Who doesn’t love a cool summer hang-out in New York City?
Partners Coffee, headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, is celebrating the summer with a new seasonal offering called Block Party. The team launches Block Party in tandem with a general package refresh for their single-origin offerings. Partners collaborated with illustrator Sophie (@soupiestudios) on the design; the illustrator had worked previously with Partners to develop illustrated brew methods and their holiday Miracle Blend. Block Party has fun full-color illustrations in custom wrap packaging unique to seasonal offerings.
The new single-origin packaging has gold foil printing on creamy bags to differentiate from Partners’ seasonal offerings and colorful mainstay blends.
Coffee Design is a feature series on Sprudge presented by TricorBraun Flex.
We spoke with the team at Partners Coffee to learn more.
Tell us more about the illustrator behind Block Party!
Partners has a long-standing relationship with illustrator Sophie (@soupiestudios), who designed the team’s beloved holiday blend bag and designed the Block Party bag in collaboration with the Partners team.
Sophie wrote to Partners one day as a new grad with a passion for design and history working in coffee, and the Partners team was enamored with her illustration style and wonderful energy, tasking her with helping to develop an illustration style and new iconography for the Partners brew guides. She was able to easily translate Partners’ vision and “got” their style so quickly that it pushed Partners to collaborate with her on their Miracle wrap last year, and now Block Party.
Partners came to her with a vision for Block Party, and she helped the team bring the Block Party characters to life. While she developed the wrap illustration, Partners’ in-house team developed the two versions of the label that serve as the “sun” above the cityscape.
What’s the story behind the Block Party design?
It all started with conversations about what thoughts of summer in New York brought up for each of Partners’ team members. They thought of friends sitting on stoops, kids running through fire hydrant sprinklers, a bustling McCarren Park, and the electric energy of the city’s residents out and about soaking up the sun. The team explored motifs from Coney Island to Rockaway to the ferry on the river but felt that the truest representation of New York summer was simply people finding R&R all around them.
You’ll see characters sitting on the long bench in front of Partners, walking a pedestrian street, grilling in the park and commuting on bikes and skates. The Partners team hopes anyone—especially residents of Partners’ HQ’s Williamsburg neighborhood, will find something they recognize from their summer in the wrap design!
What changes were made to the single-origin bag design?
The bags used to be all different colors, and now the rotating roster of Single Origin coffees are in creamy, white colored bags with gold foil printing, offering a fresh perspective that both contrasts and harmonizes with Partners mainstay offerings (which are still in the colorful, branded bags). The thoughtfully updated off-white bags represent the purity and uniqueness of the coffee they hold. The bag serves as a blank canvas, paying homage to the diligent efforts of Partners’ esteemed farmers and producers who transform the humble coffee plant into the rare and beautiful coffee that reaches your cup. The bag also includes a new, expanded label on each package with additional insights and information about the coffee written by Partners’ Green Coffee Buyer, Samuel Klein.
Today, all of Partners’ rotating roster of Single Origin coffees are now packaged in the new cream bags. Partners’ Single Origin program highlights the brand’s unparalleled farm relationships and sustainable sourcing efforts. Maintaining strong relationships at origin allows Partners to offer blends with a consistent flavor profile year over year, while celebrating the growing and processing efforts of the brand’s producing and importing partners. Rotating Single Origins – featuring farm relationships from Colombia, Burundi, Brazil and more – are some of the brand’s bestsellers, while El Ramo (Partners’ mainstay Single Origin from Colombia) is Partners’ fourth best-selling product overall.
Thank you!
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Coffee Design is a feature series on Sprudge presented by TricorBraun Flex.
