Black Sheep Coffee

Agency: CARTILS
Type of work: Commercial
Country: The Netherlands

CARTILS creates the brand and design for Black Sheep Coffee

Black Sheep Coffee is a start-up of four coffee-loving friends offering a new perspective to coffee in the UK. The brand is new in the coffee industry and extremely unorthodox, doing things differently and challenging the status quo. CARTILS collaborated with this unique company to ensure that their branding and packaging design stands out from the “herd”. The new design is different, outspoken and matches the cheeky and rebellious brand personality of the Black Sheep Coffee.

Daring to be different from the rest of the coffees offered in the UK, Black Sheep Coffee, is the first to break the trend and offer a unique specialty grade Robusta bean coffee. Not only is Robusta Revival a high quality product it also contains twice as much caffeine as a typical Arabica coffee.

Robusta beans, were often associated with low-quality coffee, yet this has changed with Robusta Revival. The beans are ethically sourced from a single-estate in Chikmagalur in Southern India and are hand-picked, tray-dried and washed, in accordance with the highest processing standards in the Indian coffee industry, called Kaapi Royale. Black Sheep Coffee pays very close attention to its supply chain and works with carefully selected roasters in England to ensure the highest roasting quality and consistency of taste. This all has earned Robusta Revival a specialty grade quality coffee.

The founders of Black Sheep Coffee state “We don’t want to just stick a Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance stamp on our packaging to buy ourselves a healthy conscience, but rather try to make a real difference to farmers and local communities”

The brand presentation features the company’s namesake, a black sheep, yet it also represents the emotional message of the brand of being the cheeky rebel. The black sheep is cheekily sticking its tongue out whilst wearing a pair of sunglasses adds to its rebellious and cool nature. The simplicity of the design increases memorability and clarifies the emotional message. The spray effect of the logo on the craft bag creates the desired effect of challenging the status quo of coffee. In the meantime the quality feel of the label endorses the craftsmanship and premium nature of this specialty coffee.

The new Black Sheep Coffee packaging stands out on the shelf with its cheeky and quirky character. Black Sheep Coffee is now, as its slogan states, all about leaving the herd behind. It is about redefining coffee culture as we know it.

The co-founder of Black Sheep Coffee, Gabe Shohet said: “We’re proud to be bringing a product to market that has such a strong point of difference and be able to introduce UK retailers, caterers and consumers to an exciting new concept in coffee, a high-grade Robusta bean.”

The new design of Black Sheep Coffee is available in the UK market as of the beginning of April.