happy messages.
Key Learnings
- Balancing Tradition and Innovation: Maintaining the core identity of an established brand while embracing innovation to appeal to a younger audience requires a delicate balance. The team's ability to strike this balance ensured that the brand refresh retained the loyalty of existing customers while attracting new ones.
- Visual Storytelling: The sketches and vibrant visuals played a pivotal role in telling the brand's story and conveying its values. The power of visual storytelling was evident in capturing consumers' attention and enhancing brand engagement.
