Starbucks
Pro-active Brand Update
The Challenge
As the world wide COVID-19 lockdown impacted every industry it too affected the design sector. I developed a few pro-active projects that would challenge and develop new skills during a time that everything seemingly stood still. One of these projects was taking an existing brand/ product and refreshing key brand media.
Project Overview
Starbucks is a worldwide brand and as a long time consumer I set out to refresh simple brand elements.
The Idea: Taking the elements Starbucks is known for and updating them with simple fixes and devise elements to build a cohesive brand look and feel. The refresh focused around recreating print collateral and giving a simple digital refresh to their localised app.
Team
Creative Direction, Art Direction
Nathan Patrick McKay / Sorrypanic
Brief History of Starbucks*
The first Starbucks was opened in Seattle, Washington, on March 31, 1971, by thee partners who met while they were students at the University of San Francisco: English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegl and writer Gordon Bowker were inspired to sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment by coffee roasting entrepreneur Alfred Peet after he taught them his style of roasting beans. Bowker recalls that Terry Hecklet, with whom Bowker owned an advertising agency, thought words beginning with “st” were powerful. The founders brainstormed a list of words beginning with “st” and Eventually landed on”Starbo”, a mining town in the Cascade Range (a major mountain range in western North America).
From there, the group remembered “Starbuck”, the name of the chief mate in the book Moby-Dick. Bower said; “Moby-Dick didn’t have anything to do with Starbucks directly; it was only coincidental that the sound seemed to make sense.”
The first Starbucks store was located in Seattle at 2000 Western Avenue from 1971-1976. This cafe was later moved to 1912 Pike Place. During this time, the company only sold roasted whole coffee beans and did not yet brew coffee to sell. During their first year of operation, they purchased green coffee beans from Peet’s, then began buying directly from growers
*Source - https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/
Digital Media
Digital Media
Mood-Board
Project - Font
Project Swatches
Logo Build
Print Media
Print Media
Coffee Box
Cup Development
Outdoor Store stand
Re-seller Brochure
Coffee Packet
Project Learnings
Main learning was that; each project contains fundamentals that a wider team can accomplish without a splintered development process.
Stating the above, each fundamental (copy, design and strategy) was key to sell the concept and in this project I challenged myself with these various disciplines. The process was slower but also fruitful, as I found myself developing and altering the storyline alongside the creative. Thinking this way caused me to form a strong understanding of larger team dynamics and how a complete concept strategy can be structured to bolster each disciplines objective within the project.