Broadsheet Coffee Roasters

Brand identity design for Broadsheet Coffee Roasters, a coffee roasters based in Cambridge, MA.

Broadsheet Coffee Roasters creates coffee blends that boldly embrace fruity flavor, while emphasizing coffee bean origin (Central America, South America, and Africa). These principles are essential to their business and unique among competitors, so the team wanted branding to reflect these values.

Based on the company’s values, we landed on an expressive and energetic tone for the brand. Core brand elements consist of graphic shapes, saturated color, and clean type treatments.

A primary brand pattern was developed to be used across Broadsheet coffee bags. It layers graphic shapes that subtly allude to fresh fruit, without overtly illustrating a particular type. The pattern also suggests that each blend is distinctively fruity, but open to interpretation.

The color palette is bold and saturated, drawing inspiration from fruit and the regional origins of their coffee beans. The secondary palette provides depth and flexibility across brand elements.

The logo uses san-serif letterforms with subtle alterations to feel approachable, ownable, and cohesive with their primary brand pattern. The letterforms are inspired by fruit, embracing rounded forms, distinct curvature, and seed-like shapes in negative space.

A secondary mark pays homage to the flower that coffee beans grow from and is use selectively among brand elements.

For the labels on each coffee bag, a scalable design system was created to accommodate different types of roasts from single origin roasts to seasonal roasts to limited release roasts. The color of each label nods to the flavor notes of the roast.