Prove through Process
I believe that something as simple as coffee can be transformative. That if you can see the importance of changing the way that we interact with something as simple as coffee that it can change the way that you view your community, your purchasing power, and the way the level of impact that you can have in your community.
I think the best way to do that is to show people every chance we get why something like coffee can be transformative. To do that, I want to catch the heart, mind and imagination with our coffees. To show how we’re trying to build better relationships with the coffee and products that we purchase, to help foster healthier economies around the world by paying for coffees at prices that are sustainable for farmers. Our first goal is to build enough of an audience to open up a cafe in our home of the Inland Empire, CA. Throughout that campaign to a brick and mortar, we will prove through a multitude of means our expertise, our marketing flair, and a blueprint for those who want to progress the cultural richness in their communities as well. I believe that in being transparent in our journey we will prove our value and forward that value onto others even if their desires transcend coffee. I hope that our process will inspire and build rapport.
The first start in this process was figuring out our name. The Three Fanged Feline is an homage to my cat Felonious Monk. He is missing his bottom left fang which is also represented on our logo. I know many companies can have what they do in their name. Like “brewing” or “ Coffee Roasters” I feel like doing that loses some of the mystique in what your business can be. I like the idea that businesses can have a mascot, because I think that they add to a brands identity. We still make jokes about Clippy, the friendly Microsoft paper clip, because of the level of brand recognition it created. Love him or hate him, it added to your experience. It’s an added bonus that in my ideas for branding I get to immortalize my cat.
One thing I learned in making logos is that a good logo can’t have more than 3 colors. I think those colors need to be done in a way that they can be easily done as pallets so you can transform similar branding to express multiple moods or ideas. I learned this from because I had many friends who had screen printing businesses and your charge is by the color. Design work that has a lot of colors - Including black! - can make the price of your products go up.
We worked with Refine Packaging for our boxes and our outside design is in full color, while the inside of our boxes used only 2 colors. We we’re able to utilize negative space on the inside to turn the two color inside have a third color by utilizing white. One thing that we learned that I don’t think we would have learned without going through this process is that once the box is closed that even though we utilized the brown that is a part of our 3 color (Teal, Brown, Black). That brown doesn’t pop up as much as I think white would be. Honestly it’s such a mixed bag because I think the side flaps having the brown and the white as the third color utilizing the negative space is really fun, but doing a 1 color design might have a pretty nice price reduction. I don’t regret my choice, but it does make me wonder if I should do a brown inside with blue because It’ll be light on dark and should have a bit more pop. Only 500 boxes to sell before we decide to switch on the packaging. In the future, I would like to have a few different colored boxes to represent different things or even like a blend. I want a blood red box for Halloween.
We also worked with No Issue for our mailer bags. Those mailers are recyclable, have a double adhesive so you can use them again, and are a company that reflect our values in sustainability and transparency. In a similar vain, the cost went up fairly substantially for where I am for a startup to go for two colors. I opted for size of bag, which allows me to put two retail boxes in nice and snug. In doing that, I wanted to pick our teal to go up against the white background. I made a strokeline - or something… I’m not gonna be a good teacher for photo editing - and hollowed out the 3 so it kinda looks like it’s ripping through the paper. If it wasn’t an outline I think the design would look sloppy.
Even the bags that we package our coffee in are 100% biodegradable. I will update this blog when I get a better link about the products specifics. In the link I provided, it’s the link to the Merchant that we currently use.
Single use products are an inevitable part of our economy. A goal of The Three Fanged Feline is to do our best to have recyclable, biodegradable and sustainable product. As we grow, we will always reevaluate the standards of the industry to make sure that our partners are treating the planet, their employees and their community with respect.
In my design process, I learned throughout my last endeavor the downfall of having a lot of labels to distinguish products. From ink costs, to designing multiple color pallets to distinguish products, to updating the files to keep consistent and finding space in those designs to put in important information like the roast date. I wanted the design to be inviting, clean, and malleable to everyday business needs. In our shipping needs we have a thermal label printer, and in that same thermal label printer we can cleanly and in small or large order print out labels. I also thought of ways to make our product have increased web traffic. So being able to incorporate a QR code, is a clean, effective and versatile way to give relevant data about a coffee while leaving out a fair amount of clutter from our branded image. You’re able to to get a basic QR code for free here.
I can’t wait to show our process in roasting coffee, our quality assurance process, and fun ways that we’ve learned how to make our coffee shine through this endeavor.
3d Proof that we received courtesy of Refine Packaging.
