Coffee and great design go hand in hand, like puzzle pieces that just *fit*.
On a purely utilitarian level, caffeine has fueled artists and creatives for centuries. But in a commercial design sense, fantastic art and creativity have helped define how coffee is understood, packaged and marketed since day one. And in the field of specialty coffee-our oeuvre here at Sprudge—the design aesthetic and language of coffee continues to innovate, surprise, and delight.
Sprudge Media Network has published original content each day since the year of our lord 2009—an era of skinny jeans, swoopy hair, unfettered millennial optimism, and many independent web logs, or “blogs”. Today we are the The Last Blog™ with a remarkable 17 years (and counting!) worth of archives to draw inspiration from. Our archives are free, open to all, and have served countless units of inspiration, mood boards, and investment deck presentations across the ten thousand articles we’ve published right here on Sprudge.
All the way the heck back in 2015, we began spotlighting coffee (and coffee adjacent) companies in a regular feature series called Coffee Design. With a desire to showcase companies far and wide, Coffee Design has now featured dozens—no, hundreds!—or coffee companies from around the world, boldly platforming brands large and small, established and emerging, all with an eye for the power and beauty of coffee’s unique aesthetic. Today, as we look forward to the incredible feature of Coffee Design, we also want to take a moment to showcase some outstanding stories from the last decade.
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But it’s not enough simply to show off these remarkable designs. Sprudge’s unique platform allows us to go deeper, and to engage directly with our community through public outreach and awards. An award for Outstanding Design has been a part of our annual Sprudgie Awards program since 2009, and there are some incredible winners in there over the years. But we know it could go even bigger. In 2023 we took our love of coffee design and celebration a step further by launching the Sprudge Design Awards. The SDAs allow us to showcase all manner of design in the coffee industry, inclusive of packaging across the value chain, merch, food products, designers and teams, e-commerce, web design, and more. We’re thrilled to bring the SDAs back this year bigger and better than ever. Watch this space!
In 2026, for brand-new roasting companies and garage upstarts, access to beautiful packaging is easier than ever. Case in point: we’ve partnered with noissue, a company that prints all manners of sustainable packaging and products, offering low-minimum print-on-demand services for retail, food service, and hospitality. It’s a terrific company for smaller-scale roasting companies, with their low minimum orders (as low as 25) and intuitive browser-based design tools for those just getting their footing in design and marketing. Their commitment to sustainability doesn’t sacrifice quality: soy and water based inks pop with vibrant colors, compostable products are durable, paper is acid-free, and folks we’ve worked with for years have had positive experiences with limited-release offerings and large-scale bulk orders alike.
In partnership with noissue, we’re excited to continue bringing you fresh Coffee Design stories throughout 2026. Noissue represents an important category of the coffee industry—the small and large scale printers that are responsible for a majority of the bags and printed packaging you find at cafes and stores and in your mailbox—and in 2026, we’re going learn more and ask questions about that whole world. Prepare to dive deep on home compostability versus industrial compostability, FSC-certified paper, plant based polymers, MOQs, WATs, and greenhushing. It’s a bold new world out there, and we’re gonna get geeky.
Coffee Design: Infinitely Recyclable Coffee Cans From West Berkshire Roastery
Coffee Design: An Edible Coffee Bar From Big Island Coffee Roasters
If you’re reading this, and perhaps own or work for a cool coffee company, we would love to have the opportunity to feature your company in an upcoming story on Coffee Design, presented by noissue. Please get in touch—and we can’t wait to continue telling these stories for many years to come.
Coffee Design is an original feature series on Sprudge Media Network, curated by co-founder Zachary Carlsen. RRead more Coffee Design here in our archives.
