A Brazilian Coffee Roasting startup with strong ties to the city of Brasília needed help with branding and communications.
Pilotis is an architectural term for columns; and, although columns have been around since before the stone age, pilotis are pretty unique feature of city planning in Brasilia. In Brasilia, Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer teamed up to create the quintessencial modern city (in the 60s), by capitalizing the ever-present horizon line of the heartland of Brazil. They accomplished that by making pilotis an obligatory feature of downtown apartment buildings—essentially fooling the eye of the random passerby into seeing thru buildings.
Everyone that has grown up in Brasilia will tell you that the space created by the pilotis under the residential buildings was intrinsically tied to their rearing. It is a communal space, frequented by kids and elderly alike. And it could have resulted in a very boring and repetitive feature, except that Niemeyer, being Niemeyer, got creative with geometric shapes and turned these utilitarian columns into sculptural companions to the daily life.
I based the Café Pilotis logo in the actual shapes of the different columns you can find in Brasilia, giving these shapes the proper tribute by this startup.
The website needed to be easy to maintain and update, as the team had a very limited budget for their entire operation.
The company’s website was designed and implemented using WordPress and Woo-commerce, while the startup’s mail system was set up in Mail Chimp.
I assisted in researching packaging options within budget constraints. I designed an effective system by splitting the variable and non-variable data: creating a main sticker label for the overall batch information; and another, smaller, label (that doubles as a seal) for the variable data such as roast color and date.
As with any business, needs for further design work are constantly arising. I am fortunate enough to be able to build-and-expand on the branding put forth, with banners, paper bags, aprons, signage and such.
I accompanied this client through the entire process of creating a new brand and positioning it in the market by: brainstorming business name, launching a campaign with facebook ads in which the target audience could vote on the final name, creating pre-launch ads on facebook, designing the logo and brand guidelines, researching and designing effective packaging options within budget constraints, advising on web and communication practices, and finally drumming-up clicks and traffic to the social media platforms and website.